Best monitor around the £500 mark

mattie · 2 Mar 2016 at 21:05

Hi all

I'm running a 22" old Dell on an AMD FirePro W4100, and want to go to 2 monitors for CAD work through AutoCAD and SolidWorks, some light gaming, and for Lightroom photediting.

I'm looking to buy something that will last, so I've put reasonable amount aside - I could reasonably go to £500 per monitor.

I'm not sure if 4K is the way to go, especially as the Graphics Card is competent but not high level, but happy to consider. My graphics card has 4 mini displayports and I'll be upping RAM to 16Gb on a quad-core i5 running W10 (in case that makes any difference).

Any advice on candidate monitors would be much appreciated.

Fireblade77 · 2 Mar 2016 at 23:42

If you have an NVidia graphics card that supports gsync then it looks like the Dell S2716DG 27" 2560x1440 TN G-Sync 144Hz would be your best bet from what ive read. you can normally find it on sale now and then for around £440

mattie · 3 Mar 2016 at 18:52

The W4100 doesn't have gsync, it's an AMD card so not sure if they support - I don't think it has Freesync either.

Yaayuh! · 4 Mar 2016 at 09:21

Frankly if using Solidworks i would go for high res (UHD 3840x2160) and as you'll be doing some photo editing, i'd advise on an IPS panel. If these two are important to you, i would disregard the light gaming requirement.

You're unlikely to find an all-signing all-dancing decent 10bit UHD IPS monitor for that price. But i would start by looking at the Dell P2715Q

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/dell...reen-led-monitor-midnight-grey-mo-077-de.html

http://4k.com/monitor/dell-p2715q-r...ing_wp_cron=1457083352.4850161075592041015625

Slam · 4 Mar 2016 at 10:46

What about a 34" ultrawide with an IPS panel?

mattie · 4 Mar 2016 at 15:27

Rossi~ said:
Frankly if using Solidworks i would go for high res (UHD 3840x2160) and as you'll be doing some photo editing, i'd advise on an IPS panel. If these two are important to you, i would disregard the light gaming requirement.

You're unlikely to find an all-signing all-dancing decent 10bit UHD IPS monitor for that price. But i would start by looking at the Dell P2715Q

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/dell...reen-led-monitor-midnight-grey-mo-077-de.html

http://4k.com/monitor/dell-p2715q-r...ing_wp_cron=1457083352.4850161075592041015625

Ta, will check out the Dell

mattie · 4 Mar 2016 at 15:30

Slam said:
What about a 34" ultrawide with an IPS panel?

I was considering this, especially those can split the screen to give what are essentially two separate monitors (if I understand the marketing bumph correctly) for when I've got a document and a model open - the reason I really wanted two monitors.

Any ones worth looking at? I can go higher in price if buying only one monitor. And a silly question - if a monitor does 'screen in screen', does it need to physical connections?

mattie · 7 Mar 2016 at 12:32

Rossi~ said:
Frankly if using Solidworks i would go for high res (UHD 3840x2160) and as you'll be doing some photo editing, i'd advise on an IPS panel. If these two are important to you, i would disregard the light gaming requirement.

You're unlikely to find an all-signing all-dancing decent 10bit UHD IPS monitor for that price. But i would start by looking at the Dell P2715Q

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/dell...reen-led-monitor-midnight-grey-mo-077-de.html

http://4k.com/monitor/dell-p2715q-r...ing_wp_cron=1457083352.4850161075592041015625

I note the Asus PB279Q Professional 27" is a 10bit IPS, worth considering this over the Dell? It's a bit more expensive but I should be able to up the budget.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-pb279q-27-3840x2160-ips-4k-60hz-professional-widescreen-led-monitor-black-mo-076-as.html

I'm not sure what load two 4K monitors will place on the graphics card, the FirePro W4100 states that it supports a maximum resolution of 4096x2160 through DisplayPort 1.2a (it has 4 miniDP outputs) but no idea if it'll gum up trying to push to two monitors.

If this is likely to be a problem I might look at a single 34", as Slam suggests.

seniavod · 7 Mar 2016 at 15:40

I wouldn't suggest asus, I had it before(so many things didn't work properly), get better dell

Slam · 7 Mar 2016 at 16:49

mattie said:
I was considering this, especially those can split the screen to give what are essentially two separate monitors (if I understand the marketing bumph correctly) for when I've got a document and a model open - the reason I really wanted two monitors.

Any ones worth looking at? I can go higher in price if buying only one monitor. And a silly question - if a monitor does 'screen in screen', does it need to physical connections?

If you want to display from two separate devices then each needs to be connected through its own separate connection.
If you mean to display two separate program windows both running on the same pc then of course there's only one connection. The monitor software will enable you to arrange the windows in various pre-configured sizes.

Two ultrawide monitors worth considering are
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-...escreen-super-wide-led-monitor-mo-026-ao.html

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/iiya...s-widescreen-led-monitor-black-mo-133-iy.html

mattie · 17 Mar 2016 at 20:19

Still wrestling with this, not quite made a decision. As ever, too much choice!

I note that the 34" monitors are 3440x1440, whereas something like the Dell UP3216Q is 3840x2160 (although only 31.5").

Is there much noticeable to be gained with the higher resolution screens?