Samsung U28D590 UHD Review

Chaoss

Weaksauce
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Jul 15, 2011
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Today I received my new U28D590 UHD (4k) monitor and decided that I'd leave a review for people to easily find who are on the wall about ordering this monitor. Pictures will follow later, for now however only text based review with 'borrowed' pictures.

In case you've stumbled on this review by accident or been living under a rock the Samsung U28D590 packs a 3840x2160 resolution which runs at 60hz, the low price is due to the high quality TN panel.

Here is my experience...

After opening the box I saw that the unit didn't come with my countries power figure 8 power cable that goes from the power unit to the wall, I nipped down to the local computer store and picked one up which seems to work brilliantly. The monitor itself is super light, uses a semi glossy coating and a full gloss outer bezel with a plastic 'brushed' back, the stand was very easy to attach to the monitor.

After plugging in the included display port cable and the power cable the monitor immediately came to life, the resolution was already automatically set to 3840x2160 without me having to even restart, the refresh rate is 60hz and that is the only option visible to me. There appears to be no MST by default and it just works at any resolution without any dual screen issues (I tried every resolution available to me including 4:3 ones). Everything seems to 'just' work as it would a standard 1080p monitor. I use a GTX 780 so mileage may vary on older GPUs that may not be able to push 4k resolutions.

The first immediately apparent thing is that the text size is tiny, I can read it ok but you may wish to run the display at a lower resolution or increased DPI size if your vision is not 20/20 or better. There is an enormous amount of desktop real estate and I can see that this will be a great monitor for modelling.

The colours look exceptionally good for a TN panel, the primary red, green and blue colours have very little vertical shifting, even colours such as pink appear nice and flat with no gradient. A grey image will unfortunately reveal the tell tale sign that this is a TN panel and will exhibit a small amount of shifting. Looking at the monitor from above or below will shift the gamma about slightly as you would expect from any TN based panel. Black levels are surprisingly far better than on my u3011.

This monitor is very good at picking out small details, nuances and colour variations in images, even more so than my U3011 which really surprised me for a TN panel, there are things I am seeing in images that just weren't there on my u3011, and these images are 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 sized images blown up to the full size of the display.

Colour work is possible to an extend on this monitor, for example texture asset design if you are into game development or rendering if it does not need to be 100% colour critical, this display could even be used for starter photography if being used correctly.

The coating on the display is very mild, however a very, very small amount of grain is visible as would be expected from any diffuser coating but it is almost invisible to the eye even on a white background, it is far better than my u3011 which has terrible grain.

Games on this monitor look awesome, I can see much further and things just look a lot cleaner and smoother (due to the increased responsiveness and reduced input latency of the TN panel), moving images just look amazing and this monitor could be used to give a serious advantage in e-sports due to the increased resolution, aliasing (stair step effect) is still somewhat visible but is greatly reduced and is 'almost' acceptable.

This monitor does not 'overclock' and will go up to about 66hz before glitching out, at 65hz the image exhibits frame skipping indicating it is still outputting a 60hz image. This monitor uses 'very good' PWM flickering at at lower brightnesses than 100% however this is not visible and does not cause any ill effects to myself personally (and I am somewhat sensitive to PWM flicker).

This monitor is an absolute godsend for 3dsmax work!

If you have any questions feel free to ask away and I will add a Q&A section to this post
 
Thanks, great review and particularly thanks for mentioning the color quality.
 
Dear Quartz,

Thank you for contacting Samsung Customer Support.

Regarding your query please be advised that there currently is no official release date for this product within the UK.

:(
 
Dear Quartz,

Thank you for contacting Samsung Customer Support.

Regarding your query please be advised that there currently is no official release date for this product within the UK.

:(

:(. April 18th for the usa on amazon.... hopefully uk soon.
 
Gibbo on Overclockers.co.uk forum said:
Yes we shall be uk launch partner for this, about £499-£599

I expect they'll be on the upper end of that, but I hope they won't.
 
How does 1080p gaming look on it compared to normal 1080p monitors ?
Is the scalling perfect 2:1 ?
 
If you run it at 1080p will it overclock to higher frequencies?
 
If you run it at 1080p will it overclock to higher frequencies?
No, this display uses a scaler that seems to be 'locked' to 60hz, so even though it will display an image at 65hz, you are still only getting 60 frames a second with frameskipping

If you run it at 1080p will it overclock to higher frequencies?
Using the monitor in 1080p looks somewhat blurry due to the image being scaled up
 
Using the monitor in 1080p looks somewhat blurry due to the image being scaled up
This seems somewhat wierd, knowing that UHD is exectly double width & height of FHD. It shouldn't be worse then normal 27" FHD monitor if basic pixel doubling would have been used.
 
Very tempting.. wonder how much the TN panel would bother me going from 2 24 IPS panels.
 
OP have you tried an HDMI cable and see if it can pass 4K60 on this monitor?

HDMI can only handle 30hz, that can be overclocked to about 31.4hz but after that it doesn't work. You can use 2xHDMI to get a full 4k @ 60hz picture but Windows will see it as 2 1920x2160 displays rather than 1 3840x2160 display
 
Phew! I happened to double-check my order confirmation and it had gone through as the Dell 28" 4K! A quick conversation with Ben at OC UK and he corrected the order.
 
Hmm so this a 1ms 4K monitor?

How about put that description in the title?

Didn't know that this monitor was this big of an achievement.

Also please update the OP with pics of the actual monitor.
 
Picked one up from NCIX, I'll let you know how it goes - time to find a new GPU! Do you guys think the vram on the 780 ti will be enough at 4k?
 
Picked one up from NCIX, I'll let you know how it goes - time to find a new GPU! Do you guys think the vram on the 780 ti will be enough at 4k?

It's enough for now, yeah. But really, if you're buying just a single card, the 290X has the better price/performance now that they're back to available with a third party heatsink for ~$600. It also has more memory, which gives you more breathing room for the memory requirements of next gen titles.

It's really disappointing that big Maxwell seems to be at least 6 months away, maybe as much as 12.
 
It's enough for now, yeah. But really, if you're buying just a single card, the 290X has the better price/performance now that they're back to available with a third party heatsink for ~$600. It also has more memory, which gives you more breathing room for the memory requirements of next gen titles.

It's really disappointing that big Maxwell seems to be at least 6 months away, maybe as much as 12.

The main reason I'm avoiding AMD this generation is I live in Florida and the summer heat is almost upon us - I don't want to melt!
 
The main reason I'm avoiding AMD this generation is I live in Florida and the summer heat is almost upon us - I don't want to melt!

Wait you own a 580 GTX and are complaining about AMD and heat?

You do realize you put out the same out of heat as 290/290x. Also AMD does have aftermarket AIB cards now.

Some people /facepalm
 
Wait you own a 580 GTX and are complaining about AMD and heat?

You do realize you put out the same out of heat as 290/290x. Also AMD does have aftermarket AIB cards now.

Fans don't affect how much heat a card outputs, it outputs the same heat regardless of what heatsink/fan you put on it. The TDP of the 290X is 290W or 300W depending on what source you believe(some sources do state lower, but this is physically impossible because the card uses significantly more power than a GTX 780ti). The TDP of the GTX 580 is 243W, and the TDP of the GTX 780ti is 250W. Power consumption of the 290X is also about 10-15% higher than the 780ti, so it clearly does output more heat. For the purposes of this comparison I'm talking about "Uber" mode, largely because if you aren't going to run your 290X maxed out there's not much point in buying one especially for 4k gaming.

So yeah, the 290X IS going to put out more heat... but honestly I don't think 10-15% more heat(heat being directly related to power consumption) is that big of a deal, even if you live in Florida.

The last factor is overclocking... the 780ti overclocks way better than the 290X, and it does so more efficiently(ref: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/01/13/asus_r9_290x_directcu_ii_oc_overclocking_review/ ).... so if money is no object, the 780ti is faster, overclocks better, uses less power, and produces less heat, especially if overclocked. Water cooling may change this conclusion, but that's a very big tangent to go on so I'll ignore it.

The 290X is a lot of card for $100 cheaper and it's unclear whether the RAM advantage will matter or not in a year or two. It might.
 
Fans don't affect how much heat a card outputs, it outputs the same heat regardless of what heatsink/fan you put on it. The TDP of the 290X is 290W or 300W depending on what source you believe(AMD does not state it officially). The TDP of the GTX 580 is 243W, and the TDP of the GTX 780ti is 250W. Power consumption of the 290X is also about 10-15% higher than the 780ti, so it clearly does output more heat. For the purposes of this comparison I'm talking about "Uber" mode, largely because if you aren't going to run your 290X maxed out there's not much point in buying one.

So yeah, the 290X IS going to put out more heat... but honestly I don't think 10-15% more heat(heat being directly related to power consumption) is that big of a deal, even if you live in Florida.

The last factor is overclocking... the 780ti overclocks way better than the 290X, and it does so more efficiently(ref: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/01/13/asus_r9_290x_directcu_ii_oc_overclocking_review/ ).... so if money is no object, the 780ti is faster, overclocks better, uses less power, and produces less heat, especially if overclocked. Water cooling may change this conclusion, but that's a very big tangent to go on so I'll ignore it.

The 290X is a lot of card for $100 cheaper and it's unclear whether the RAM advantage will matter or not in a year or two. It might.

Why did you bring up a 780ti when i was talking his 580 gtx? LOL

P.S. Nvidia always had lied about TDP. It has been proven.
 
Why did you bring up a 780ti when i was talking his 580 gtx? LOL

Because that's his alternative.

P.S. Nvidia always had lied about TDP. It has been proven.

Even if they do lie(and they probably aren't in this case), the 290X uses more power than the 780ti or gtx 580. NOT the same. Stating that the 290X will produce the same heat as a GTX 580 is simply incorrect. It will produce more.

There's no way you can get around the actual measured power consumption of the 290X in uber mode, and it's even moreso the case when overclocked, where it gets progressively less efficient.
 
As Sancus has been nice enough to point out TDP is the only factor that matters in heat generation. I might eventually throw in a second card to feed this 4k monster and while overclocking both cards (780 ti sli vs 290x crossfire) the difference will be more like 40% more heat.
 
Yeah if you want to maintain a serious overclock and eventually do SLI/Crossfire I don't think the 290X is really a good choice at that point, the over 100W(!!!!) power consumption differential per card is just crazy.
 
Back on to the main subject, this monitor...

I bought it yesterday at my local bestbuy and quickly returned it. I've had a multitude of monitors throughout the years, 2407WFP-HC, U2410, U2711 and U213HM

Maybe I've been spoiled but I was expecting better color quality and sharper text. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the colors I wanted and text appeared fuzzy. Contrast wasn't that great either

The cheap stand really bothered me, and the fact that you can't really replace it easily unless you make something custom yourself.

In the end, the monitor had too flaws for me to keep it even at $599+tax

Back to my 2713HM for now :D
 
Text appeared fuzzy? At 157 ppi? Color me skeptical. Are you sure you had the monitor set up correctly? Can't imagine how text would appear fuzzy on ANY 4k monitor smaller than 40 inches.
 
Text appeared fuzzy? At 157 ppi? Color me skeptical. Are you sure you had the monitor set up correctly? Can't imagine how text would appear fuzzy on ANY 4k monitor smaller than 40 inches.

Definitely, using the supplied DP cable and confirmed that the display what at 3840X2160@60hz

There is a sharpness setting but I couldn't get to display perfectly.

As I said, maybe I'm spoiled or too used to IPS monitors...
 
Can I ask a big favor of someone who owns already the U28D590 ? Can someone connect 2 monitors at the same time, U28D590 into Display Port and another monitor with HDMI and see if both work ? I need it for the things I do, U28D590 would be for CAD images and the second monitor for everything else. There is also another reason for it, I believe that you can not have another monitor when MST mode is used, something interesting to be verified.
 
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