Decent monitor with native refresh rate over 60 hz?
 

I've been monitor hunting lately while waiting for my tax return, and I've decided to get one with 1920x1080 or 1920x1200, but I can't seem to find any monitors with high resolutions now that will display their native resolution higher than 60hz.

Is that normal for monitors, or have manufacturers just started to go daffy and decide that if you have a good enough response time, it doesn't matter?

I'm using a Philips 190CW monitor, and I can go with 75 HZ at its native resolution of 1440x900. I guess at higher resolutions, they're incapable of doing so.

But I doubt it hardly matters for LCD monitors. Perhaps you can see flickering at 60 Hz with CRTs, but I can't really see them with LCDs, so it doesn't matter for me.

Yeah, if I recall correctly, LCDs don't even technically refresh, it's just a part of the VESA standard they follow for compatibility. So yeah, most 1080p+ monitors will only do 60Hz.

That said, I have an HP L2335 (23" 1920x1200) that apparently goes up to 72Hz after you install drivers for it. It's a nice monitor, but discontinued. If you decide to get one, watch for references to a "pink hue" or "pressure spots" in the descriptions (mine has the latter :/ ). And as usual when buying monitors, try to see it in person first if possible.

Old CRT monitors used to work by scanning an electron beam across every pixel in your screen X many times a second, where X is the Hz it was operating at. Newer LCDs don't actually need to do any sort of scanning, and as far as I know they stay at a certain setting as long as they're not told otherwise (and when they are told otherwise, the response time is a measure of how fast they'll be able to change to the new color).

So, yeah, refresh rate is pretty much a nonsense number for LCDs. It's like asking for the miles per gallon you'd get with an all-electric car.

Combine that with refresh rates being just one of many things that determine how fluid your display looks and it becomes a pretty academic question. A higher refrsh rate does not necessarily mean less flicker or more fluid motion, it depends entirely on what you're looking at, how well lit the room is, how close you're sitting and frankly, how good your eyesight is. The only way to know for sure if a monitor does what you want is to test it out, rather than reading the side of the box.

A well-rounded community guide on the subject can be found here: AnandTech - The LCD Thread

Deffffintely check out the AnandTech LCD thread, is is "the place" for all your monitor information/question needs.