starting again some hardware advices

[carlonarducci]

dear Friends

I have 2 old workstations

1 with i7 920 6 gb of Ram Nvidia Quadro 3700 fx and a small monitor from samsung

the othet one is

1 i7 950x 16 Gb of Ram Nvidia Geforce 460 gtx

 

I would like to know a good 27" screen ( I am thinking for my budget to a Hp ips)

I would like to know if is better to switch the 2 card having the quadro with the i7 950.

Will it possible and usefull to render with both of them when i will use vray?

i have also a mac book pro do have sense to connetct it to render with the other 2?

this distrubuited render do have sense?

 

I have some ideas not so clear hope you will help me to solve.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Pretty much all the 1440p 27" screens out there, from $350 cheap Korean, to high-end EIZO are based on the same LG panel.

The most often chosen 1440p screens are Dell U2711, HPzr2740w and Apple Cinema Display 27.

All of them are very good, with Dell having slightly better color control (and I do like the stand, USB hub etc the most), HP having better response times and by average found a bit cheaper.

 

Recently there have been a couple of Asus 27" that are very nice (one including 4x USB 3.0 hub which would be great if you would like something like that and is unique in a 27" atm), and the newer Dell U2713M, which is not full 10bit as the U2711, but in a few tests exhibits the best factory calibration for sRGB by far in the class, and improved response times etc. Being newer, both these models cannot compete with the older 27" in price (ok, the Apple is out of that league anyways), while the 2711 is regularly on sale - at least in the US.

 

If you want to retire the 920 or turn it into a render node, the FX 3700 will most likely offer noticeable improvement over a GTX 460 as far as viewport performance goes, but the Fermi architecture of the 460 will give an edge in GPU rendering - won't be huge, it will be kinda limited VRam wise, but it will be faster than with the FX3700 alone. In theory all CUDA enabled cards will be individually recognized and used alone or in combination by most GPU rendereres - including VRay RT GPU, so you can have the Quadro as your primary display driver, with the GTX idling at all times but when CUDA computations are in order. Will cost you a bit in noise/heat/electricity (even when idling) but you could def. try.

[carlonarducci]

after many test the 3700 fx doens't work properly

when i use it whith vray it crash

 

thanks for cheap monitor advices...i will go for a Hp due the fact my shop here has good price on in and my machines are unders this shop...

[Dimitris Tolios]

Fiddle back and forth with older drivers maybe?

 

I would not call any 27" 1440p exactly "cheap" - just gave hints on the "cheaper" ones

Are you sure your are not getting quotes for 1080p ones? 27" 1080p have horrible pixel pitch and personally I cannot stand them for anything but console gaming.

[carlonarducci]

sorry u right. they are not cheaper but less expensive and an Ezio...

anyway u really help me...

[carlonarducci]

right now I ahve two sony 19" on my i7 950. with lightwave they work really good due modeller layout split. With 3ds is crazy working on a 19". Don't know if buy or wait for the 27"

[Dimitris Tolios]

Well, monitors are different in many ways and of course the layout of a program's UI or the freedom in customizing it does favor different monitor configurations in one way or another.

 

Personally I am a huge advocate in favor of 2 monitor setups. Even if the second one is actually much smaller, I find it invaluable having the extra space where I can maximize or tile windows easily. Windows OS can easily tile different app windows only by splitting the screens horizontally or vertically...custom size tilling etc is problematic - at least in my experience, and having reference information (anything reference images to text, tutorials, youtube, movies for entertainment etc) in a secondary screen is so much easier, and you usually waste much less real estate.

I honestly go bananas in my mind on how unproductive some stuff are - from not maximizing your working area (digital) when working (a fav with noob mac users who stick to the default tiling) to working on design suites with touchpads instead of mice.

 

In this table you can see really quick the available real estate as far as pixels go for the most popular resolutions. Of course most of the 4:3 and 5:4 monitors are obsolete now as nearly all the LCDs sold for the last 5 years are 16:9 or 16:10, but there is still a big volume of 19" (usually 1280x1024) screens out there - I know I am doomed to used 2x of those @ work...

 

 

 

And this is a fast diagram, comparing the real estate in area instead of Megapixels.

 

 

It is easy to see that any 1080p - 1200p screen will give you roughly 1.5x times the total working area. This is actually huge in some cases, as for example in 3DS where you typically have that big toolbar on the right of the screen, which I tend to expand 1-2 times in order to roll-out all the options etc, this 1.5x more real estate with the toolbars deployed actually leaves you with almost double the actual working area.

 

Switching to a 1440p panel, the difference is ofc huge, with clearly almost 3x times the resolution in comparison to a single 5:4 19"...

 

In conclusion, any upgrade to a 1200p or 1440p IPS will lead to a noticeable difference. Since you do have 2x monitors now, I believe opting for a 24" 1200p if you have shortage in your budget for a 27" is not that much of a compromise. Even the cheapest Dell or Asus IPS will give you better color than most TN panels, while helping you expand/optimize your digital workspace.

[carlonarducci]

 

 

 

Switching to a 1440p panel, the difference is ofc huge, with clearly almost 3x times the resolution in comparison to a single 5:4 19"...

 

In conclusion, any upgrade to a 1200p or 1440p IPS will lead to a noticeable difference. Since you do have 2x monitors now, I believe opting for a 24" 1200p if you have shortage in your budget for a 27" is not that much of a compromise. Even the cheapest Dell or Asus IPS will give you better color than most TN panels, while helping you expand/optimize your digital workspace.

 

do u think a 27" ips 1200p could be too expensive?

[Dimitris Tolios]

1st of all I don't think there are 1200p 27" monitors out there.

There is a number of 16:10 23-24" IPS panels that sport 1920x1200, and the popular 16:9 2560x1440p LG IPS panel that you see almost exclusively in all 27" 1440p offerings (Apple, HP, Dell, Catleap and others).

 

The rest of the 27" panels out there are 16:9 TN, but 1080p. Personally I would never recommend one of those for graphic work. It is not about them being TN, nor about being of low quality - the contrary. Those are just not fitted for the job.

 

Why?

 

Well, it is hard for me to frame the answer unless the receiver knows why he wants to go bigger than 23-24". Personally I would give 2x objective reasons (and multiple subjective, but e.g. if you friend will be impressed by the size, though a valid reason, is not objective).

• You go bigger because you need/want to display MORE information
  
• You go bigger because you need/want to display the same information, but make it visible further away, due to desktop arrangement, viewer distance etc.
  

 

It is clear that talking same aspect ratio panels, a 27" 1080p cannot display more information that a 19", 22" or 24" 1080p panel. So it falls back to the need to place the monitor further away to make it visible for more people, or because of other reasons.

 

In my humble opinion the pixel pitch or pixel density or PPI of a 27" 1080p monitor is too big (talking physical size) or too small (talking PPI or density) - depending on how you talk about it.

 

In order for our eyes/brain to "fit" and "control" the contents of a frame/image, we have to position our heat roughly as far back as the diagonal of the frame/image we are interested in. 27" and 30" monitors push the limits of this ergonomic requirement, as this is barely attainable with the average workstation (talking physical desk size here). There has to be a good reason to go big, and since distance sitting away from the desk is limited, we keep it reasonable.

 

27" 1080p would be ok for sitting on your desk playing games as you don't focus on details as much as working, and even better laying back playing Xbox games or watching movies, but that's it. For productivity, I find the fat pixels in such monitors distracting.

 

To put it into perspective, a 1080p 27" pixel is roughly 1.7x times that of a 1440p in area, despite the PPI being roughly 82 (1080p) vs. 109 (1440p). Remember that differences in length get squared when dealing with area, and pixel is an area of color while PPI is linear in its expression.