Monitor Refresh Rate: What matters and why?
 

Right now I have two monitors in the house. My wife's is a 15 Inch LCD from Dell and mine is a 19inch CRT. There was a big sticker on hers across the entire screen demanding that I use a screen refresh rate of 60Mhz.

With that out of the way, how do I know what to set mine to. The settings are incremented by 5 from 85 - 60 Mhz. What are the pros and cons of setting to either end of the spectrum?

Thanks a lot of the help.

and lcd refresh rate is different then a crt.

Since a crt uses an Electron gun, it refresh from the upper left too lower right. Thus the higher the refreshrate, the less flickering you see.

Lcd's are pixel refresh independent, the thing you want to look for is the rise and fall time. That's why you see counts like 25ms for an lcd and so on.

On a standard Digital connection to an lcd, you can't even raise the refresh above 60.

On a crt, you want to go as high as you can go. 120 if you can depending on what res you run at.

So the fact that I can only choose up to 85 shows that my monitor is crappY?

No thats actually pretty decent for your moniter.... i have mine set at 75 and it is rockin the casbah for me...

Anything above 80 - 85 on a CRT is sufficient, so 120 is not needed (but not bad or anything). 60 is definately bad.

the refresh rate for CRT can change depending on the resolution you run your monitor at. Although my monitor can go up to 120, I can only do 60 when I am running in 1280x1024. If I went with a smaller resolution I could get a faster refresh rate. THis is because then the monitor would not have to draw as many lines on the screen. But I usually set my monitor to 1024x768 and get a better refresh.

72Hz is fine for a <14" visible 75Hz for above 14"

Too high a refresh rate can impair the performance of your PC, same for a mismatched one.

This tool will help you set the optimum refresh rates for 2K/XP

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/

As mentioned, LCD refresh rates are treated differently - the setting you pick on software shouldn't make a difference.

I find that I can get by if I have it set to at least 75Hz. 85hz is a lot better.

YAY I got 60rr i need a new monitor bad!! Spose to get one along time ago..my eyes are bleeding

60 is really bad, your eyes will hurt, set 85 or more
i have 100 on a 19" monitor

A refresh rate of ~60 hertz on a CRT monitor will often cause eye fatigue and headaches. This is occurs from a 'flicker' that the human eye barely catches, but is still there. To prove this, set your refresh rate to 60 hertz, and look at your screen from the corner of your eye. Usually, you will be able to see the flicker on lighter0coloured surfaces and are able to see this much easier out of the corner of your eye because your peripheral vision is more sensitive to movement.
Anyways, just imagine having this thing flickering at you for hours at a time day after day. Hurts my eyes just thinking about it.
Thus I swear by my refresh rate of 85 hertz at 1024x768 on a 17 inch monitor.
Hope I helped.

wakeleggers response is well written and precise.

I agree - wakelogger thanks a lot for the insight - that is the kind of thing I was hoping to hear. The only other question I have is about the stuff that charliex suggested. Will it hurt my monitor to "overclock" it so to speak with the software that is on that site. In otherwords, when i run my monitor at 100 hz even though the OS would have only let me go to 85 hz, will that kill my monitor?

It would not be all bad; if this thing broke, I would go to a flat screen....

It can hurt it mondak. You can cause the electron guns to fry. The worst part is it starts with the high pitch whine that sounds like a banshee.

85 is decent, don't worry. Anything under 75 is bad.

just dont go over the hz that your monitor is rated for at that resolution. and yeah higher is defintely better, i feel sick at 60hz after 30 seconds.

Do everyone you know a favor:

When you sit at someone elses desk, check their refresh rate!! It seems to me that windows automatically chooses the lowest, and that's usually 60, gack!!

Change it for them and have them take a look. Even the ungeek can tell the difference.

good for the old karma.

I also recommend 85. Anything higher and you won't notice much, plus you run the risk of screwing your monitor. And if that doesn't happen, you're wasting video processing power (GPU or RAMDAC?), although I don't know how much performance you're going to lose over it. 85 is great for normal CRT monitors!