Question about LCDs

#1

I am currently running dual monitors for Maya.

A 19 inch ViewSonic A90f+ and an old 17 inch HP Pavilion as my secondary monitor.

I’m seriously thinking of getting an LCD to help with the eyes and the long hours in front of the computer. My budget is around $1000 USD.

The thing is I’ve heard quite a few negative things about LCD and 3d work as well as gaming, but I’d really like to get a 19" or 20" LCD, but don’t know if the cost is justified. I’ve heard both good and bad things about the DELL 20 inch as well as the Samsung ones. Don’t know if you guys could recommend specifically what will work best with 3d work because all I have to go on is basic reviews which has the DELL at the top. (however, consumer reviews don’t seem to rate them as terribly high as they are on pcmag and cnet.) I’ve never experienced ghosting, but I think that I’d be quite annoyed at paying around $1000 for an LCD and have to put up with that or any dead pixels.

My second question is whether it was possible to have my viewsonic or hp as the secondary monitor and the LCD as the primary. I’m not sure whether there are any conflicts with such a set up. Just wondering because with my Quadro FX 1000, you have to use a horizontal spanning desktop that spans both monitors to be able to have right click menus come out on the secondary monitor. Would have a dual setup with a CRT and LCD be best because I will have the best of both worlds or should I be saving up for 2 LCDs?

I guess that’s all I can come up with now.

Thanks

#2

I’ll just say two things…

  1. LCD’s are WELL worth the money, to save your eyes is priceless in my books, and something you can’t put a price on. It’s not a big deal for a casual computer user, but for people looking at computers 10 or more hours a day, it’s a must.

And

  1. Dual monitors are only good if you don’t do animation were time is crtical. A dual monitor set up will take a huge hit in performance.

My advice, with 1 grand, get a nice 21 inch LCD, with a good response time. Forget about the dual monitor set up, unless you really need extra real estate.

#3

I’m so used to the extra real estate that I’m not even sure whether I can go back to a single monitor setup. I always thought that there was either no performance hit or a very little one with dual monitors as long as you were using a spanning desktop rather than dual desktops between the two monitors. I think the person who told me this said that there wasn’t supposed to be a performance hit with a spanning desktop because your graphics card treats both monitors as a single display. Not sure if this was true, but it was what I was told.

#4

I should be more specific…I only use maya now a days, so I speak for that program only, the others might be the same, but I have no proof.

It’s not true what that person told you, even going from 1280 by 1024 to 1600 by 1200 is a performace hit, so imagine what a spanning desktop will do to performance :smiley:

Again though, if your not an animator it’s not a HUGE deal, but animators depend on fps heavily, so that’s why I mentioned it.

#5

Err, no. The performance hit is virtually zero.

#6

No…it’s not…

Aren’t you the same guy who gives alot of crap advice about video cards too?

gezz man…give it up.

The higher the resolution the more of a performance hit your going to take…simple as that.

#7

I agree, i don’t just animate. I’m an avid gamer. Any gamer with more than two minutes of expierience knows that high resolutions mean bigger performance hits. I mean which should be easier for a graphics card to run 800x600 or 1600x1200? Higher resolution means much higher detail. and a spanning desktop? shivers

#8

With a dual screen you’re NOT going to span the 3d image across both screens. You use one for the 3d viewport and one for the menus. So the 3d performance is still going to be that of a 1280 / 1600 screen, not some monster 3200x1200 desktop.

Displaying menus on an extra screen takes next to no resources and gives no real speed hit. I DO know what I am talking about having setup, used and benchmarked quad screen systems before.

If you feel like showing the tiniest shread of information to backup yourself then feel free, I await your reply. Until that day, please keep your comments to yourself.

#9

My job is not to prove things to you pal, this is an internet forum of opinions and people can eithier try to help people…like me.

or

Just troll and try to argue with people who are trying to be helpful…like you.

Anyone with common sense will know who to believe.

#10

you are wrong. Ive used dual monitors for over a year and I get no performance hit whatsoever. I use maya and and an avid gamer and I get the same results as when im using a single monitor.

#11

They asked for facts and information, not your out-dated opinion and incorrect beliefs.

#12

sigh

Well whatever I don’t want to argue…You probably just never noticed.

If you have maya on one monitor, and hypershade on the next with trax editor…you will notice a lower fps…If your not a serious animator you won’t notice.

I have dual CRT 21 inch monitors…and gave them up for a single LCD, and noticed a nice fps increase in maya.

I am not talking about just rotating a heavy sphere around, or anything like that…I am talking real scenes…like the ones that come with spec maya.

Trust me it’s there…it’s just common sense…

#13

actually I do alot of modeling/animation in Maya and get no slowdown with my dual monitors. and I always have several windows open including trax, hypershade, graph editor and outliner with no slowdown. If your experience with dual monitors hasnt been so good then thats ok.

#14

Guy…your just some kid with to much time on his hands…give me a break.

I have no desire to debate this…

#15

Lol!

  • Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Woman In White: 3D animated stage (modelling, lighting, rendering, renderfarm and worstation admin)

  • Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy previz and IT admin

  • Head of Maxon UK support and technical manual author

  • 3D software training and animation for Cadbury, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, UK National Theatre, BSkyB

Yourself?

#16

well whatever…This is off topic now and not helping anyone except maybe ego’s.

So pm me if you want to know more about me … We both have our point of view, and we aren’t going to change it…

Sorry mayakindaguy…I hope we didn’t muck up your thread to bad.

#17

The performance hit is negligible, if one exists at all, while using dual screens. I’m currently running a setup similar to the one you’re proposing. LCD as primary and CRT as secondary and using a spanning desktop.

As far as an LCD goes, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Samsung 193P. 

A couple review links: (Note: I think these were reviews of early test units)

[http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=2024](http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=2024) (Anandtech actually recommends this LCD in their weekly buyer guides quite often now as well.)
[http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20040326/lcd-04.html](http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20040326/lcd-04.html)

It’s very bright, the colours are true if you take the time to properly calibrate it, and if it’s important to you at all, the response time is good enough to play anything without any problems whatsoever. It is just one sexy screen :wink: You may notice some very faint ghosting when you first get it but that passes quickly. (ie. Though I still use my CRT to play Quake 3, the LCD can handle it quite well even when it’s set to contrasting colours like this: http://synapse.redphive.org/q3/q3-2.jpg). Playing games with actual textures minimizes any tiny ghosting effect that you may encounter and manages to hide it :slight_smile:

The problem with a lot of the specs monitor manufacturers throw out at people is that there’s no real “set” way to rate things. One screen could claim a response time of 16ms, but look worse than one that’s rated at 20ms. Usually companies will list the White/Black to Black pixel response time, but the real important one is the Grey to Grey, as that’s the one that takes longer and is usually the cause of any ghosting you’ll see.

I was in the same boat for awhile. I’m an animator and I game. I game a LOT. I also program as well now, but any text looks magnificent with Cleartype enabled on an LCD so that’s not that important. I was desperately searching for a monitor that I could say “yes, this is exactly what I want.” But unfortunately I was always torn between all the supposed specs, reviews, dead pixels, warranties, and real user experiences. Quite often if you were looking for something that gave you true colour representation, you’d have to sacrifice response time, and vice versa. Basically my decision came down to the Viewsonic VP201B, Dell 2001FP, and the Samsung 193P. I chose the Samsung and have had no regrets. This screen has reached an excellent balance of both and I have no hesitations in recommending it to anyone in the market for such a monitor.

P.S. It came with zero dead pixels. I have one pixel stuck on red on the far right, and one in the top right corner. I can only see these if I switch to a white background and then search for them for awhile. (It doesn’t take that long to search since I know where they are now :))

I don’t mean to sound like I’m trying to push this monitor on you, It’s just the only LCD I’ve constantly used can really give personal feedback for.

Btw, this is an excellent little app for any dual monitor users: http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

#18

You only get a noticable performance hit if you do something graphics intensive on both screens, like watching an animation preview on one screen and rotating a high poly model in the other. For the most part, people don’t do that so they don’t notice the loss of performance.

#19

Also he has two different monitor sizes, 19 and 17 inch, so that would make a spanning desktop very inconvient.

If he has too use that nview, with two seperate desktops, the performacne hit will be there.

When I had my dual monitors I can’t remember if it was spanning or two desktops, but I do know there was a huge performance decrease.

#20

I’m curious, is that because of the dual monitor setup or because you’re trying to do two things like that at once? Meaning, would you notice the same perfomance hit when you have both of those windowed on one screen with the secondary monitor disabled as you would when running spanning screens with each window on a different monitor?

Honestly, I could never see myself switching back to a single monitor setup. Dual screens just increases productivity so much that any negligible performance hit that may occur is moot. The ability to have viewports on one screen with graph editors and text menus on another, being able to programming one class while having the another sitting right beside you in order to make sure you’re calling the correct methods and what not is unmatched. No matter what anyone says, Alt+Tab is not the same thing. I would go as far as to say that two 17" LCDs are far better than a single 21".