30" Dell or new motherboard/CPU/RAM

[Sobek]

http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/30lcd?c=au&cs=audhs1&l=en&s=dhs

A 30" 3007WFP-HC for AU $1,499-fricken-dollars, cheaper than the damn 27". That's pretty damn good considering not 6 months ago here they were $2000+... I'm so seriously considering getting one, but I only have an X2 4600+ @ 2.88ghz and a single 2900xt. I was planning on getting a new Core2 Q6600, x38 motherboard and 2-3gb of good ddr2 ram and clocking the shit out of it, but I only have enough right now for one or the other. God it's a hard choice... Sexy big screen, or all new major system parts. I don't think my 2900xt can drive this thing at 2560x1600. 1280x1024 with 2xAA on medium-high settings in any game pretty much results in barely playable framerates.

Just how bad do these funky LCD's that you silly buggers use look when run at a resolution lower than their 'native' (I still can't believe such a stupid thing exists) resolution. I'm using a 21" trinitron at the moment, and my only 24" widescreen trinitron died, so i'm really looking into a new monitor now and only a 30" at least will do... (to justify the drop in quality going from CRT to LCD) Just worried I can't drive it well enough and might have to drop the res, but don't want a dirt blotchy jaggy screen as a result. Thoughts?

 

[Skrying]

Depends on the LCDs scaling unit. Just for the record: I will NEVER go back to a CRT after my LCD, never.

 

[Sobek]

I see. Is there any word out on the quality of the unit in the 30" model? I know from reading around that the panel itself is fairly high quality, so that's not a real issue. It's just that right now I don't think my system in its current state is prepared to deal with 2560x1600 for normal day-to-day play. 1920x1200, yeah that's doable, but it just concerns me that if I really need to run that res whether or not the quality will be acceptable for gaming.

*edit* I just read it's only 2560x1600 or 1280x800... That might not actually be so bad you know, I only run 1280x1024 and x800 isn't a whole lot less screen space. The fact that it's an LCD should help blend the jaggies of the lower res and make things acceptable, while allowing sufficient levels of AA.

Can anyone confirm that it's 2560x1600 / 1280x800 only? And if it is, how would 1280x800 look? If both are designed to look great, I could run the lower until I upgrade, then switch to the higher. The possibilities!

 

[nutball]

My feeling is that whilst the Dell 30" does seem to have a very good panel it's let down somewhat by what surrounds it. Here's a list of the front panel controls you'll get:

- on/off
- brightness
- nothing else

If you want to change contrast, colour temperature, etc., you're at the mercy of your graphics card drivers to do so. It's also a bit short on inputs which may or may not be a problem depending on what you do.

Regarding size, trying to play Crysis at 2560x1600 is just a LOLfest. At 1280x800 it looks pretty crummy. Intermediate resolutions depend on the graphics card scaling I think (not certain about this). Other games I've played on it (EVE, WoW, UT3, SupCom) look great but then they work OK at native res. But I guess you can tell from that list of games that I'm not a g4m3r!

I got mine for £880 and I love it. Don't regret it for an instant. However, I don't game much, I don't need more than one input, I calibrate my monitors using a colorimeter, so I can work around its short-comings. It'll keep me happy until the LED backlight versions come out, hopefully by then Dell will have worked out that they need to provide more on a top-of-the-line monitor to keep most people happy

 

[Dooby]

Get the 30".

Its... just...

Im still glad I got one every day. It has a higher dpi than other monitors, so its slightly sharper. You have an ATi card, which can do non-scaling for playing lower res in the middle of the screen rather than stretched. I found a 1900XT was good enough for most games at 2560x1600 so a 2900XT should be kosher. You should be using drivers for your settings anyway, I dont know any professional that calibrates using + and - buttons. And who *really* needs more than a DVI input. Its much more likely to have more monitors than computers, not the other way round.

Outside of games, desktop res is fantastic, two browsers next to each other (the 30" is bigger than having two 20" monitors in portrait next to each other) making life so much nicer.

Getting the monitor gives you the option to get a better gfx card in future, which will serve you LOADS better than a (fairly minor tbh) CPU upgrade.

www.pogdesign.co.uk/stuff/crysisbay.jpg
www.pogdesign.co.uk/stuff/cod4night.jpg
www.pogdesign.co.uk/stuff/gowbuildings.jpg

Obviously you wont be able to play games like this just yet, but keeping thinking of the day....