New 30" Monitor Question

[crowdx]

So I just ordered Dell UltraSharp U3011 Monitor, I have an ATI 6970 video card and I am wondering how it will handle the higher res running 2560x1600 vs it's current monitor that runs at 1920x1080.
anyone running a similar setup? Will I need to upgrade the video card to 5 box using it for the main account and 2 seperate monitors for the rest of the team?
Any insight welcome.

[Crum1515]

4096000px vs 2073600px = about a 97.5% increase in view area. Basically look at your system and ask can the GFX card handle rendering about twice the pixels? It is a very very archaic way to think about it but it is a good way to start questioning if you need a new card (or 2). Look at where your card sits while 5 boxing now and just think about the increase and if the GPU and VidRAM would be able to handle the extra load.

A 6970 is a pretty sexy card so I am interested as to how it handles it, keep us updated.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Cutting-edge integrated display support

DisplayPort 1.2

Max resolution: 2560x1600 per display
Multi-Stream Transport
21.6 Gbps bandwidth
High bit-rate audio

HDMI® (With 3D, Deep Color and x.v.Color™)

Max resolution: 1920x1200

Dual-link DVI with HDCP

Max resolution: 2560x1600

VGA

Max resolution: 2048x1536



You should be fine. Back in the day you had to make sure the video card had dual-link dvi output. Today's display port resolves this. It had to do with a limitation on a single vga/dvi output. I remember these kinds of monitors back when I worked at Dell. People would buy the biggest and best monitor and pair them with a crappy ass video card and wonder why it didn't work.

[crowdx]

Well my delivery is supposed to be here today, so I will report back once I am all setup :)

[Crum1515]

Awesome, good luck. I would love a monitor like the one you got!

[crowdx]

OMG, so monitor arrived and it is SOOOOO much bigger than the 27" I was using. I boxed a little real fast to see how it was and I had to drop the slaves to low res rendering. Otherwise it seemed pretty decent. I currently have it hooked up using the Dual Link DVI and my other two montiors are hooked up via displayport.

I do have think, would I benefit from either going crossfire or getting the new 7970. I don't play any other shooters etc and so Rift is the biggest stress my video card gets.

[JohnGabriel]

Does it work well enough with 5 toons on a single monitor or are you still using the other two monitors for the slaves?

I was thinking of getting rid of my dual monitor setup and going with a single large monitor.

[crowdx]

I still use the other two monitors for the slaves although to be honest it would probably run better if I was only using a single monitor.

[crowdx]

So I have been playing Rift with my 3 monitor setup for the last couple of days and I can really say it has added to my enjoyment of the game. The big impact I have is that I can turn off antialias and the game still looks great and also with the high res I can see my full team all the time and so fights are much cooler with 5 toons blasting a mob in pretty nice color lol.
The negative is that I had to cut the slaves down to low render mode but this allows me to run the main in medium settings with AA off.
I have not played a lot in Ember Isle and so have not really done any large Rifts, I think this maybe a challenge as EI is running at about 20fps.
I am considering springing for a 7970 but not really sure if the cost is worth it. I think crossfire would not benefit at all? Correct? Or would adding a second 6970 into my machine gain me the much needed frames for Raids in EI?
Overall I am very happy with the monitor and for professional work the colors are very neutral and show everything the way they were designed to be seen.

[Smedbox]

Sorry to comment this late, but that Dell monitor is a truly great monitor. :)

However, instead of hooking up multiple monitors to a single PC, I would recommend running multiple computers with a single monitor each. Using InputDirector makes the system behave exactly like if they were all on same same PC, but everything runs much faster. Imho, multiple medium-spec computers run multiboxing better than a single uber-spec PC - and you still control everything exactly the same way.

Crossfire/SLI should in theory work great with multiboxing, but I don't know. Could be issues with the driver or game that causes issues, decreasing the theoretical performance improvement (that's very often the case though - crossfire/SLI is a pretty horrible technical solution imho). I have seen a lot of complaints from AMD/Crossfire users on the Rift forums about performance problems.

[Ualaa]

I'm currently using 2x 27" Samsung SyncMaster SA350's.
They're both 1920x1080.
So 2x [1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600] = 4,147,200 pixles.

I was previously using a Samsung 30" monitor.
That was 2560x1600.
Or 4,096,000 pixels.

The entire team on one side of the 30", plus the main... looked really good.
Having everyone on a 27" doesn't look that great, but having one toon (main) on its own monitor, and the slaves on the other looks good.

I would have thought 2x 27" would be a lot more pixels than 1x 30".

[crowdx]

Well I just started to play WoW again using the scroll of resurrection for a free weeks play and the characters are tiny onscreen when fully zoomed out. Coming back from Rift though, the graphics are looking very tired in WoW though, hoping MoP improves things.

[Krago]

How do you like the LCD overall since you have been using it for a while?
I was looking at that monitor a while back when it was on sale for $800 CAD or so and I am still kicking myself that I didn't get it.

[crowdx]

I really like the monitor, looking at it compared to my old 27" it is huge (wife has my 27" on her desk :P ) .
With all the screw ups Dell did on the purchase I got an additional $100 off the price and so it came in at 1199 plus tax, I took out the 4 year warranty too, just in case it dies, it would be hard to pull that sort of money together and justify the same purchase ALTHOUGH I would HATE to go back to a smaller monitor.
I did upgrade to a 7970 video card too and in WoW it is running the main in Ultra with everything maxed and the slaves are on high. Main is at a steady 45fps and in dungeons maxes out to 60fps as per ISBoxer settings.