Wow, ordered this puppy Wednesday night and it arrived Monday morning. Used regular ole’ ground shipping too. Santa came early for me this year.
Anyways, I’ve been firing up my recent gaming addictions (Dark Messiah, NWN2, Oblivion, Titan Quest, Medieval 2, etc.) and so far all of them natively support 2560x1600. Overall the display looks great, with my only real complaint being uneven backlighting in the corners. If a scene is really dark you can see the difference in the corners, but the majority of the time it’s not too noticeable. I thought about playing the RMA game with Dell hoping I’d get a better unit, but a little voice in my head is saying to be happy with what I’ve got now. The ‘replacement’ unit could very well be worse, a refurbished part, have dead pixels, etc.
Have I mentioned this thing is huge? And bright. . .I’ve turned down the onboard brightness as far as it goes and then went into my graphics board’s control panel and dialed it down even further in both 2D and 3D.
Anyways, definitely gonna’ need to upgrade my single Radeon 1950 XTX, though; NWN2 is pulling around 15-20fps at 2560x1600 with 2x AA and I’m hitting around 22-24fps in Oblivion with HDR and 2x AA at that res. I’ve always been very tolerant of low frame rates, choosing IQ over frame rate since I’m not a competitive, online fragger, but frame rate around 20 is a bit low even for me.
Sweet purchase John. I’m not too convinced that even the 8800GTX will be able to power 2007 titles at an adequate frame rate for that resolution, but if you’re not sensitive to frame rate dips, it’s got to be a great experience to game on that display.
Just curious though. You can get a 42" 1080p HDTV for the same or less money than that Dell. (I’m thinking Westinghouse) Personally, I think a 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 resolution is going to satisfy me for quite some time, and would probably look fantastic on a 42" panel. Did you consider that route at all?
Yet another shoutout for my 37 1080p westinghouse! Its a killer monitor. I thought about going for the 30inch dell but I knew that I would run in to the same problem that John has. Hell even with this 1920x1080 you still need to have a pretty kicking video card.
No, I didn’t really consider it since I wanted a display with a bit more flexibility in its resolutions for hardware testing at SimHQ. I had to sell my 2405 to someone at work to undercut the cost of this 3007 lest I incur wifely wrath.
Medieval 2’s strategy map looks incredible on this display. I’m really into NWN2 right now, but for some reason I keep finding myself firing up Medieval 2 so I can pan across Europe and admire the graphics.
The perception of resolution and size is relative to your view distance. A 3007 with its 2560X1680 resolution looks awesome at almost any distance, and especially rocking close up. With a 42" 1080p you’re still going to want to use from a few feet away. If you are planning on setting the thing on your computer desk and then sitting in front of that desk, the monitor is going to work better and cause less eye-strain.
Currently having an HDTV and an 8800 really kind of sucks - nVidia’s drivers for these new cards currently do not have custom resolutions working. This means HDTV users have to suffer with overscan with no way of compensating for it. Hopefully this will be addressed soon.
I use a 1080p 65" DLP as my primary monitor for my gaming/media PC. It does rock, but I pretty much had to set my entire living room up around it.
While I’m not complaining, the brightness issue I had with the corners has all but faded. Only the bottom-right is still noticeable, and really only since I know it’s there. . .to a casual viewer, even while watching a dark scene, probably wouldn’t notice it. I don’t know squat about LCD manufacturing, so anyone able to hazard a guess as to why the backlighting evened itself out over time?
I have seen something made mention of this previously, in that in order to potentially rectify this issue, people would lay their monitors down flat on their faces and leave them on. Something about the heat would help seal a film or something internally which would eliminate the bleed? Perhaps just by having it on, a similar process occured in your 3007.
I love my 37" Westy, although it has lead me to ride the upgrade express a couple of times more this year than I probably would have otherwise. Now with an 8800GTX, 1920x1080 isn’t the albatross resolution it used to be.
I’m fairly partial to 1920x1200 as my default resolution; I’m also sporting an 8800gtx here. I don’t think I want to stretch it out much further than the 24" Dell panel I’m running. Supposedly Dell will be releasing a 27" version of this panel, also with a 1920x1200 default resolution. I think that LCD panel size will be the absolute sweet spot for the 19x12 resolution.
At least if you’re gaming at a desktop. if you’re sitting in front of a TV with a wireless setup, then bigger may be better.
