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jamespetts-2
n00b
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2016
- Messages
- 34
Introduction
My current computer monitors predate my current computer by several years: they were bought in 2007 and 2003 respectively, my computer being a self-build from late 2010 (Core i7 950 overclocked, ATI Radeon HD 5850, 12Gb system RAM, Windows 7 Professional). They are an Eizo FlexScan S2000 (1600x1200) and an Eizo FlexScan L367 (1024x768). They are noticeably inferior to my mobile telephone and tablet screens (the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Tab S 10.1, both of which are circa 1440p) for viewing photographs. I also find the 1024x768 screen to be unhelpfully low in resolution as a secondary display even for work on documents.
I am therefore considering an upgrade in my monitors. I realise that this is likely to need to be accompanied by an upgrade in graphics card, too: my current graphics card has insufficient VRAM (1Gb) for current games, and struggles on Cities:Skylines when there are many buildings in view even at my current resolution of 1600x1200.
Use cases
My usage pattern is a little unusual and quite varied. Much of the time is spent working on text documents (.PDF and Word documents). It would help greatly to be able to have a lot on the screen and be able to see it all clearly. My current monitors (especially the smaller of them) is not ideal in this regard.
I also am a keen amateur photographer. I use Lightroom. I mainly display photographs on Flickr. I have a Spyder 4 colour calibrator. I notice with my current monitors that, when turning the calibration on, the monitors become very dark (especially the larger of the two) and shadow detail that I can see with the calibration off is lost. The calibrator reports that the larger monitor can only manage 71Cd at 100% brightness. Neither monitor has an IPS panel (being VA and TN respectively). Colour accuracy if of some importance. I notice with my current monitors that I have problems with very saturated reds (photographs of poppies, for example) that I understand relates to the colour gamut of my monitors, both of which are less than 95% of sRGB.
I do play games (most notably of 3d games Cities:Skylines), but not as often as the other two tasks. I do spend quite a lot of time with amateur game development, but this is with a game (Simutrans) that uses very old-school low-fi graphics. This involves using Blender to create models that are then exported to .png files of 128x128 pixels.
I am not one for television/Netflix or DVD/BD format films very much, but I do like watching Youtube videos fairly often.
My desk is 120.5cm wide, but has to accommodate a label printer, a banker's style desk lamp, the front 3 speakers of a 5.1 speaker set and the large volume/sound control module that goes with my speakers. The speakers could in principle sit below the monitors space underneath permitting.
I tend to sit with my eyes between 30-70cm from the monitor.
My thoughts and queries
Generally
I am keen to get good quality monitors that will stand the test of time. The Eizo monitors that I have now are still in good condition and very usable, and will be re-used in another setting once I have finished using them. Despite now showing their age as described above, they are very consistent and work well. I should hate to "upgrade" only to be left with something that is significantly worse in any noticeable respect, such as brightness consistency on which Eizo monitors have always been very good.
Panel type
Given their advantages for colour rendition and consistency accross multiple viewing angles, it really has to be an IPS panel.
Resolution
I am strongly minded to go for 4k. This is clearly the emerging standard. 1080p is no improvement on 1600x1200, and 1440p is not a standard (nor an exact multiple of 1080p nor 4k), with the result that any video played on the 1440p monitor will be scaled and not exact. Given that, from what I understand, at my viewing distances and preferred monitor size (23-30in or thereabouts), I can expect to notice the difference between 4k and a lower resolution, but not between 4k and any higher resolution, it seems that 4k is the sensible long-term option.
Refresh rate
I am aware that 4k monitors currently do not come with a refresh rate above 60hz, nor do the connexion standards of current graphics cards support a refresh rate of more than 60hz with a 4k resolution. I am doubtful that I should notice a refresh rate increase above 60hz as much as a resolution difference between 1440p and 4k.
Size
I am rather undecided on this and any thoughts would be appreciated. There is a limit to what will fit on my desk, although the layout of the monitors (see below) is likely to make a difference to this. I am not quite sure what the optimum size is for a 4k resolution for both sensible text size in the GUI (I am keen to avoid non-integer scaling, which I understand does not work well, so it would have to be 100% or 200% dpi scaling) and appreciating photographs/video in high resolution.
Number/layout
Having been accustomed to using two displays for some years now, I do not think that I could or should want to go back to using only one. I doubt that I could fit three on my desk (and I also doubt that a graphics card would have enough DisplayPort outputs to fit three).
I think that there may be much to be said for having one in landscape format and one in portrait format, but I should be interested in people's views on that pattern. The portrait format monitor is likely to be good for scrolling documents and e-mail, and the landscape monitor good for spreadsheets, coding, video and viewing photographs.
I am rather fond of the 4:3 aspect ratio for photographs as that matches my camera's sensor's aspect ratio, so I can view photographs full screen without black borders, but there seems to be no 4k equivalent monitor in a 4:3 ratio (apparently, a 3200x2400 monitor was produced circa 2001, but this was a CRT; this is a shame as it would have been an ideal resolution were there only a modern IPS panel with this resolution). The trouble is that the portrait format monitor may be less than ideal for use as Lightroom's second monitor, but I am not sure that I can see a solution to that. The resolution of the displayed image would still be higher than 1024x768, I suppose.
Because Windows cannot handle differential DPI scaling on different displays very well, or so I have read, it seems to me sensible to stick to a pair of identical displays rather than, as I had earlier contemplated, having one 1440p and one 4k display or two 4k displays of different sizes.
Gamut
There are a few wide gamut monitors in 4k. There was a time when the default recommendation was not to bother with wide gamut and work exclusively in the sRGB colour space for any display on the web, but I am not sure whether this holds true any longer. The issues of saturated reds would be solved by a monitor that could display all or most of Adobe RGB. Setting everything up to use a colour space other than sRGB is hard work (and not everything can do so in any event; only Lightroom, Firefox and some other dedicated applications will actually work properly with a colour profile, I understand). It is difficult to decide on the relative importance of this issue.
Operating system
I currently use Windows 7. I wonder whether there is any advantage to upgrading to Windows 10 when using very high resolution displays? DirectX12 is another thing entirely, of course; but there also seem to be many disadvantages to upgrading to Windows 10, so I should be grateful for any views on the subject. I note that the free upgrade has only a few months left to run.
Legacy/retro software
As noted above, I spend some time developing (a fork of) Simutrans, which has old, low-fi graphics. Some of the other developers believe that the text will look too small in a 4k monitor (and it is not currently scalable in the game).
However, this depends to some extent on size. Presumably, a large enough 4k monitor will have an acceptable size of text, but might then have an optimum viewing distance (for it appearing to be as detailed as the eye can see) greater than a comfortable working distance.
Gsync/Freesync
From what I have read, this makes really quite a big difference to many games. Although gaming is not the highest priority, I do want things to look sensible when I do play games, so this feature seems to be of some importance. Which of the two to get will depend on the graphics card, on which see below.
Graphics card
Given that a graphics card upgrade will be necessary, some thought has to be given to this aspect, too. The default recommendation for 4k gaming seems to be the GeForce 980 Ti. That would, I expect, be single monitor gaming, but I do not imagine that an L+P layout would make for much of a multi-monitor setup in any event. I tend to use just the one monitor for games at present in any event.
I have traditionally cascaded my main computer to run Linux and put it in the bedroom that I use when I stay at my parents' house after I have upgraded it. I understand that ATI has refused to write a driver for the latest version of XOrg, meaning that ATI graphics cards will not work with the proprietary driver in the latest versions (16.04 and onwards) of Ubuntu, the distribution that I use. There are open source drivers available, but they do not work with many features. If I were to be able to cascade this computer in the future in that way, not having an ATI card would be a benefit.
However, I am not sure whether this pattern of cascading will continue. I have just ordered parts for an Intel NUC to use at work (I dislike the awful ergonomics of laptops), and that I could take with me when I visit my parents to use as the desktop there. My current computer I have had for just under 5 1/2 years now, and I tend to find that motherboards/CPUs tend to fail after 9 years (my two last computers both failed after 9 years: 1998 - 2007; 2003 - 2012). Given that the advances in CPU speeds are now much less than once they were, it may well be that the motherboard/CPU fails before it is worthwhile upgrading this, meaning that I can simply re-use the case and many components for my next build whenever what is currently there fails, making cascading unnecessary.
It might thus be that there are some reasons to consider ATI graphics cards. This would then open the possibility of having a monitor with Freesync rather than Gsync support, which might increase the pool of options considerably. Eizo Foris monitors, for example, support Freesync (albeit none of those are 4k yet).
Timing
Now may not be an ideal time to upgrade to 4k because the technology does not seem as mature as it might be. Also, there may well be even better technologies (e.g. OLED) readily available at decent prices in 1-3 years.
Further, I understand that the next generation of NVidea cards are coming in Q3 this year ("Pascal", I believe that they are to be called), and that from around that time, they will have DisplayPort 1.3 connexions, enabling refresh rates of higher than 60hz with 4k (albeit a framerate of more than 60 in a 4k resolution is unlikely with current technology from what I understand).
However, there is some imperative to upgrade now. The new NUC that I have ordered will need to be used in the room in which I stay when I visit my parents. That currently has a CRT monitor. The NUC does not have a VGA output. A DisplayPort or HDMI to VGA adapter can be had (indeed, I have ordered one), but I doubt that this will give a refresh rate of more than 60hz. 60hz on a CRT monitor is a painful experience to watch (it is currently set to circa 100hz on the very old computer to which it is currently attached, sporting an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ and various other gubbins of 32-bit antiquation). Consequently, I need to release the monitors that I am currently using at home for this purpose. There is also the alternative possibility of using the smaller of them as a second monitor at work (where the supplied monitors are mainly 1024x768 17" LCDs with only VGA connectors).
Options
From what I understand, there are few monitors that appear to be suitable and meet all requirements (assuming Gsync; I have not yet looked for Freesync monitors and I am unsure of the ability of current ATI graphics cards to match the 980Ti).
Indeed, I have found reference to only two so far:
(1) the Asus ROG Swift 27"; and
(2) the Acer Predator XB321HK.
The trouble is that the Asus has uneven illumination according to this review, and the Acer is huge, possibly too big for my desk, possibly sub-optimal for both 200% and 100% dpi scaling, and also rather expensive.
Neither of these options seem particularly satisfactory (as well as both having garish "gaming" appearances, whereas I should prefer a more professional look).
I wonder whether it is worth considering having two different 4k monitors of the same size, one with Gsync/Freesync and one with more accurate colours? If so, which would better be the portrait and which the landscape option?
Conclusion
This post has ended up being rather longer than I had purposed; but such is the consequence of setting out all the relevant considerations when one is a perfectionist.
Anyone who has taken the trouble to read this far deserves much gratitude. Anyone who is kind enough to respond with practical suggestions deserves a cake. I should be very grateful for any thoughts.
My current computer monitors predate my current computer by several years: they were bought in 2007 and 2003 respectively, my computer being a self-build from late 2010 (Core i7 950 overclocked, ATI Radeon HD 5850, 12Gb system RAM, Windows 7 Professional). They are an Eizo FlexScan S2000 (1600x1200) and an Eizo FlexScan L367 (1024x768). They are noticeably inferior to my mobile telephone and tablet screens (the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Tab S 10.1, both of which are circa 1440p) for viewing photographs. I also find the 1024x768 screen to be unhelpfully low in resolution as a secondary display even for work on documents.
I am therefore considering an upgrade in my monitors. I realise that this is likely to need to be accompanied by an upgrade in graphics card, too: my current graphics card has insufficient VRAM (1Gb) for current games, and struggles on Cities:Skylines when there are many buildings in view even at my current resolution of 1600x1200.
Use cases
My usage pattern is a little unusual and quite varied. Much of the time is spent working on text documents (.PDF and Word documents). It would help greatly to be able to have a lot on the screen and be able to see it all clearly. My current monitors (especially the smaller of them) is not ideal in this regard.
I also am a keen amateur photographer. I use Lightroom. I mainly display photographs on Flickr. I have a Spyder 4 colour calibrator. I notice with my current monitors that, when turning the calibration on, the monitors become very dark (especially the larger of the two) and shadow detail that I can see with the calibration off is lost. The calibrator reports that the larger monitor can only manage 71Cd at 100% brightness. Neither monitor has an IPS panel (being VA and TN respectively). Colour accuracy if of some importance. I notice with my current monitors that I have problems with very saturated reds (photographs of poppies, for example) that I understand relates to the colour gamut of my monitors, both of which are less than 95% of sRGB.
I do play games (most notably of 3d games Cities:Skylines), but not as often as the other two tasks. I do spend quite a lot of time with amateur game development, but this is with a game (Simutrans) that uses very old-school low-fi graphics. This involves using Blender to create models that are then exported to .png files of 128x128 pixels.
I am not one for television/Netflix or DVD/BD format films very much, but I do like watching Youtube videos fairly often.
My desk is 120.5cm wide, but has to accommodate a label printer, a banker's style desk lamp, the front 3 speakers of a 5.1 speaker set and the large volume/sound control module that goes with my speakers. The speakers could in principle sit below the monitors space underneath permitting.
I tend to sit with my eyes between 30-70cm from the monitor.
My thoughts and queries
Generally
I am keen to get good quality monitors that will stand the test of time. The Eizo monitors that I have now are still in good condition and very usable, and will be re-used in another setting once I have finished using them. Despite now showing their age as described above, they are very consistent and work well. I should hate to "upgrade" only to be left with something that is significantly worse in any noticeable respect, such as brightness consistency on which Eizo monitors have always been very good.
Panel type
Given their advantages for colour rendition and consistency accross multiple viewing angles, it really has to be an IPS panel.
Resolution
I am strongly minded to go for 4k. This is clearly the emerging standard. 1080p is no improvement on 1600x1200, and 1440p is not a standard (nor an exact multiple of 1080p nor 4k), with the result that any video played on the 1440p monitor will be scaled and not exact. Given that, from what I understand, at my viewing distances and preferred monitor size (23-30in or thereabouts), I can expect to notice the difference between 4k and a lower resolution, but not between 4k and any higher resolution, it seems that 4k is the sensible long-term option.
Refresh rate
I am aware that 4k monitors currently do not come with a refresh rate above 60hz, nor do the connexion standards of current graphics cards support a refresh rate of more than 60hz with a 4k resolution. I am doubtful that I should notice a refresh rate increase above 60hz as much as a resolution difference between 1440p and 4k.
Size
I am rather undecided on this and any thoughts would be appreciated. There is a limit to what will fit on my desk, although the layout of the monitors (see below) is likely to make a difference to this. I am not quite sure what the optimum size is for a 4k resolution for both sensible text size in the GUI (I am keen to avoid non-integer scaling, which I understand does not work well, so it would have to be 100% or 200% dpi scaling) and appreciating photographs/video in high resolution.
Number/layout
Having been accustomed to using two displays for some years now, I do not think that I could or should want to go back to using only one. I doubt that I could fit three on my desk (and I also doubt that a graphics card would have enough DisplayPort outputs to fit three).
I think that there may be much to be said for having one in landscape format and one in portrait format, but I should be interested in people's views on that pattern. The portrait format monitor is likely to be good for scrolling documents and e-mail, and the landscape monitor good for spreadsheets, coding, video and viewing photographs.
I am rather fond of the 4:3 aspect ratio for photographs as that matches my camera's sensor's aspect ratio, so I can view photographs full screen without black borders, but there seems to be no 4k equivalent monitor in a 4:3 ratio (apparently, a 3200x2400 monitor was produced circa 2001, but this was a CRT; this is a shame as it would have been an ideal resolution were there only a modern IPS panel with this resolution). The trouble is that the portrait format monitor may be less than ideal for use as Lightroom's second monitor, but I am not sure that I can see a solution to that. The resolution of the displayed image would still be higher than 1024x768, I suppose.
Because Windows cannot handle differential DPI scaling on different displays very well, or so I have read, it seems to me sensible to stick to a pair of identical displays rather than, as I had earlier contemplated, having one 1440p and one 4k display or two 4k displays of different sizes.
Gamut
There are a few wide gamut monitors in 4k. There was a time when the default recommendation was not to bother with wide gamut and work exclusively in the sRGB colour space for any display on the web, but I am not sure whether this holds true any longer. The issues of saturated reds would be solved by a monitor that could display all or most of Adobe RGB. Setting everything up to use a colour space other than sRGB is hard work (and not everything can do so in any event; only Lightroom, Firefox and some other dedicated applications will actually work properly with a colour profile, I understand). It is difficult to decide on the relative importance of this issue.
Operating system
I currently use Windows 7. I wonder whether there is any advantage to upgrading to Windows 10 when using very high resolution displays? DirectX12 is another thing entirely, of course; but there also seem to be many disadvantages to upgrading to Windows 10, so I should be grateful for any views on the subject. I note that the free upgrade has only a few months left to run.
Legacy/retro software
As noted above, I spend some time developing (a fork of) Simutrans, which has old, low-fi graphics. Some of the other developers believe that the text will look too small in a 4k monitor (and it is not currently scalable in the game).
However, this depends to some extent on size. Presumably, a large enough 4k monitor will have an acceptable size of text, but might then have an optimum viewing distance (for it appearing to be as detailed as the eye can see) greater than a comfortable working distance.
Gsync/Freesync
From what I have read, this makes really quite a big difference to many games. Although gaming is not the highest priority, I do want things to look sensible when I do play games, so this feature seems to be of some importance. Which of the two to get will depend on the graphics card, on which see below.
Graphics card
Given that a graphics card upgrade will be necessary, some thought has to be given to this aspect, too. The default recommendation for 4k gaming seems to be the GeForce 980 Ti. That would, I expect, be single monitor gaming, but I do not imagine that an L+P layout would make for much of a multi-monitor setup in any event. I tend to use just the one monitor for games at present in any event.
I have traditionally cascaded my main computer to run Linux and put it in the bedroom that I use when I stay at my parents' house after I have upgraded it. I understand that ATI has refused to write a driver for the latest version of XOrg, meaning that ATI graphics cards will not work with the proprietary driver in the latest versions (16.04 and onwards) of Ubuntu, the distribution that I use. There are open source drivers available, but they do not work with many features. If I were to be able to cascade this computer in the future in that way, not having an ATI card would be a benefit.
However, I am not sure whether this pattern of cascading will continue. I have just ordered parts for an Intel NUC to use at work (I dislike the awful ergonomics of laptops), and that I could take with me when I visit my parents to use as the desktop there. My current computer I have had for just under 5 1/2 years now, and I tend to find that motherboards/CPUs tend to fail after 9 years (my two last computers both failed after 9 years: 1998 - 2007; 2003 - 2012). Given that the advances in CPU speeds are now much less than once they were, it may well be that the motherboard/CPU fails before it is worthwhile upgrading this, meaning that I can simply re-use the case and many components for my next build whenever what is currently there fails, making cascading unnecessary.
It might thus be that there are some reasons to consider ATI graphics cards. This would then open the possibility of having a monitor with Freesync rather than Gsync support, which might increase the pool of options considerably. Eizo Foris monitors, for example, support Freesync (albeit none of those are 4k yet).
Timing
Now may not be an ideal time to upgrade to 4k because the technology does not seem as mature as it might be. Also, there may well be even better technologies (e.g. OLED) readily available at decent prices in 1-3 years.
Further, I understand that the next generation of NVidea cards are coming in Q3 this year ("Pascal", I believe that they are to be called), and that from around that time, they will have DisplayPort 1.3 connexions, enabling refresh rates of higher than 60hz with 4k (albeit a framerate of more than 60 in a 4k resolution is unlikely with current technology from what I understand).
However, there is some imperative to upgrade now. The new NUC that I have ordered will need to be used in the room in which I stay when I visit my parents. That currently has a CRT monitor. The NUC does not have a VGA output. A DisplayPort or HDMI to VGA adapter can be had (indeed, I have ordered one), but I doubt that this will give a refresh rate of more than 60hz. 60hz on a CRT monitor is a painful experience to watch (it is currently set to circa 100hz on the very old computer to which it is currently attached, sporting an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ and various other gubbins of 32-bit antiquation). Consequently, I need to release the monitors that I am currently using at home for this purpose. There is also the alternative possibility of using the smaller of them as a second monitor at work (where the supplied monitors are mainly 1024x768 17" LCDs with only VGA connectors).
Options
From what I understand, there are few monitors that appear to be suitable and meet all requirements (assuming Gsync; I have not yet looked for Freesync monitors and I am unsure of the ability of current ATI graphics cards to match the 980Ti).
Indeed, I have found reference to only two so far:
(1) the Asus ROG Swift 27"; and
(2) the Acer Predator XB321HK.
The trouble is that the Asus has uneven illumination according to this review, and the Acer is huge, possibly too big for my desk, possibly sub-optimal for both 200% and 100% dpi scaling, and also rather expensive.
Neither of these options seem particularly satisfactory (as well as both having garish "gaming" appearances, whereas I should prefer a more professional look).
I wonder whether it is worth considering having two different 4k monitors of the same size, one with Gsync/Freesync and one with more accurate colours? If so, which would better be the portrait and which the landscape option?
Conclusion
This post has ended up being rather longer than I had purposed; but such is the consequence of setting out all the relevant considerations when one is a perfectionist.
Anyone who has taken the trouble to read this far deserves much gratitude. Anyone who is kind enough to respond with practical suggestions deserves a cake. I should be very grateful for any thoughts.
