Jump to content

Home

Is this a good time to buy a $1k PC monitor?


Kjølen

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 66
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Can someone explain to me why ANYONE would take this into account when discussing their income?

 

Because it's money that I have, that I'm keeping aside just in case. I'm simply trying to explain my state of financial security in various "What if" cases.

 

Oh, and I forgot to ask if you get the Newegg newsletter. It provides coupon codes for extra discounts on certain items and free shipping.

 

I will be now. :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SO, I made my purchases. I have bought:

 

1 Gateway XHD3000 30" LCD monitor that which is capable of 2560x1600 with a large selection of input and outputs

1 Two-year Newegg extended warranty (added on after the dismal Gateway 1yr expires)

1 GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 Video card to support this resolution

 

And Live.com is giving me $42.07 back. Feel free to criticize my lack of thoughtfulness or my massacred bank account. I'll try really hard to see your tiny text at 2560x1600. :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha, tight. I personally wouldn't have been able to blow $1000 on a monitor, but that's just me.

 

Maybe if I were rolling in money. Then I'd buy $6000 monitors without hesitation.

 

Anyways - I'm not sure about the GTX 295 purchase - nothing wrong with it, but if you do look at benchmarks, often the HD 4870 X2 wins out due to more VRAM. I'm not just saying this because I have an HD 4870 X2 (I hate fanboyism - I buy whatever is the best at the moment). However, the main concern in this would be that DirectX 11 cards aren't too far away - maybe you should have waited to splurge on the best GPU then? ATI's should be out this summer, and nVidia's should be out in the beginning of Q3 2009.

 

Again, just a personal thing there - not trying to bash your purchase.

 

All in all - you just kicked some serious ass and now have a huge monitor.

 

- PR-0927

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyways - I'm not sure about the GTX 295 purchase - nothing wring with it, but if you do look at benchmarks, often the HD 4870 X2 wins out due to more VRAM. I'm not just saying this because I have an HD 4870 X2 (I hate fanboyism - I buy whatever is the best at the moment). However, the main concern in this would be that DirectX 11 cards aren't too far away - maybe you should have waited to splurge on the best GPU then? ATI's should be out this summer, and nVidia's should be out in the beginning of Q3 2009.

 

Yeah, and while I am aware of all that, and did consider the 4870X2, I chose the GTX 295 because I have an NVIDIA chipset on my motherboard, with SLI support. Now, I doubt I'll buy another GTX 295, but I ust want it to run smoothly on the right chipset. Also, in regards to the DX11 cards coming out, I've realized that if I'm always waiting a few more months for some grand new technology, there will be no end to the wait. By the time those cards are out, someone will have something new coming, just on the horizon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

alternatively, you could buy a child slave, have her dress as alma, and live fear 2

 

I currently have two life goals, which can be fulfilled in any order or concurrently:

 

1.

  • Finish college
  • Get a job
  • Buy a house

2.

  • Find a girlfriend
  • Get married

  • Have a daughter named Alma

 

i hope you have dead pixels kojo

 

<3

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I ordered my LCD from Newegg. One of the best purchases I've ever made. Shipped VERY fast, had no problems with it, and still works great a year later.

Your monitor had no defects, so you didn't have a problem. The problem that I have with Newegg's LCD return policy is that they require that the LCD have at least 8 dead pixels in order for them to consider it defective. That's way too many, IMO, which is why I'd rather purchase a panel from a store, where you could return it for exchange or refund at no extra cost (except for gas and time) if it has dead pixels.

*Raises hand*

 

Acer AL2216W - 1680x1050 - Pretty nice monitor, no dead pixels, yay.

That's the exact model that I have. Acer seems to have pretty good QC on their cheap TN panels. Mine doesn't have any dead pixels and even the backlight bleed is minimal. It's still a TN, with all of the inherent flaws (the vertical viewing angle is terrible :(), but it was all I could afford at the time. All in all it was a good purchase, IMO. :)

 

There is a new type of IPS (called E-IPS) panel coming out that's supposed to be almost as cheap to produce as TNs and if everything I'm hearing about it is true, it will make TNs obsolete because people will be able to buy an IPS for not much more, and even a detuned IPS panel would be far superior to any TN. The Dell 2209WA is the first of these E-IPS panels to be introduced. I don't know about anyone else, but "IPS for the masses" sounds pretty damn good to me. :D

i hope you have dead pixels kojo

I smell panel envy. :p

 

 

 

Anywho, @kojo: when you get your new panel, you can calibrate it here. AFAIK, this the best LCD calibration site on the web, and I recommend that everybody use it. It worked wonders for my Acer once I made up my mind to dump the factory presets, set my video drivers to default and use only the monitor's controls to adjust for brightness, contrast and gamma. You should get the best results that way. If my cheap-assed TN panel can pass all of the tests with the drivers set at default, then anyone's can. ;)

 

Just remember to turn that backlight way down because just about every LCD ships with the brightness set high enough to give you a suntan, which can be very, very bad for your eyes. It should be just high enough to pass the black level and color band tests and no higher. For reference, my brightness is set at 30 (out of 100) for webpage viewing/document reading and I turn it up to 40 for video and games. My contrast stays set at 20.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Anywho, @kojo: when you get your new panel, you can calibrate it here. AFAIK, this the best LCD calibration site on the web, and I recommend that everybody use it. It worked wonders for my Acer once I made up my mind to dump the factory presets, set my video drivers to default and use only the monitor's controls to adjust for brightness, contrast and gamma. You should get the best results that way. If my cheap-assed TN panel can pass all of the tests with the drivers set at default, then anyone's can. ;)

 

Just remember to turn that backlight way down because just about every LCD ships with the brightness set high enough to give you a suntan, which can be very, very bad for your eyes. It should be just high enough to pass the black level and color band tests and no higher. For reference, my brightness is set at 30 (out of 100) for webpage viewing/document reading and I turn it up to 40 for video and games. My contrast stays set at 20.

 

Heh, thanks for that site. I had my contrast at stupidly high levels, it seems: for the white saturation test, I couldn't see anything besides the first checkerboard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My monitor is really weird. The vertical angle of view is terrible, and for the black saturation tests and white saturation tests, some of them looked inverted. I noticed on the white test that I couldn't get the bottom row to display at all, until I hit exactly 80 contrast, then almost all of them popped up, only most of them inverted. They won't show up on 79, or 81, only 80. I'm just gonna keep it on that. :p

It looks pretty good now, thanks for the site.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My monitor is really weird. The vertical angle of view is terrible, and for the black saturation tests and white saturation tests, some of them looked inverted. I noticed on the white test that I couldn't get the bottom row to display at all, until I hit exactly 80 contrast, then almost all of them popped up, only most of them inverted. They won't show up on 79, or 81, only 80. I'm just gonna keep it on that. :p

It looks pretty good now, thanks for the site.

Yeah, Lagom kicks ass. :D Best calibration tests that I know of.

 

Have you tried adjusting your contrast to well below 50% (mine is at 20%)? That should help with the inversion problem. Also, the black- and white-level tests are brightness-dependent. The backlight should only be bright enough for the darkest square in the black-level test to be viewable, so that the white-level test isn't washed out. As long as you can barely see the darkest square in the black-level test and the lightest pattern in the white-level test, it counts as passing. And with TN panels, just about all of these tests are affected by the viewing angle (a huge PITA, I know :(), so try to keep yourself in your normal viewing position when running the tests. TNs are best viewed from slightly above, so the top edge of the panel should be at eye level.

 

Remember to set your driver's desktop color settings to default and use only your monitor's brightness, contrast and RGB adjustments to get everything as close to perfect as you can before even touching the driver's settings. IMO you'll get the best results if you only use the driver's settings to compensate for any deficiencies that your monitor has. Mine are still set at default for normal use and I only have to use a driver color profile for watching videos with MPC. I don't use my monitor's factory presets at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...