New computer monitor

Lounge
#1

Hello,
I got a problem with my old cinema display from Apple (shutting off at arbitrary intervals, and some color defects on screen)
Now is high time to buy a new and bigger monitor - but not from Apple. :joy:

I thought to buy one from Dell, the specs for a monitor are :

  • 60hz,
  • 27",
  • great colors
  • better not too glossy,
  • at medium-low price,

My graphic card has 1 plug for hdmi, 1 plug for DVI and 2 mini display ports. (Check out the attachment for more info)
My machine is a Macpro

Please tell me your ideas and what you would buy in my place, Iā€™d appreciate

IMG_MacP
IMG_MacP986Ɨ1077 273 KB

#2

ā€œmedium-low priceā€ leaves quite some room for interpretation.

In any case, if you donā€™t go into the professional grade product lines, youā€™ll have to pick some priorities.

Would you prefer 4K UHD (3840x2160) or is WQHD (2560x1440) good enough?
Can you calibrate yourself or do you rely on decent factory calibration?
How important is wider gamut than sRGB to you? Or HDR?

I had to replace my monitor a few months ago too since my old one died.
Since I didnā€™t want to invest in additional calibration equipment and figured my hardware is not the strongest anyway, I decided against 4k and wide-gamut and went with the BenQ PD2705Q for ~400ā‚¬.
I also considered a Dell in the same price range, but went for the BenQ because the Dell had mediocre brightness uniformity in all tests, and didnā€™t have the best experience with longevity of Dell monitorsā€¦

Iā€™m happy with my pick, but really itā€™s nothing fancy, itā€™s ā€œjustā€ a pre-calibrated sRGB 60Hz WQHD display, but the basics are done right, it doesnā€™t make noises, has good uniformity, colors and contrast are about as good as you can have with an sRGB IPS panel.

A decent 4K sRGB display would not really be much more expensive though, but as I said, my hardware is not the most powerful, and I didnā€™t really want to deal with UI scaling either.

There are also a bunch of gaming oriented panels in the same price range that cover DCI-P3 or AdobeRGB gamut well and support >60Hz with AdaptiveSync, but none of them seem to have decent sRGB or even DCI-P3 presets, they just give you vibrant colors and calibration is your own issue.

Also, if you go for 4k, make sure you graphics card can actually feed that display, Iā€™m almost sure the HDMI on that card is too old to allow 60Hz, it seems like it should work with DisplayPort, if Appleā€™s drivers support it properly (or are you running Windows or Linux on that thing?)

1 Like
#3

Thank you for writing out all the technical information,
I omitted details to allow more choices to the answers and to make better decisions too.

Also youā€™re much more into it than me, I donā€™t change hardware very often, so itā€™s an important investment.

Your choice is a solid one, and of course thereā€™s always something better on the market. Yes, I run macOS on my machine, and used 20" screen diagonale all the time, Iā€™m so tired of this dinosaur age format.

WQHD (2560x1440) is great and because of my hardware, the same kind of monitor Iā€™m looking for

Itā€™s ok if the monitor supports sRgb, once Iā€™ve more money I am gonna pick a new workstation and a better monitor hdr altogether. Thatā€™s not gonna happen very time soonā€¦

Oh monitors can be noisy as well?
Hopefully not like a noisy stomach :joy:

Uhm, Iā€™m still looking and guess I do better to consider a second hand model which isnā€™t the newest to be sure the hdmi port works well by 60hz and 27" plugged into my Radeon 7970 3gb grafic card. Drivers? By Apple drivers are supported or not supported, we usually donā€™t have to install hardware related software components

I hoped having a decent graphiccard would bypass restrictions (ok, 2011 is old now, the newer versions of amd run 6 times faster)

#4

Oh yes, since they all got an integrated power supply, there can be noticable buzzing/humming noises. My previous Eizo did make a bit of noise, but luckily when sitting in front it was barely audible.
Some people are not very sensitive to that, but I amā€¦my nVidia GTX 960 also makes some nasty noises at certain load levels that annoys me, btw.

Well the video card is the issue here, like most connection standards, the version gets upped over time to support higher bandwidths. HDMI was lagging behind DisplayPort for a while, and simply did not support data rates high enough to drive 4K displays at 60Hz. 2560x1440 should not be an issue though, you must be aware that 4K means more than twice as many pixels (2.25x to be exact).
DisplayPort 1.2 or HMDI 2.0 is what you need to drive a 4K display at 60Hz.

1 Like
#5

I researched awhile to get more insight, my hdmi version is 1.4a, 4k should be possible but Iā€™m unsure, considering my hw. My grafic card specs
https://www.gpuzoo.com/GPU-AMD/Radeon_HD_7970.html

This one looks like a great model,

The usual monitors come with some drivers pre-installed to code decode video and audio but since my video card is an amd model the hdmi port should work regardless if my machine mounts an apple or a windows.

Hmm I guess this needs more research. :sweat_smile:

Eizo and benq are great but a little bit more expensive

#6

I bought a beautiful, 27" monitor from Dell, even with pivot. Works like a charm with macOS
My Christmas gift :laughing:

27" is not even so big as I thought :laughing:
Your tips were very helpful to show the direction
Thanks again :+1:t2: