How important is the ability to set monitor RGB gains?

I have just purchased a new 19" CRT monitor (Iiyama Vision Master

Pro 454), and to my surprise it is not possibly to the RGB gain

settings individually, as it was with my old NEC C900 monitor. I

used this feature when calibrating the old monitor with Photocal and

the Colorvision CRT Spyder. However, the new monitor does not have

controls to modify RGB gains individually, although you can set the

colour temperature to any value.

 

How valuable is it to be able to adjust RGB individually? I had

assumed that it was mandatory in order to get an accurate colour

balance. Is any imbalance compensated for when Photocal creates a

monitor profile?

 

It also seems quite difficult to find a monitor with RGB controls

these days. Eizo to one (at a cost), but many of the other

manufacturers don't seem to provide this feature any more.

 

I would be happier returning the new monitor and getting a

replacement that has RGB controls. Do you think this would be

worthwhile, or is there another solution?

All the modern graphics cards I use, especially the Nvidia line, allow you to control RGB intensity, contrast and saturation via the video DAC. Although technically not the same as adjusting voltage pots on a monitor, they accomplish about the same thing in terms of display and are much more convenient to work with. By default every new monitor I've seen lately, including the cheapy ones, produce a perfectly neutral greyscale when displaying a greyscale and don't require RGB tweaking. I store several profiles for different labs and paper types and recall them at well without touching my monitor settings this way.

 

Sorry if this doesn't help with your question, but it may be some help with your solution.

I agree with Scott. As nice as it is to get in and fiddle with the monitors controls, to have that raw control over the monitor's output, it isn't necessary. You can adjust the color in most graphics card drivers now anyway and it gives you the same results.