THG Unveils New LCD Benchmarking Method

The Test Setup

The machine on which all tests will be conducted will remain constant - we will use a PC with:

• 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
• 512 MB of RAM
• NVIDIA Quadro FX3000 graphics card

Our choice of components is made necessary by the heavy demands that recent games make on system resources, but for a monitor test, power isn't really an issue.

The Quadro FX3000 is an important factor in this test. It's basically an excellent 3D graphics card aimed at the professional market. But we use the Quadro card in particular because it's one of the rare products that has two DVI outputs of perfectly equal quality, which allows us to compare the two displays directly, side by side, during application tests without the performance of the card itself being at issue.

Our reference monitor is still the excellent Hercules Prophetview 920 Pro - until another one comes along to take away its title. Equipped with a Hydis 20ms panel, it nonetheless has excellent responsiveness, as our tests will show.