Running higher than recommended refresh rate = monitor overclocking?

Soooopahfly · 06-21-2006, 05:38 PM

I recently purchased a Viewsonic VA1912wb widescreen 19" monitor. Works beautifully. 1440x900 resolution. My only problem with it was that it only went up to a max 60Hz refresh rate (apparently this is about on par with most LCDs). Now I keep reading that 60Hz is fine for LCD screens because the flickering that CRTs were prone to is not as imminent, however, I find myself straining even at 60Hz.

I went ahead and generated a ModeLine for my xorg.conf file to run it at 75Hz, but I read in the documentation that at 1440x900 only 60Hz is supported. Lo and behold, the monitor works at 75Hz, much to my eyes' satisfaction.

When I read the spec sheet from Newegg.com (where I purchased from), the horizontal refresh rate ranges 30-82kHz, while the vertical refresh rate ranges 50-85Hz. Since the vertical refresh rate has a range up to 85, I don't seem quite as worried. Although, my guess is that this reading is simply for ALL the supported resolutions (and not necessarily 1440x900). Can anyone verify this?

Will running at 1440x900x75 cause any damage to my monitor (short- or long-term)?
I noticed when I had a 60Hz ModeLine generated the value for "clock" was at 106.5MHz, but with a 75Hz ModeLine the clock was at 136.49MHz. This seems akin to "overclocking" my monitor, is it not?

dravenloft · 06-22-2006, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soooopahfly

I recently purchased a Viewsonic VA1912wb widescreen 19" monitor. Works beautifully. 1440x900 resolution. My only problem with it was that it only went up to a max 60Hz refresh rate (apparently this is about on par with most LCDs). Now I keep reading that 60Hz is fine for LCD screens because the flickering that CRTs were prone to is not as imminent, however, I find myself straining even at 60Hz.

I went ahead and generated a ModeLine for my xorg.conf file to run it at 75Hz, but I read in the documentation that at 1440x900 only 60Hz is supported. Lo and behold, the monitor works at 75Hz, much to my eyes' satisfaction.

When I read the spec sheet from Newegg.com (where I purchased from), the horizontal refresh rate ranges 30-82kHz, while the vertical refresh rate ranges 50-85Hz. Since the vertical refresh rate has a range up to 85, I don't seem quite as worried. Although, my guess is that this reading is simply for ALL the supported resolutions (and not necessarily 1440x900). Can anyone verify this?

Will running at 1440x900x75 cause any damage to my monitor (short- or long-term)?
I noticed when I had a 60Hz ModeLine generated the value for "clock" was at 106.5MHz, but with a 75Hz ModeLine the clock was at 136.49MHz. This seems akin to "overclocking" my monitor, is it not?

That's an LCD monitor, so I doubt you're actually doing anything. On a CRT the Vrefresh and Hsync form the screen and its resolution. So setting an unsuported refresh means: a) you get no pictures and b) doing that too often for too long you fry your monitor.

Last I knew (this was a few years ago when a 14" LCD monitor was still us$850+) an LCD does not actually have a refresh. They just emulate one to the system to keep the graphics card and OS happy. LCDs don't do scanlines, or scanning of any sort, each pixel is controlled independently and just told "light up with this colour" to make the picture. If this is still true you're safe. If not... I'd say getting a picture means you won't quickly kill your monitor, but don't be surprised if it doesn't live long.