Dual or Triple monitors?

lolage

lolage

lolage

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Hi,

At the moment I have a Syncmaster 223BW. I'm looking at getting either dual screens or triple screens. I do a bit of gaming, along with a lot of graphical work so an E-IPS panel might be the way to go? Got a budget of around £450 to spend on 2 monitors. Been looking at this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-046-DE Getting two of those would come just under budget. However I have a few options - what would you do?

  1. Buy two of the Dell Ultrasharp U2311H and use my current Samsung as the middle screen to use for gaming as TN is supposed to be better for gaming?
  2. Buy one Dell Ultrasharp U2311H and use with my Samsung, as having 3 monitors is not nessasary??
  3. Sell the Samsung and buy two Dell Ultrasharp U2311H

What would you do? :confused:

Thanks in advance!
 
Hi there, unfortunately your Samsung has a resolution of 1680x1050, while the Dell U2311H has a resolution of 1920x1080.

This will work fine in extended desktop mode run off the HD 5770 - but to run games in eyefinity you really need all the monitors to have the same vertical resolution and you really need to run these monitors at their native resolutions - which are very different.

You may want to consider having a hunt around for a pair of refurbished Dell 2209WA monitors. These will come with 1 year warranty and use an 8 bit, E-IPS panel and a resolution of 1680x1050 (just like your samsung). Just add an active displayport to DVI adapter like this (assuming you card has a mini-DP output) and you will be away.

I would suggest using the Dell 2209WA for the primary gaming monitor - as it is pretty darn responsive and the IPS panel will make everything look nicer.

That said, with just a HD 5770 you will have some trouble running modern games at 5040x1050 resolution at playable framerates.
 
Hi

Sorry for not explaining correctly, but I won't be using eyefinity - if I do I'll need to upgrade my PSU and GPU which I dont want to. If I had 3 screens I'd use just 1 for gaming, and have the other 2 switched off when not doing design work.
 
Ah, in that case get a pair of U2311Hs, no active DP to DVI adapter needed as the U2311H has a display port input.

As for the one monitor to be used for gaming - I would use one of the Dells. It is responsive enough to play games well and the input lag is low - it is also slightly bigger (wider at least), higher res and the panel is better quality.
 
Thanks, do you think its worth me keeping my samsung? Or should I let the nagging parents have it? :D Only ever used 1 monitor with 1680x1050 so part of me is saying that 2 at 1920x1080 is going to be fine.
 
If you have only ever used a single monitor - then a dual monitor setup (with two 1920x1080 res displays) will feel like a big step up. So giving your 22in Samsung to your parents sounds like a nice thing to do, especially if they will make good use of it.

It will also allow you to add a third 1080p monitor in the future if you do want to try out some eyefinity gaming.
 
cmndr_andi said:
If you have only ever used a single monitor - then a dual monitor setup (with two 1920x1080 res displays) will feel like a big step up. So giving your 22in Samsung to your parents sounds like a nice thing to do, especially if they will make good use of it.

It will also allow you to add a third 1080p monitor in the future if you do want to try out some eyefinity gaming.
Click to expand...

Good shout :)

Thanks for your advise
 
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