Pairing a Dell 3008WFP & a 30" Apple CD

[oz1]

Am looking for a second monitor to sit next to my 30" CD.

Given the silly prices for large Apple CDs, I'm thinking of getting a Dell 3008WFP.

Has anybody got a setup like this? Any problems?

Will they sit at the same height? Any difficulties colour matching? etc, etc.

Yes I know it's a lot of screen real estate but I currently use 3 x 20" displays on another PC & find that setup v. useful.

Thanks

 

[GoCubsGo]

I don't run that setup but here are my thoughts. Out of the box the Dell won't match the ACD's color. You can however calibrate it and get close or spot on as I believe they use the same panel.

The Dell, if i recall, is height adjustable. However you need to find it's lowest height as that may be your issue.

 

[kasakka]

The 3008WFP goes pretty low. You should have no problems adjusting it to the same height. And yes, you need to calibrate it right away. The preset modes are basically useless and the custom RGB is the only one that does the trick.

A plus of the 3008WFP is that it can be used with Displayport too so if your Mac has a mini-DP connector then you can save yourself a lot of hassle and money by just getting a mini-DP to Displayport cable instead of the mini-DP to dual link DVI adapter.

One thing you will notice is that the 3008WFP takes quite a while to turn on and change resolutions or inputs, about 5-10 secs for any of those. It's one of the few flaws (along with the excessive amount of inputs which makes cycling them annoying).

 

[maghemi]

A plus of the 3008WFP is that it can be used with Displayport too so if your Mac has a mini-DP connector then you can save yourself a lot of hassle and money by just getting a mini-DP to Displayport cable instead of the mini-DP to dual link DVI adapter.

+1 for this.

Especially if you have a new card, this eliminates the need for that crappy and expensive dual link dvi adaptor.

The screen will drop down as low as about an inch from the desk.

Can't comment too much on colour though, because I'm not particularly fussed about colour profiles. I use it purely for screen real estate.

 

[oz1]

A plus of the 3008WFP is that it can be used with Displayport too so if your Mac has a mini-DP connector then you can save yourself a lot of hassle and money by just getting a mini-DP to Displayport cable instead of the mini-DP to dual link DVI adapter.

One thing you will notice is that the 3008WFP takes quite a while to turn on and change resolutions or inputs, about 5-10 secs for any of those. It's one of the few flaws (along with the excessive amount of inputs which makes cycling them annoying).

Thanks guys. I'll be running it on a 2008 Mac Pro. It has two 8800GT cards in it as I already run two 20" Samsungs as well as the 30"CD so I already have two dual link outputs. The cycling sounds a bit annoying but I'm not likely to be using more than one input.

I read somewhere that that Dell is not backlit so it doesn't match the CD as well as it might. Any thoughts?

 

[brentsg]

I don't run that setup but here are my thoughts. Out of the box the Dell won't match the ACD's color. You can however calibrate it and get close or spot on as I believe they use the same panel.

I don't know if they use the same panel or not, but regardless they use different backlight mechanisms/electronics, and they are designed to address completely different color gamuts.

Good luck getting these to line up at all. In a perfect world you could use an OS that properly handles tagged content, 100% of your applications would properly handle tagged content, and your content would be 100% tagged as well. If all these things happened then it wouldn't matter.

When I owned a Dell 30" display I couldn't get it to look proper most of the time. Even when my apps were proper, I would come across untagged content and all the colors would look absolutely garish. Now, if "close" was all I cared about then had I not had a monitor a few feet away that always looked fine.. maybe I wouldn't have cared.