Monitor/Display Megathread - Chromebook Pixel is best IPS display on market

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Monitor/Display Megathread - Chromebook Pixel is best IPS display on market

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DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

I'm a gamer and want to do this Eyefinity poo poo
(someone help me out here, because I haven't done anything with Eyefinity)

Eyefinity is a sweet-rear end option built into virtually all newer ATI video cards. Like basically every card made in the last 5+ years, ATI cards incorporate a pair of physical chips that handle the digital output: this is what allows you to use two DVI ports simultaneously (or HDMI, or one of each). ATI takes this setup and tosses another bunch of circuitry in there to handle DisplayPort. The practical upshot is that an Eyefinity card can output at least 3 displays: 2x DVI/HDMI/VGA/whatever, and 1x DisplayPort. Things work best when you conform to that setup. It is possible to get an active (passive won't work) DisplayPort -> DVI/HDMI adapter if you care to do so, but they're not particularly cheap. There are also some crazy Eyefinity cards with 6x DisplayPorts and nothing else, which can drive 6 monitors at the same time if you really want to get insane (or want to set up a monitoring station).

Some people report curious problems using a triple-monitor setup, such as flickers, monitors losing signal, etc. These issues are, however, in the minority and shouldn't be considered as an inevitable trade-off, and may be more of a sign of poor interaction between particular pieces of hardware (or software) than anything else. In particular it seems some cards will cause flickering at certain GPU/RAM frequencies, and/or when transitioning between the idle and full-power states. These cases can generally be fixed by tinkering around with frequencies a bit. On the other hand, I've been using a chimera setup (5850 pushing a 2007WFP via DVI, U2410 via DP, and a L921G no-name monitor via DVI) for months now, both gaming and not, and have had zero problems whatsoever.

In short, Eyefinity is the easiest option to getting a triple-monitor setup working, so long as you have at least one DisplayPort compatible monitor (or buy an active adapter). If you have 3 or more non-DP monitors and are ok with using all but two of them as desktop/2D-only monitors, it may be cheaper for you to just buy a second $30 ATI card than gently caress around with adapters.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2010 07:36

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:33

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

Calibration stuff here! Calibration is important!

While I won't go into a really long calibration post right now, here are some short answers:

Q: Why should I calibrate?
A: If you're only interested in games, and you're happy with the way things look as-is, it may not be worth it for you to gently caress around with things. However, it's almost always possible to make things look closer to the way the designers/artists/etc intended it to look with a bit of calibration. It also allows you to better match what you see on your monitor to other things, such as what you print out, or what other people see on their monitors (assuming they are also properly calibrated).

Q: Ok, so how do I calibrate?
A: First you decide how much money you want to spend. Basic options are $0, <$100, and >$100. Online-only methods will rely on you to eyeball things, and consequently tend to have poor results: you're probably already used to "wrong" colors of one sort or another, to the point where "correct" colors may look off and tempt you to set things a bit incorrectly. Hardware kits are pretty much all plug-and-play these days, with step-by-step software that'll do all the hard stuff for you.

Q: I want to spend $0! How do I do this?
A: Best way is to borrow a calibration tool from someone who took one of the more expensive options. Barring that, there are some basic online tutorials you can use to improve your picture a bit. http://tft.vanity.dk/ has a very nice set of tools that you can use to get a better idea of what tweaks to make to your monitor look better. If nothing else, most monitors are more "correct" when set to brightness and contrast settings of about 50%, vice whatever they came set at.

Q: I want to spend <$100. What do I get?
A: The HueyPro is an ok colorometer, and is cheap. It's pretty fast, and it'll do a better job than the online setups will. It also supports multiple monitors and doesn't require any software registration, allowing you to use it on multiple computers without issue. Note that this will not work well with wide-gamut monitors, such as the U2410. You need to bump up to something better.

Q: I want to spend >$100. What do I get?
A: If you don't want to spend too much, the Spyder3 Pro goes for around $130. It's better than the HueyPro, also supports multiple monitors, and does a decent job with wide-gamut displays like the U2410. It, however, requires software registration, limiting its use in multi-computer setups. If you're willing to drop even more cash, the X-Rite Eye One Display 2 runs about $200, and is where "professional" grade calibration really starts to pick up. If your livelihood depends on proper colors, this is probably the cheapest one you should be considering. And you should probably investigate this sort of poo poo yourself, anyhow. If you absolutely HAVE to have the best, the X-Rite i1 Pro is probably the best one before things get really silly--and it's still about $900 or so.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2010 08:02

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Some minor updates to the U2410 entry:

movax posted:

24"
Dell U2410 (IPS)
Inputs: 2x DVI
+/- Wide-gamut
+ 12b processing
+ Audio-out/HDMI audio pass-through
+ Factory calibrated (not a replacement for real calibration, though)
+ Picture-in-Picture
- Twice the price of the U2311H

# ¿ Dec 11, 2010 08:30

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

ilkhan posted:

Want to add that this is wrong. Eyefinity started on the 5 series cards (last year). Dual monitor outputs have been around for a long time, eyefinity not so much.

But it is built into the virtually all ATI cards released in the last year? It's on all 6xxx cards, and is also on the vast majority of 5xxx cards that cost more than $75. Pretty much the only cards it's not on are sub-$75 budget cards (so the 3xxx, 4xxx, and 5(4/5)xx lineup), largely because those tend not to have a DisplayPort output on them to begin with--all of which are a year or more old now. I guess maybe you consider the word "newer" to go back farther than I do.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2010 20:33

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Commissar Of Doom posted:

The top of the screen is always a few shades darker than the bottom when dealing with certain colors.

It may be your viewing angle, it may be a bad monitor, or it may be simple limitations of it being a cheap TN panel. The reviews I found on a cursory glance were generally unimpressed with the visual quality (not that it was bad, per se, just not particularly good), noting banding, sharpness, and greyscale issues. You can certainly try RMAing and hoping for a better one, but there's not going to be a software setting that fixes that sort of thing, unless you're still running it with brightness/sharpness maxed out, in which case set them to 50% and see if that helps.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2010 10:26

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

El Kabong posted:

I just got two displays and was wondering if there is a way to prevent one full-screen application from minimizing when I click on something on the other monitor? What I want to do is keep a game full-screen, and be able to browse on the other monitor. The tricky part is that you mouse to the edge of the screen to scroll around in the game.

There isn't anything system-wide you can do to fix this; it's something that the game devs have to bother enabling. It sounds like you want what's called "Full-screen windowed" mode, which (as its name implies) makes the game run in full screen, but act like it's windowed so you can mess around with other programs and whatnot. For games that don't support this, ShiftWindow can fake it pretty well, but you may run into issues with how the game handles things when you mouse off to somewhere else. Worth a look, anyhow.

Manny posted:

Also, anyone had problems with the AG coating on Dells? I've heard that it is particularly aggressive/noticable on the u2711, and some people go as far as major warranty-voiding surgery to remove it and convert their screen to glossy.

It ends up being strongly personal preference. People coming from glossy displays are more likely to be driven batty by it, since they'll immediately see the difference. On the other hand, people coming from non-glossy displays probably won't notice anything unless they load up a blank white page and look for it. As LakesGuzzler notes, it might be worth it to see if you can see one in person if you think you might be sensitive to this issue.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2010 15:23

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

HandsomeBen posted:

I have an Acer p235H that I really like and was looking around last night to grab another. It appears to have been discontinued I don't understand why, it seemed pretty popular and I'm pretty sure it was released in 2009.

I want to run dual monitors but not having two of the same might drive me crazy.

Many companies update their lineups on a yearly basis, so it's not uncommon for something in 2009 to not be in production anymore, even if it is/was wildly popular. See: Dell's U2209WA. That said, without calibration, it's unlikely you'd have gotten the "matching" you wanted without substantial effort. Over time the CCFL in monitors fade (which is one of the big advantages of LED backlights), and as a cheap TN panel, uniformity and QA are generally rather low. That all combines to make it probable that the picture produced by one you picked up today would be noticeably different from the picture produced by the one you've had for almost two years now. So in that sense you're not really losing much by going with a different monitor.

My suggestion is if you can't find one on eBay or something, just find one that has a similar enough looking bezel so at least that part matches pretty well.

Xybjj posted:

I've been looking at the Samsung B2330H for a while now. It's probably the cheapest 23 incher that I can find. It's about 10 bucks below the U2311H. It's response time is 5ms. The U2311H is 8ms. Surely I can't see a difference, since there's only 3ms difference between those 2 screens.

As was born out in the previous thread, response times are basically dirty lies and should (at most) be used as such:
Is the response time >10ms? If so, you'll probably notice ghosting/latency when gaming.
Is the response time <10ms? If so, you may or may not notice ghosting/latency when gaming regardless of what the number is. That is, the difference between 2ms, 5ms, and 8ms amount to measuring techniques and should be ignored. A 2ms panel coupled with a lovely processing chip will perform worse than an 8ms panel coupled with a nice and fast chip. Sadly, there's no way to know which is which without looking at individual reviews.

tl;dr Unless you're used to playing crazy-rear end timing games on a CRT, it is unlikely you'll notice any ghosting/latency on the U2311H, let alone any difference between the U2311H and the B2330H (or any other quality monitor in its class).

DrDork fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Dec 16, 2010

# ¿ Dec 16, 2010 21:16

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

HandsomeBen posted:

Probably sounds incredibly stupid but now that I have a steady job and am no longer a poor college student I want my stuff to be shiny and perfect!

You're talking to a thread where numerous people have tossed down $500-$600 on the U2410 because our sperging OCD was driven batty by the loss of 120 lines, rather than spend half as much on a U2311H. We understand. This is a great time of year for that "wait and see" tactic, too, what with everyone putting out sales regularly.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2010 21:26

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

angrytaxman posted:

But the one problem I have with it is that it seems to have a strange coating on it that makes everything that's light (like white background on a webpage) kind of "shimmer". Has anyone else noticed this? Will I get used to it, or does it go away, or is it just something that some people can't get over?

That's the anti-glare coating that has been discussed so much. By itself it will never go away. You may or may not get used to it. Some people have gone so far as to strip the AG coating off (Google for it), but I've no idea what sort of consequences that carries for the warranty. Myself, I just got used to the very similar AG coating on my U2410, but it is a deal-breaker for some people.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2010 23:37

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

angrytaxman posted:

Yeah the other display I was considering was a refurb 27" iMac Core2Duo and using the min-DP port to run my computer. It's $1269 which is $550 more than the U2711 was. That's a lot of dough!

Kinda silly question, but have you tried turning the brightness down and making sure you're viewing it in a well-lit room? It might help alleviate some of the eye-strain.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2010 02:35

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Entreri posted:

Edit: Actually, I found a slightly cheaper 120hz Asus that I may jump on. Do monitors tend stay at a relatively fixed price or can I expect it to be half as much next year?

120Hz monitors are a very niche product right now--even moreso than IPS panels, in that they address a "need" that most people don't even recognize: 60Hz is quite fast enough for the vast majority of users, and 3D gaming is going to be a chicken-and-egg game for awhile yet. Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying that all the decent 120Hz panels are rather expensive, resulting from a very small target audience and being new tech. That one you linked, incidentally, does not include NVidia's 3D kit required for 3D gaming (~$150 or so), if that was what you were going for.

As for where the prices will go, the answer is always down. Or, more accurately, the price for a specific monitor stays pretty stable through its life, but new products will come out that replace it at a lower price point. Eg, the U2311H will stay at ~$275 from release to the day it's discontinued, but the refreshed 2011 or 2012 model may offer all the U2311H did, but for $225 while a new monitor with even fancier tech takes over the $275 spot.

I don't know if they'll drop by half by next year unless there's some magic push between now and then that justifies the substantial added expense of a 120Hz monitor over a 60Hz one for more than a tiny subset of the gaming population. As I don't expect such a revolution to take place, I'd imagine they'll still be comparatively expensive vice 60Hz monitors in another year. Maybe it'll only be a $100 premium instead of a $200, but it'll still be higher.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2010 09:53

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

pwh posted:

Someone please convince me that I don't need a second monitor. Please.

No.

That would be entirely against the spirit of this thread.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2010 06:06

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Number_6 posted:

It seems to me LCD monitors are really going down the "wrong" path, in terms of almost every new monitor being 16:9 and 1920x1080.

As much as many of us here may agree and long for the days of 16:10 monitors, market forces have gone the other way, and 16:9 is here to stay (and dominate). It's a lot easier to stamp "Full HD!" on your monitor and get Average Joe to comprehend that that's a good thing, and then pocket the difference in production costs vice a 16:10 monitor.

Number_6 posted:

If anyone knows where I can buy an inexpensive 22", 1680x1050 monitor, with at least 75 hz refresh and overall good image quality, and no discernible input lag, please post it here.

Does not exist, sorry.

22" 1680x1050 monitors aren't hard to find. 75Hz though, is...uhh...well it'd be an odd bird, at the very least. Virtually no LCD monitors actually support 75Hz in any meaningful way. Either they simply don't let you select that as a refresh rate, or they drop 1:6 frames to resync, effectively displaying the same number of frames over time as at 60Hz, but skipping now and then--probably not what you want. Any monitor which actually does support more than a 60Hz refresh rate is not going to be inexpensive, by any means. The 120Hz monitors carry roughly a $200 premium for it. You're again going to run into issues with "inexpensive" and "good image quality with no lag," as well.

Also, why do you play with vsync on? If you can't also set triple buffering, you're almost always better off with vsync off.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2010 09:26

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Randuin posted:

Is there any way to for reals connect a 30" ACD to a 13" mbp? I heard the Mini display to DVI-Dual Link adapter that they sell for $100, is total poo poo.

Since that is Apple's blessed method for that connection, I'm not really sure that there's any better option, other than maybe seeing if there's a 3rd party adapter. What exactly makes it "total poo poo" for you?

# ¿ Dec 18, 2010 20:41

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

ToastyX posted:

The 2209WA is exactly that, if you can still find one.

Except it fails the inexpensive check miserably, by managing to be a $300-$400 22" monitor (if and when you can even find it--even refurbs are $250). If you're going to spend that much, you might as well step up to something better and newer, anyhow.

ToastyX posted:

Even that's not a good rule of thumb because the NEC EA231WMi is rated at 14 ms while the Samsung F2380 is rated at 8 ms, but the Samsung clearly has more ghosting than the NEC.

It works 90% of the time, though there are, as you say, particular monitors which go one way or the other against the rule. In practical terms, the processing chip (when present) has as much or more to do with visible ghosting and latency than the panel itself, and that's not something anyone bothers to put on the box, which is why a lot of people don't really bother paying much attention to response times anymore; by and large modern panels are all "fast enough" and the critical issues are going to be things like the processing chip, overdrive strategy, etc. Listed response times over 10ms is just a general thing suggesting that performance was probably not a big design consideration (or in the case of large monitors, a necessary trade-off).

ToastyX posted:

Basically, if you care about response times, TN with overdrive and IPS with overdrive are the fastest. They are about the same on average with TN being slightly better with gray-to-gray transitions and IPS being slightly better with other transitions.

This is sorta kinda true, and feeds back into my point above: the processing chip can and does make all the difference at times. Many more IPS panels are packaged with a slowish chip for a variety of reasons (better/more processing, the monitor is aimed at office/graphic use so they pick a slower/cheaper chip, etc), where as more TN panels opt for a faster chip (or no chip at all). And, of course, then we've got the new 120Hz TN panels which are faster than pretty much anything else. I will agree with you, however, that most moderate (24" and under) sided IPS panels today will give real-world performance that is not noticeably worse than a good TN panel.

In the end, though, if you really care about ghosting/latency/etc, you owe it to yourself to look up some reviews and see how that particular monitor actually performs, because the numbers never tell the full story.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2010 23:53

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

Also, had no idea the 2209WAs were that special. Got 2 for $220 ea. a few years ago, have to RMA one soon though.

The 2209WA was, much like the U2311H is now, the "golden monitor" of it's time, and pretty much everyone is disappointed that it got discontinued.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2010 06:50

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Number_6 posted:

As to refresh rate, my cheap 19" Acer AL1916 (5:4 ratio) supports 75 hz, or at least Windows thinks it does, and older games show 75 FPS framerate via FRAPS etc. Black level sucks on this thing though, and it has some motion blur and (I suspect) worse than average input lag.

Yeah, 75Hz monitors do exist, they're just an odd bird and have largely fallen out of favor (not that they ever really were in favor), but they're not cheap, especially not with the other requirements you listed. Honestly, you may be better off getting a more main-stream monitor and picking up a better video card so you don't have to worry about falling below 60FPS. Even sub-$200 cards these days can easily push 1680x1050 without a problem.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Dec 19, 2010

# ¿ Dec 19, 2010 09:04

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

freeforumuser posted:

What's the verdict on the Dell U2211H? I'm kinda interested in replacing my trusty LG L227WTG 22" gaming monitor.

It's an excellent all-around monitor. Pretty much take all the gushing over the U2311H and tack on "except it's 1.5" smaller and $50-$75 cheaper." Very good color/accuracy, very little latency/lag/ghosting, a reasonable set of inputs, and an excellent warranty. About the only thing to complain about is that at $240 it's only a "decent" price and not an outstanding one. Still, not much more you could ask for in a monitor of that class, unless you have something very specific in mind. However, unless you're really stuck on the price or need the smaller size for some other reason (like it won't physically fit), I'd personally recommend just waiting for the U2311H to go on sale again, spending the little extra, and enjoying the larger monitor.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Dec 19, 2010

# ¿ Dec 19, 2010 11:58

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

LakesGuzzler posted:

For this reason I don't see why anyone would run with vsync *off*. The tearing is awful in many games. As the refresh rate is 60Hz anyway there's no benefit of having a higher framerate other than e-peen measuring ("I get 132 FPS ") or am I missing something?

The issue with vsync on has to do with a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo, but the crux of it is that it limits you to only being able to run frame-rates that are equal to (refresh-rate/N) where N is some whole integer. So for your normal 60Hz monitor, this means you're limited to 60, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, etc. The problem is that drop between 60 and 30--most people find 60FPS to be smooth, but 30FPS to be kinda iffy for anything with a lot of movement. If your card can push more than 60FPS at all times, that's great and none of this will ever be an issue for you. But the moment your card can only push 59FPS, vsync forces it to drop to 30FPS. That's why a lot of people don't really like it, preferring occasional tearing in exchange for frame-rate that doesn't halve itself at times. Obviously this is less of a concern when you've got the hardware to be comfortably above 60FPS at all times, and triple buffering helps a lot by removing most of the potential FPS penalty of vsync, but it's not always available, sadly. The downside of triple buffering is a small increase in input lag, which may or may not be important (or even noticeable) depending on how it's implemented and what game you're playing.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Dec 19, 2010

# ¿ Dec 19, 2010 22:07

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Steakandchips posted:

I'll be receiving my long awaited U2311H in January, and in preparation for that, I'd like to be able to hook up both my PC as well as my cable TV connection to it from day one.

Unfortunately for you, there is no cheap way to go from HDMI/DVI -> DP, which complicates your setup substantially. The adapter you linked (and all others that aren't like $75+) only goes DP -> HDMI/DVI. That is, you have to have DP-out port on your video-card for it to be any use to you. As such, the DP-in port on the U2311H is basically useless to you, leaving you with but a single DVI port. But all is not lost! You can get HDMI switches pretty cheap that'll let you swap your sources. I'll see if I can find a more elegant solution to your audio problem later tonight.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2010 02:10

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Yup, that'll all work just fine (though I wouldn't suggest a 5m cable unless you actually need it--that's a lot of cable!).

Looking at the audio issue, though, while there are more elegant solutions, they're all far too expensive to consider (several hundred dollars, usually). So as much as I usually don't like franken-setups, going optical -> RCA -> 3.5mm like you initially suggested is probably your most economical option.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2010 07:13

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

kimcicle posted:

So I got a U2410 to be my second monitor in my setup, and I have it connected via DisplayPort. I've noticed that when I turn off just the monitor (leave my computer up and running) that my computer will change everything to just one of my monitors and makes the Windows noise like a USB device has been disconnected. Is this expected behavior?

Yeah, Windows tries its very best to never have stuff displayed on a monitor that's disconnected or turned off, so whenever it can't communicate with a monitor, Windows will collapse everything down to the remaining monitor(s). As with what movax noted about the USB hub, letting it fall into standby instead of manually turning it off will prevent this problem.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2010 21:29

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Tunga posted:

Though I don't think these two models use the same panels?

The U2311H and the U2410 do use different panels, but have similar AG coatings, with the U2410's generally being considered to be heavier. The U2211H also uses a slightly different panel from the U2311H (really the same one just smaller), and shares both the resolution (1920x1080) and the AG coating.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2011 21:52

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Ryokurin posted:

Does anyone have any idea when WQXGA or anything bigger than 1920x1080 screens will start to filter down in price, like say under the $500 range?

There is already the occasional monitor that meets those requirements--filter search on newegg and you'll find a few. However, they're pretty niche products, and I wouldn't expect any serious growth in that segment this coming year. Simply put, "Full HD" is enough of a consumer draw that there's little reason to push things higher--office workers don't really need it, and budget-conscious consumers aren't going to want to spend the extra money on a video card beefy enough to power one, anyhow.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2011 19:29

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Shumagorath posted:

I'm already sorta regretting going for my second and third 24" monitors instead of a giant 30", so here's hoping Eyefinity is really sweet.

Eyefinity is really sweet.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2011 03:32

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

movax posted:

Haven't tried a console hooked up to HDMI yet though, so can't comment on lag there, unfortunately.

There should be little/no difference between playing something 1920x1080 scaled to 2560x1600 over DVI and playing a console scaled to 2560x1600 over HDMI. Either way it should be acceptable for most people, doubly so for anyone who's used to playing console games on a non-CRT TV.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2011 17:00

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

smug forum rear end in a top hat posted:

This has a displayport input, and I think you might be able to just get an hdmi adapter for it, same signal right?

Actually, no, you can't. Well you can, but it's like a $100 adapter or something silly. You can (usually) go from a DP source (video-card) to an HDMI/DVI display with a $5 adapter, but you can't go from a HDMI/DVI source to a DP display cheaply.

The U2311H does have a DVI port in addition to the DP input, though, so you can easily connect a single HDMI/DVI source.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2011 20:47

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

fuseshock posted:

I ordered my U2311H from that eBay deal on 1/07 and got it today. Oddly enough on the status tracking it says in production with estimated delivery of 1/17, what the hell.

Dell's tracking system works in a reverse time-warp, and has little relation to our man-time. Glad to hear you like your new monitor, though!

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 03:13

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Strong Sauce posted:

Anyone know where to get cheap DP to HDMI cables? Looks like the cheapest in Mono Price even with shipping.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10246&cs_id=1024607&p_id=6011&seq=1&format=2
Keep in mind this is DP -> HDMI and will not work for HDMI -> DP. As in, you need the DP output on your video card and the HDMI input on your monitor, not the other way around.

Monoprice.com pretty much is the answer to the "where do I get cables?" question, though.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 06:58

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Strong Sauce posted:

Okay I'm actually looking for an HDMI->DP cable as I have a ATI 4850 and I'm expecting a U2311H.

There are HDMI -> DP adapters, but they're like $100 or so. The reason is this: DP and HDMI/DVI are not signal-compatible the way HDMI and DVI are. That is, the actual video signal in an HDMI and DVI connection are the same, the major differences are the physical shape of the connectors and that HDMI has some audio lines running with it, too, so it's easy to convert between the two, since nothing needs to be done to the signal--just gotta line up the right pins and you're good. DP is a whole different beast, and isn't signal-compatible at all. You can (usually) go DP -> HDMI/DVI easily because the video-card itself will detect what you're trying to do and do the signal conversion for you. But HDMI/DVI outputs are physically incapable of doing the conversion required to produce a DP signal, so you'd need an external box to do that, which turns out to be pretty pricey.

EyeFinity works by leveraging the DP output(s) to allow for more than two monitors at once. Minus a DP output, you will be limited to the usual two concurrent displays. If you did manage to get three displays connected, only two would function.

What all are you trying to connect up to the U2311H, anyhow? I suspect that the proper solution for you is either going to simply be manually swapping cables, or buying a cheap HDMI switch like this $16 one.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 07:29

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Warkak posted:

I'm currently looking for a good affordable monitor that is mainly going to be used for gaming, looking at the OP, is a 120Hz refresh rate an enthusiast thing or is it really noticeable?

It's an enthusiast thing right now. Sure it's nice, but it's by no means a requirement for a gaming monitor, and you're not gonna find one under $200 anyhow.

Strong Sauce posted:

Thanks for the explanation. I'm essentially connecting a U2311H to a ATI Radeon 4850. The U2311H apparently has a DP instead of an HDMI port so I may have to end up connecting it through DVI and connect my old 2001FP to VGA.

Am I correct in assuming that your particular 4850 has one DVI and one VGA port? If so, then yeah, run DVI to the U2311H and VGA to the 2001FP. If you've got a free PCIe 16x slot you can toss in a $20 card to enable more monitors. If you only have free PCI slots, a $35 card also is available. Mind you won't be able to game on them, but they'd be fine for displaying a desktop or FireFox or whatever.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 07:46

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Ika posted:

Can you actually go DP -> HDMI -> DVI with one of these HDMI to DVI adaptors you get with video cards which are meant to go the other way?

HDMI <-> DVI is easy, and the adapters are bi-directional, since they really do nothing other than line up pins. So yes, as long as the male/female bits match up.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 22:29

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Pooperscooper posted:

So is it safe to use a lens wipe on an LCD monitor? It says just not to use it on plasma screens.

Look on the package and see what's in it. If it's just water and some isopropyl alcohol (which it probably is), then it's fine.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2011 03:07

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Alereon posted:

This is a pretty inexpensive way to get triple-head Eyefinity going without having to buy a $100 adapter or DP monitor.

e; I'm dumb and can't read. Ignore me, please!

DrDork fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jan 13, 2011

# ¿ Jan 12, 2011 03:46

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

VermiciousKnid84 posted:

I'm not asking to attack or anything, I'm just curious about how much of the (seemingly minute) difference between the two is due to slightly different factory settings/profiles.

It also seems he got a somewhat iffy U2311H, with higher-than-average backlight bleed issues and whatnot. That is one thing that no one but Dell seems to have: a rock-solid warranty that'll let you return things for virtually any reason. That's not to say that the EA231WMi isn't a good monitor, mind you--it also is quite nice, but I haven't seen any professional review site that puts it much more than on-par with the U2311H, let alone "light years better." Too bad neither of them have more than a single DVI port.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2011 07:40

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Alereon posted:

Yeah that issue is why this adapter exists, it's an active adapter that generates the TMDS signal, not just a passive pin adapter.

You know what. I just re-read the product info on that adapter again, and realized I'd been reading it wrong--I thought it was able to go DVI -> DP, rather than what it actually does, which is DP -> DVI with it's own clock source. I think we're square now. Kinda a limited-use item, though, since it's only useful for people who have a HD5xxx/6xxx card and three or more monitors with no DP inputs, but a nice option for them nonetheless.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2011 01:36

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

kuddles posted:

That said, I think why there's no clear recommendation is that the cheap TN market have been refined and mass produced for so long that as long as you don't go insanely cheap and stick to well-known brands (Asus, Acer, Samsung, etc.) it's unlikely you'll end up with a lemon.

Pretty much this. Manufactures have figured out and perfected how to make TN monitors now, so you're likely to get similar quality around a given price point from pretty much whomever you buy from, and you may as well base your decision on which particular one to purchase on things such as aesthetics, available rebates, and whatever minor add-ins that they may differ by. Eg, it doesn't really matter, pick one that you think looks pretty.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2011 21:58

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Tab8715 posted:

I think that most LCD manufactures are trying to get in on smartphone craze and are putting all their resources into that.

More or less. Consumer-grade TN-panels are now a "solved" issue and a commodity product, so there's very little going on there. IPS/PVA pretty much has the graphic/artist/quality sector on lock-down, and there doesn't seem to be many sectors whose needs aren't being met. 120Hz TN-panels are starting to come out in more numbers, but unless you're doing 3D stuff or are into high framerate FPS games, the benefit over a 60Hz TN is usually not worth the price.

So about the only think we're likely to see this year is drops in prices of stuff we've more or less already seen, an increase in DP support, and a move to more LED backlighting (which has advantages over CCFL mostly in power usage, heat, and life-span. Doesn't do much for visual quality). Maybe some more forays into wide-gamut support.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2011 23:58

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 09:33

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Perfect Potato posted:

If it's an issue that can't be fixed, I'd probably just try and go for a higher resolution monitor. If I'm just a guy who watches video and plays games, is the difference between TN and IPS something I'd miss, or would I be better off going the cheap and dirty route? I've noticed a P2411H on dell's site for 199$ Canadian that seems alright.

Coming from the 2209WA (An IPS monitor), if you went with a TN you'd plug it in and immediately go "wtf is this poo poo?! This...looks like poo poo!" and be pretty disappointed with how your 2+ year old monitor looks better than your new hotness. Especially if you put them next to each other. Not sure how close you are to a friend across the border, but the U2211H is on sale for $199 US right now--the Canadian Dell store wants more like $320 or something (which is crazy since they only want another $20 or so for the U2311H).

# ¿ Jan 20, 2011 14:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Monitor/Display Megathread - Chromebook Pixel is best IPS display on market

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