Samsung 305T and HP LP3065 compared

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ClausDue

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May 5, 2007
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I've written a thorough review after having these two beauties on my desktop at the same time. Someone requested in one of the threads on this forum (one which convinced me that the LP3065 was a worthy candidate) that these two monitors be compared - so that's what I did.

There are a whole bunch of photos showing both monitors with the same content, along with my notes on how the quality compares.

To the review of the 305T and LP3065 side by side.

I don't think I will ruin anything but letting on that the Samsung 305T is now on my desktop and is looking absolutely stunning. Best ~$2000 I spent in a long, long time.

Read the review and let me know if it was helpful or not. I have already sent back the LP3065 but I will try to answer any questions you may have about how it compares to the 305T; if it's not in the review then perhaps it should be.

Thanks everyone for your inputs on the display forum here. All the nice 30-inchers-threads helped me a lot in deciding which ones to try. I deselected the Dell because of two things: price and a somewhat negative review where the backlight was found less uniform than the HP LP3065 - and since they use the same panel I simply opted for the LP.

Kind regards,
Claus Due
 
Thanks for the great review,
did you use a colorimeter calibrate the displays?
 
Benny said:
Thanks for the great review,
did you use a colorimeter calibrate the displays?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not. Just the color profile (for the HP) and factory settings for the Samsung. I did try to manipulate image settings in the Nvidia control panel to see how similar to the HP the Samsung can get - which is a whole lot except for slightly better separation of light colors in the HP when "digital vibrance" for the Samsung is set to 50% (where it needs to be in order to match the vibrance of the HP). I suspect that's also why games look slightly better on the HP... but I haven't played anything with digital vibrance enabled yet. No need. :)

At this time I am running the Samsung with slightly lowered gamma settings overall (8%) and slightly lowered brightness through the monitor's controls. If I ever get near a good colorimeter I will of course attempt to further adjust the Samsung but the HP is gone now.
 
Samsung promise to release an updated 305T with a new backlight.
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where's the source or the link of the above? Is this related to the LED LCD that they are releasing? Or something totally different?
 
Happy Hopping said:
where's the source or the link of the above? Is this related to the LED LCD that they are releasing? Or something totally different?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I don't remember where I read this. After doing a quick search no specific results came up but I believe this info too was in another review. It may be wrong, I haven't asked Samsung.

I do remember the new backlight that was mentioned was not LED but rather a "conventional" wide gamut CCFL - although no other specs were given.
 
You really put a lot of effort into this head-to-head comparison--great stuff! It's a real shame that you didn't use a color calibration device, because you didn't really get optimal performance out of either monitor. To me, that makes all the effort you put into comparing the color, contrast, etc. useless. Don't take this the wrong way, because I'm not trying to be mean about it. I'm just regretting (for your sake as well as for readers of your review) that you didn't go the extra step to make the comparison more accurate and credible instead of leaving it as a subjective comparison. I love all the photos though, especially the ones of the desktop. It's hard to imagine how much stuff you can have on a 2560x1600 screen at one time until you see it yourself.
 
A few more questions and comments on your comparison:
  • In the color blocks photo it's shocking how crushed the bright colors are on the HP. This is an example of why I wish so much you'd used a calibrator, since now I'm wondering if that could've been fixed by setting the proper brightness, contrast, etc. Also, what's up with the ultra-bright blocks on the right side of the Samsung, particularly the light blue and pink?
  • Wish you hadn't resized the single-color gradient photos. You can't judge the real banding because of the JPG compression.
  • Surprised that you considered the 8800GTS enough for Oblivion in 2560x1600. My X2 4600 doesn't compare to your C2D, but it's nice to have a point of comparison since I have a GTS as well.
  • For testing how your webpage design looks at a particular rez, use Firefox and the Web Developer extension. With Web Developer you can resize your browser window to specific resolutions like 800x600, 1024x768, or any other custom resolution you want.
  • Since you took photos with a 20D, if you wanted to maintain a consistent color balance you could've set a custom color balance on your camera.
  • Just not a fan of the color red, eh? Interesting preference. Of course the red tint on the HP would bother you if so. 9800K is entirely too blue for me. Are you sure you had the Samsung close to 9800K? I'm more of a 6500K man myself :)
  • Have you tried Nvidia's 158.19 drivers? I'm looking hard at 30" monitors, and I'm curious to see if the new drivers fix the broken 1:1 mapping. If you have the chance to test, I'd really appreciate it.
 
MentatYP said:
A few more questions and comments on your comparison:
  • In the color blocks photo it's shocking how crushed the bright colors are on the HP. This is an example of why I wish so much you'd used a calibrator, since now I'm wondering if that could've been fixed by setting the proper brightness, contrast, etc. Also, what's up with the ultra-bright blocks on the right side of the Samsung, particularly the light blue and pink?
  • Wish you hadn't resized the single-color gradient photos. You can't judge the real banding because of the JPG compression.
  • Surprised that you considered the 8800GTS enough for Oblivion in 2560x1600. My X2 4600 doesn't compare to your C2D, but it's nice to have a point of comparison since I have a GTS as well.
  • For testing how your webpage design looks at a particular rez, use Firefox and the Web Developer extension. With Web Developer you can resize your browser window to specific resolutions like 800x600, 1024x768, or any other custom resolution you want.
  • Since you took photos with a 20D, if you wanted to maintain a consistent color balance you could've set a custom color balance on your camera.
  • Just not a fan of the color red, eh? Interesting preference. Of course the red tint on the HP would bother you if so. 9800K is entirely too blue for me. Are you sure you had the Samsung close to 9800K? I'm more of a 6500K man myself :)
  • Have you tried Nvidia's 158.19 drivers? I'm looking hard at 30" monitors, and I'm curious to see if the new drivers fix the broken 1:1 mapping. If you have the chance to test, I'd really appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input, MentatYP - It's appreciated. I will try to answer the questions you have.

About the color blocks photo - yes, the HP looks crushed in the high range. I have no "before" photo but this was after loading the color profile HP supplied with the monitor. Before it was even worse - but the darker colors are less separated after loading the profile than they were before. It helps but not enough in my opinion. I'm no dummy at the controls of a monitor, and no matter what I did I would always end up with poor separation either in the low or high ranges when toying with contrast/gamma on the HP. I could not get a consistent performance out of it. And what's up with the blue and pink colors on the 305T you ask? That's the darkening around the edges that I describe. That makes the color look darker in the last half of the last block in the color blocks photo - like a gradient. I do not notice this in regular use and I believe it is unavoidable with CCFL tubes.

Wish I had a color calibrator or that I knew someone who does.

Resized gradient images... you are absolutely right about that. I uploaded the full-res 8 megapixel images instead. As well as the full-res color blocks photo and the contrast bars - for your enjoyment. You may need to force a refresh of those images.

The 8800GTS I have is an XFX top o' the line GTS model, by comparison especially games with Oblivion-sized textures should run a whole lot better on this card (640 MB) than on the cheaper models. I admit there is choppiness but there's always been choppiness in Oblivion. I could barely run Oblivion in 1024x768 on my old system (P4 2.8, X850XT-PE, 1024 RAM) so compared to that system, this one has absolutely blazing performance.

I know about Web Developer (hey man, it's in the pictures! ;)) but that really does not give an impression about how your pages will look in maximized browsers at around 1280x1024. It could just be a matter of taste but I prefer to test my creations on my trusty old IBM ThinkPad - the display is just so damn tiny and ugly compared to this baby but it is closer to the average screens out there than anything else I have.

Yes I should have set a fixed white balance on the 20D... but it's not my camera, I had it for a few hours only and boy, are there many buttons and dials on that thing. I wish I could do this over but I also had to return the HP.

Still not a fan of the color red. :) The samsung is at default (no VPU) - my old Philips 202P4 22" was set to 9800º and actually, the whites on that monitor closely match those on the 305T - which was a bit of a surprise. That had a lot to do with my choice between the Samsung and the HP; I could not for the life of me adjust the HP to look naturally white, there was always a slight red tint. Seems connected to the LG panel used; the Dell apparently has the same very vague tint.

I am using 158.22 for my 8800GTS at the moment. Same problem with the flat panel scaling - it's destroyed and Nvidia does not seem to care much about that. I can do a test of the 158.19 drivers if I can find them - will let you know how that turns out.


Cheers!
 
ClausDue said:
I am using 158.22 for my 8800GTS at the moment. Same problem with the flat panel scaling - it's destroyed and Nvidia does not seem to care much about that. I can do a test of the 158.19 drivers if I can find them - will let you know how that turns out.
Click to expand...

Drivers 158.19 do not allow flat panel scaling either...
 
Comment-
By reducing blanking (and use it for additional graphic info).... the 400MHz RAMDACs of vga has higher bandwidth tha DL-DVI... Thus vga could possibly push up to (or higher) 5 million pixels at 60Hz.

However no monitor or device has yet to utilize the high bandwidth provided by 400MHz bandwidth... the highest utilizing device (for ordinary consumers) soon to be released would be the new Digital TH2Go that could power 4.6Mpixels at 60Hz or 2 (1920x1200) displays with vga/dl-dvi connections.

The 30 inchers (Dell/HP/Samasung) at 2560x1600 have no internal scalers to handle analog vga input..... If they do... like the proposed and canceled BenQ 30incher .. vga at 2560x1600@60Hz is not a problem.

92% colour gamut is almost solely based on the the wide colour gamut CCFL for more specific red, green and blue light wavelenght passing through the R/G/B filter behind each subpixel... There is actually 12 million points (sub-pixels) of failure instead of 4 million (pixels)
 
Askanison said:
Comment-
By reducing blanking (and use it for additional graphic info).... the 400MHz RAMDACs of vga has higher bandwidth tha DL-DVI... Thus vga could possibly push up to (or higher) 5 million pixels at 60Hz.

However no monitor or device has yet to utilize the high bandwidth provided by 400MHz bandwidth... the highest utilizing device (for ordinary consumers) soon to be released would be the new Digital TH2Go that could power 4.6Mpixels at 60Hz or 2 (1920x1200) displays with vga/dl-dvi connections.

The 30 inchers (Dell/HP/Samasung) at 2560x1600 have no internal scalers to handle analog vga input..... If they do... like the proposed and canceled BenQ 30incher .. vga at 2560x1600@60Hz is not a problem.

92% colour gamut is almost solely based on the the wide colour gamut CCFL for more specific red, green and blue light wavelenght passing through the R/G/B filter behind each subpixel... There is actually 12 million points (sub-pixels) of failure instead of 4 million (pixels)
Click to expand...

Looks like you're right about this. I know about the missing scaler and the blanking issue @ VGA - but remember that DVI also has blanking enabled in common timing formats (as part of the standard). 12m points of failure, absolutely correct. I will update the review when I get a chance - and elaborate a bit on the "no scaler"-issue.

Triple-head 2 Go? Nice... :)
 
SuperKeijo said:
Mustn't be to hard a task to put the "EnableOverscanCompensation.exe" in the startup folder.. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Heh, that's the easy part. The hard part will be to explain why this patch no longer makes any difference whatsoever. The patch has completely lost the ability to control my drivers' scaling at this point so adding it to the start menu makes little sense.
 
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