Monitor recommendation for future arcade build?

[Rollie]

Hello I'm planning on building my first arcade in the future, and have most of specs chosen, I'll prob post them later to get feed back. But what is a good computer monitor since, CRT isn't an option. What features should I be looking for?

[Lordmonkus]

At minimum you will want a good gaming monitor with low input lag, BenQ makes some great ones.

If you like CRT shader effects in your emulator then you will want 1440p or 4K because of the pixel density. It really makes those effects look that much better and scaling up 240p games fit much better with integer scaling for proper pixel geometry.

Finally if you are willing and able to drop the money on the higher end G-Sync and Freesync are both very good for emulation. With these monitors you can disable V-Sync which is a source of input lag without having screen tearing. Mame benefits greatly from these display types because it lets your monitor match the refresh rate of the game without affecting the games speed. If you use a normal monitor with main and you enable V-Sync many arcade games will run faster than they were intended. This isn't quite as big of a deal for console games since those were meant to run at 60 Hz anyways but the reduced input lag of V-Sync off still helps though.

[Rollie]

2 hours ago, lordmonkus said:

At minimum you will want a good gaming monitor with low input lag, BenQ makes some great ones.

If you like CRT shader effects in your emulator then you will want 1440p or 4K because of the pixel density. It really makes those effects look that much better and scaling up 240p games fit much better with integer scaling for proper pixel geometry.

Finally if you are willing and able to drop the money on the higher end G-Sync and Freesync are both very good for emulation. With these monitors you can disable V-Sync which is a source of input lag without having screen tearing. Mame benefits greatly from these display types because it lets your monitor match the refresh rate of the game without affecting the games speed. If you use a normal monitor with main and you enable V-Sync many arcade games will run faster than they were intended. This isn't quite as big of a deal for console games since those were meant to run at 60 Hz anyways but the reduced input lag of V-Sync off still helps though.

Thanks, but if i had to choose between freesync/G sync or a higher resolution with low response time, what should i go for? I'm trying to build on a budget

 

[Lordmonkus]

On a budget choose higher resolution and low input latency. Just keep in mind the "response time" you will see up front when looking at monitors is not "input latency", that is the time for a pixel to go from grey to white and back to grey again. While a low "response time" is good to reduce ghosting it is my no means an indicator of input latency.

If you have an AMD graphics card that supports Freesync then you may want to look into them since they aren't as expensive as G-Sync.

G-Sync is expensive and while I cannot recommend one to everyone especially if budget is a concern, I can wholeheartedly recommend one if you have the money and willing to spend on one. I have a G-Sync display and it really is a pleasure to game on.

I would suggest looking at BenQ gaming monitors though I cannot say for certain how well anything over 60 Hz is going to work with emulation with V-Sync on and those displays typically nowadays being 120+ Hz refresh rates.

[Alice Ceaser]

Hello Rollie! If you want monitor recommendation then I think IPS panel technology  will be the best option to build a new monitor.