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Good HiDPI Display to compliment Mac Pro Cheesegrater and GTX 680

honeycombz

honeycombz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 6, 2013
588
154
Wondering what a good display to compliment this setup would be. I currently just use the old school 23" Apple Cinema HD Display which has been fine but time to upgrade. The Dell 24 Ultra HD 4K Monitor – P2415Q looks decent but I would rather the 27" with more of the price point of the 24. What are other people using?
 
honeycombz said:
Wondering what a good display to compliment this setup would be. I currently just use the old school 23" Apple Cinema HD Display which has been fine but time to upgrade. The Dell 24 Ultra HD 4K Monitor – P2415Q looks decent but I would rather the 27" with more of the price point of the 24. What are other people using?
Click to expand...

I have a 27" Asus PB279 running through Displayport. I had to change one default setting on the monitor to make it run in Displayport 1.2 mode, but that it was. Runs great, love the monitor.

MacPro 1,1 with a GTX 950.
 
honeycombz said:
The Dell 24 Ultra HD 4K Monitor – P2415Q looks decent
Click to expand...

The P2415Q is a phenomenal display. However, 24 inches in general is too small for sustained UI work at 4K resolution. Do spend the extra for a 27 inch screen if you want to stay on 4K all the time.

So pretty much I am using mine around 2.5K when editing videos/photos then switch to 4K for review. Otherwise everything is just too small to see for my ancient eyes.
 
Why don't you use HiDPI scaling then? 4K@24" is actually a good choice, because it allows for @2x scaling with a reasonable UI size.
 
When you folks say run it in HiDPI do you just mean using the 3840x2160 display in 1920x1080 resolution?
 
honeycombz said:
Wondering what a good display to compliment this setup would be. I currently just use the old school 23" Apple Cinema HD Display which has been fine but time to upgrade. The Dell 24 Ultra HD 4K Monitor – P2415Q looks decent but I would rather the 27" with more of the price point of the 24. What are other people using?
Click to expand...

Another happy Dell P2715Q user here - used it with my former EVGA GTX680 Mac Edition together with an Apple Cinema 30 inch display, instantly became main monitor and works now with an EVGA 1080.
 
Gazember said:
When you folks say run it in HiDPI do you just mean using the 3840x2160 display in 1920x1080 resolution?
Click to expand...

No, the resolution is still output as 3840x2160 to the monitor.

If you run 4k "normally", you get 4x the area of 1080P but everything is smaller.

On the other hand, 4K HiDPI mode uses those extra pixels to make everything sharper instead of increasing the area.

Simulated example:

upload_2017-5-1_13-41-48.png


From left to right:
  • 1080P
  • 4K HiDPI (everything is the same size but sharper)
  • 4K (everything is smaller so there is more work area)
 
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ActionableMango said:
From left to right:
  • 1080P
  • 4K HiDPI (everything is the same size but sharper)
  • 4K (everything is smaller so there is more work area)
Click to expand...

Something I haven't found an example of, is how a 27" 4k display looks when displaying a virtual 2560x1440 - ie the non retina 27" sizing. Anyone using this able to post a screencap?
 
I have the 27" 4k Dell. its a nice display, but you can't run it at 4k. its way too small to see on the mac. I run it at 3008x1962 in hi resolution. That is a good workable size. BUT, if you can forgo the hirez, the best setup for work is my home monitor which is an Acer 21:9 34" 3440x1440 extra wide screen. LOVE it. so much area, its like having two displays side by side.
 
So if I get a 4k monitor and then want to play a game like War Thunder which would probably choke unless I have a 1k GPU is it easy to just play on a lower rez or would I be stuck trying to process all those pixels?
 
honeycombz said:
So if I get a 4k monitor and then want to play a game like War Thunder which would probably choke unless I have a 1k GPU is it easy to just play on a lower rez or would I be stuck trying to process all those pixels?
Click to expand...
Image would be blurry as not native resolution.
 
honeycombz said:
So if I get a 4k monitor and then want to play a game like War Thunder which would probably choke unless I have a 1k GPU is it easy to just play on a lower rez or would I be stuck trying to process all those pixels?
Click to expand...

I play games on my 2014 rMBP at something like 1680x1050 because it's the same aspect ratio (16:10) but lower resolution so it doesn't overload the dGPU. General rule of thumb is go for a resolution that is lower, but same aspect ratio as native and it shouldn't look terrible.
 
AidenShaw said:
View attachment 698217
Win10 at 150% to P2715Q. (150% is 2560x1440)
Click to expand...

maybe it's a mac vs windows thing, but that image looks exactly the same as the original post, except that the windows typography is more pixelated, none of the other stuff, the ui elements in the webpage look any different than they do at the same size on 24" 1920x1200 here. Am i missing something?
 
What is up with 1440p and 1600p monitors. Is there a Dell version of the P2715Q?
 
mattspace said:
maybe it's a mac vs windows thing, but that image looks exactly the same as the original post, except that the windows typography is more pixelated, none of the other stuff, the ui elements in the webpage look any different than they do at the same size on 24" 1920x1200 here. Am i missing something?
Click to expand...
The point is that they are the same size, not too small to read.
 
For many years I sat in front of a 30" 2560x1600 HP LP3065 & a 24" 1920x1600 HP LP2465. I upgraded to a 40" 3840x2160 Philips BDM4065UC which has a similar pixel density to the 30" & found it better than a smaller screen with a higher pixel density.
 
AidenShaw said:
The point is that they are the same size, not too small to read.
Click to expand...

Ahh right, yeah, reading size isn't what I'm concerned with - more in terms of how 4k is at 27" when scaling to 1440p. How sharp & smooth are curves, angles, edges, typography etc. The big limitation I have on non-retina screens is that authoring tools can't accurately reflect the iPad as a target device. Do Apple's scaling options look good at anything other than 2x (5k)?
 
honeycombz said:
What is up with 1440p and 1600p monitors. Is there a Dell version of the P2715Q?
Click to expand...

I have a Dell U3011 that's 2560x1600 native. You can probably pick up a used/ex office stock one cheap on eBay. They're brilliant monitors, had mine for 6 years now. Though I think you'd be better off picking up a new 4K display tbh.
 
The Dell S2716DG ‑ 27" LED Monitor looks interesting... it's a 144hz 1440p that looks like I can get off ebay for $400. Guess I'm concerned about getting the 4k because I don't typically run the most modern gear I'm usually on older machines, and older GPUs... concerned I'd run into issues with the GTX 680 running 4k. I really don't know though.
 
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