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MP 1,1-5,1 Recommend me a 3rd monitor for my 2009 Mac Pro tower

pirateyarrr

pirateyarrr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 8, 2009
125
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I've just bought another NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 to go with the stock one. I have 2 monitors already. I believe the best I can do currently is a 2560 x 1440. Size needs to be between 24" and 30", and height adjustable. I do a lot of Photoshop, video editing, and all of the menial reading stuff; I don't do any serious gaming on this machine.

Looking at the ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27” WQHD for starters. What do you think?

www.amazon.com

ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27” WQHD (2560 x 1440) Monitor, 100% sRGB/Rec. 709 ΔE < 2, IPS, DisplayPort HDMI DVI-D Mini DP, Calman Verified, Eye Care, Anti-Glare, Tilt Pivot Swivel Height Adjustable

ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV 27” WQHD (2560 x 1440) Monitor, 100% sRGB/Rec. 709 ΔE < 2, IPS, DisplayPort HDMI DVI-D Mini DP, Calman Verified, Eye Care, Anti-Glare, Tilt Pivot Swivel Height Adjustable
www.amazon.com
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Really what I'm looking to find out is, has anyone done this successfully recently? And which monitor did you buy?
 
the quality of colour the GPUs of that vintage can put out is likely to be the limiter, rather than the monitor, i would have thought. You're not going to get 10-bit, for example.
 
Pretty much any 1440p 27" display should work, provided it has the necessary connectors, you can just look at budget. If you're connecting via displayport on the monitor, just be aware that part of the displayport standard is that the display disconnects itself from the system when the display sleeps, which causes all sorts of merry havoc for you application windows, palettes etc.

Also, 3 displays is where macOS starts getting very squirrelly about monitor setup - physical ports map best to specific sides on your display layout, and rotating a display doesn't just rotate it in place, it rotates it around the entire display constellation, so a display on the left of the group, when rotated also shifts to the right of the group etc.

You should also consider your secondary displays may not have the same DPI as your primary, so windows spanning them won't match up, UI items, fonts etc will appear different. If you get SwitchResX you can create virtual resolutions and even that up - for example my twin 24" 1200p displays are running a virtual 1390p resolution, so they're the same pixel density / sizing as my 1440p main display.
 
Thanks for the SwitchResX tip! Definitely worth giving that a try.

I've procured my second GeForce GT 120 and installed - works fine with my existing 2 1080 monitors plugged into it. Just waiting on my new Asus 27" to arrive. Just going DisplayPort to HDMI on that so hopefully should be easy.
 
Got my 27" monitor that supposedly will go to 2560 x 1440. I'm using a DisplayPort (out) to HDMI (in) - and it won't let me go past 1080p. As in, the options in System Prefs (Displays) don't offer anything higher than that. Any advice?
 
None of that worked.

Turns out it was the cable. I had a mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable. Tried a mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable - voila! 2560x1440. Looks great. In fact, makes my other two old monitors look quite crap. I may have to upgrade some more 😆
 
pirateyarrr said:
I had a mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable.
Click to expand...
That's no good. It forces the GT 120 to output a HDMI signal - and that is limited to a max. resolution of 1920×1200 on this particular GPU. You need DisplayPort or dual-link DVI to get 2560×1440 from a GT 120.
 
Yes. Did you read the next sentence?

Honestly, this would have been great advice a week ago.
 
Eh, it was $12. I actually had the first cable lying around so fortunately I didn't even have to spend any extra money.
 
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