Eyefinity from scratch - recommended monitors?

[DeStRoYeR]

Hi guys,

I'm about to set up from scratch my EF - having just sold my lovely, gorgeous, wonderful NEC 24WMGX3 monitor :(
Reason for sale was simply that I couldn't afford to reproduce that monitor twice again, so opted to sell it and with the money (plus some of my own) purchase 3 new screens.

My dilemma now is... which screens? Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm looking for:
[list]Decent resolution (I love that this screen is 1920x1200)
DVI inputs (naturally)
Thin Bezel[/list:u]

...aside that I'm not really sure what else? Oh not forgetting:
[list]Low price[/list:u]
:D
I got £300 for my monitor, and want to spend less than £200 on top of that, so... what does the hive mind think? What would you spend £500 on? Remembering the whole displayport adapter thing.........

Many thanks in advance
Dave

[DeStRoYeR]

Update: what about 3 of these? http://www.pcbuyit.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=949
(no need for DisplayPort adapter)

[elmy]

I know alot of ppl that have Eyefinity have gotten those monitors. Cant beat it for the price. They can be easily run in portrait or landscape. I had the same ones on order for about a month from dell and they kept on getting backordered so I gave up and bought some Acers from Costco for 169.00 a piece. They are shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CdkHFE-Qc . But ATI is going to start supporting 3D so im looking at going the 3D monitor route. http://www.amazon.com/Acer-GD235HZbid-Widescreen-23-6-Display/dp/B0035KC3R0 I dont know if these panels are officially supported by ATI yet. I would love to test it out but paying that much for 3 monitors and then finding out they wont work would be a major disaster.

[DeStRoYeR]

Thanks for your reply elmy, in the end I went with:

1 x Dell Professional 23-inch P2310H Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor - Black £159.00
2 x Dell 23" E2310H Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor - Black £270.00

From PCBuyit, will arrive tomorrow :rockout

Rationale being that the P2310 with DP I can use as central monitor, and the E2310's either side (seem to have identical specs aside the DisplayPort).

Will let everyone know how I get on!

[magoo25]

I use three Dell 24" monitors, all of which were purchased on eBay.

Two 2408 and one U2410.

I bought these for the Display port option.

The monitors look and perform very well.

You monitor size(s) will depend on which GPU you have.

[Deke]

Just make sure you get 3 of same monitors, can't count how many times ppl have posted with problems due to miss matched monitors.

Also remember the larger the resolution you go with the more pixels will be used, resulting in higher heat and more problems with the DVI to Display port adapters.

So if your not to greedy on how frickn big the monitors have to be, you will not have many if any problems.

As it shows in my sig I only use 3 22" 16:10 Monitors, and that's 60" (5') of monitors sitting in front of you, so think about that when your placing them on your desk.

I use the Accell Active Adapter, and it works great, for my setup.

Deke

[Phoenixdancer]

Thanks for your reply elmy, in the end I went with:

1 x Dell Professional 23-inch P2310H Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor - Black £159.00
2 x Dell 23" E2310H Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor - Black £270.00

From PCBuyit, will arrive tomorrow :rockout

Rationale being that the P2310 with DP I can use as central monitor, and the E2310's either side (seem to have identical specs aside the DisplayPort).

Will let everyone know how I get on!

sounds perfect for you :D

[tfannon]

here is the model i got with display port. i got 3 so they are identical and don't have EDID issues.

there were (90) 3 days ago. down to 17 or so.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/popupproductdetail.aspx?sku=320-8323&?~lt=popup&c=us&l=en&s=dfh&cs=22

yes, they are the not-as-nice panels, but who cares if you are just looking to explore eyefinity.

[DeStRoYeR]

Well I now have a working Eyefinity setup! Unfortunately as much as I'd like to have got 3 of the same monitors, it simply wasn't economical - the P2310 was only purchased because it has DisplayPort, and I only needed one monitor with DisplayPort, so it seemed redundant to buy 3..... as much as I'd have liked to.

Anyway the ST2310's are nice enough, image quality is the same across all 3 (specs are idential) and Eyefinity spans nicely.

Some initial thoughts/feedback...

1) Game support seems iffy at best, Quake3 / QuakeLive doesn't seem to give me a decent enough FOV to make it playable, image stretching is awful on MW2, the only game that seems to be 100% OK with the resolution is DiRT2, which looks awesome :)
2) Maximising windows maximises across all 3 displays, I know this is normal but I can't think of many scenarios where it is preferable to individual fullscreens. For example, if I wanted to watch 3 movies all in fullscreen, extended desktop would do it nicely but Eyefinity would not.

Anyone experiencing the same?

Dave

PS will post pics later tonight !

[Phoenixdancer]

try hydra vision

[DeStRoYeR]

hmm - hydravision installed but isn't running, apparently can't find an ATI display driver loaded :nudgenudge (using 10.2 cats)

anyway pic as promised!

[Magic Man]

I'm looking at the similar sort of choice in the near future except, since I already have a 2407 (which I want to use as an additional monitor rather than as part of the eyefinity group) and love the quality of the display, I don't want to step down to TN panels.

Hence I'm looking at the prospect of 3 x U2410s - just a shame it's so much more than the 23" TN panel... Could get a full six of those for less than the cost of three U2410s :(

Unless someone can persuade me that the 23" TN panel is really very good (i.e. good viewing angles in both landscape and portrait, good colour etc. - is it a true 8 bpp panel or 6 bpp with dithering?)

Trouble with that Acer 3D screen is that, like many other manufacturers, they decided to go for a non uniform bezel which means that it causes problems for portrait use in that multiple screens can't be butted together neatly. Give us plain, square, thin bezels!!!

[DeStRoYeR]

If it helps Magic Man I took a massive step down from my previous NEC panel to these TN's, and once you've settled down the brightness/contrast, they aren't really that bad (in comparison).

I'll take some pictures tonight of angles etc so you can see how mine are (P2310H and ST2310's)

[Magic Man]

Okay, cheers!

[tfannon]

i got 2 of my 2210H refurbs today. They look fine to me. I am comparing them both a Dell 30" and Dell 24 higher-end panels.

Yeah, they are not as good, but if you are just going to game or watch movies on them, they seem fine to me. I did a little test with 2 monitors in eyefinity even though you can't really play that way. It was easy to setup and neat. I also watched a 1080P movie on one and it looked fine.

3rd comes at end of week. I'll give a real eyefinity review then.

[elmy]

Destroyer,

For MW2 you need dopefish's widescreen fixer program for it to work. Make sure you have Microsoft .net framework 3.5 installed. The link is here http://wsf.imk.cx/

You need to create your eyefinity group in the ATI Catalyst Control Center for the correct desktop resolution of 5760 X 1080. There are videos on youtube on how to do this. If you need help let me know I can get you the right video.