Merry Christmas!

[jgreco]

Nothing against CRTs (except for the massive weight and volume and the fact that they emit ionizing radiation) - image quality took quite a dive with early LCDs. I think only my current monitor manages to equal or surpass the decidedly average CRT I used back in the Pentium 4 days.

Possibly true if you had a crappy LCD until just recently. I'm perfectly fine with acknowledging that the quality of LCD's rapidly beat out even my totally awesome ViewSonic P815 (1800x1440 in 1998!) and that the three 24" 1920x1200 displays on my desk right now cost less together than that single $1500 monstrosity.

 

[Ericloewe]

Possibly true if you had a crappy LCD until just recently. I'm perfectly fine with acknowledging that the quality of LCD's rapidly beat out even my totally awesome ViewSonic P815 (1800x1440 in 1998!) and that the three 24" 1920x1200 displays on my desk right now cost less together than that single $1500 monstrosity.

Yeah, it's been historically hard to get good screens in stores here. I had to start ordering proper monitors from Amazon or keep using crap TN panels.

 

[jgreco]

I guess I never really understood the big objection to TN panels.

 

[gpsguy]

In general the IPS panels display more colors than the TN's. Many photographers use them over the TN panels.

 

[jgreco]

What do you mean, colors? There's red, and not-red.

(Grinchy sees red everywhere)

 

[gpsguy]

My Dell U2711 (IPS) is a 10 bit panel and can support 1.07 billion colors, whereas with a 6 bit TN panel, one only had 262,144 colors.

Go to the paint store, you'll see many shades of red. Can I see all billion colors, of course not. I spend alot of time in front of the screen, so I tend to buy a high quality monitor. Back in the CRT days, I like the Sony Trinitron's, NEC Multisync's, and Vewsonic's.

 

[jgreco]

I always seem to run out of screen, but as long as it's legible I guess I don't really care too much about the number of colors. So my last monitor purchase was three Lenovo LI2223S screens which I proceeded to mount vertically on a pole to give me a nice 1920 x 3240 workspace which'll be my backup workstation.

I'm actually wrestling with wtf to do for primary. A lot of my work revolves around managing networks and virtual machines, and I cannot decide whether to go with something in the 27" range (2560x1440 WQHD, ~109PPI) which is close enough to the 100PPI WUXGA displays I use now, but I'm really tempted to do some 4K QFHD 32" displays, but that means something more like 130-140PPI, and I'm thinking my eyeballs will fall out. That's about the same density as the laptop which is okay to do a little work on, but not pleasant for the heavy lifting.

Plus eventually you run out of places to stick more glass.

 

[Ericloewe]

I think 27" 2560x1440 really is the sweet spot, since anything denser needs scaling, which can be painful.

 

[gpsguy]

I'm spoiled by my 27" Dell (2560x1440 WQHD) at home. I run it at it's native resolution.

 

[jgreco]

I think 27" 2560x1440 really is the sweet spot, since anything denser needs scaling, which can be painful.

Well that was kinda the point, I can bump the display size rather than scaling. But to get a similar PPI to what I have at 4K you need a 40" monitor. (I think they call those "televisions"). It'd solve a lot of problems though.

It seems likely that I'd be going with a Matrox C680 so in theory I have the option to drive up to six 4K displays, but as tempting as all that glass would be, I'm thinking I really want to duplicate my current workspace (two 24's in portrait and a 24 in landscape) while probably adding an additional display above the current landscape display. That seems like it'd be unwieldy with 32" displays but is probably pretty straightforward with 27's. But I could also cheap out and reuse the existing displays, which'd be a lot cheaper and would still give me lots of new glass. That's only likely to make sense if I go with the WQHD 27's because I *know* my eyes will hate a significant PPI change.

Options, options.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well that was kinda the point, I can bump the display size rather than scaling. But to get a similar PPI to what I have at 4K you need a 40" monitor. (I think they call those "televisions"). It'd solve a lot of problems though.

It seems likely that I'd be going with a Matrox C680 so in theory I have the option to drive up to six 4K displays, but as tempting as all that glass would be, I'm thinking I really want to duplicate my current workspace (two 24's in portrait and a 24 in landscape) while probably adding an additional display above the current landscape display. That seems like it'd be unwieldy with 32" displays but is probably pretty straightforward with 27's. But I could also cheap out and reuse the existing displays, which'd be a lot cheaper and would still give me lots of new glass. That's only likely to make sense if I go with the WQHD 27's because I *know* my eyes will hate a significant PPI change.

Options, options.

I ran two 27" WQHD screens for a few days once and it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. By sticking to four (WQHD or 4k) panels, you can also avoid the crazy-expensive Matrox and get a low-mid-range Nvidia or AMD GPU with an appropriate amount of DisplayPort connectivity. Some AMD GPUs even support six panels, but the DP 1.2 interface limits your resolutions, since it can't handle more than one 4k panel per port (but it'll do two WQHD displays per port).
Finding DisplayPort MST hubs can be tricky, but many monitors have pass-through ports for DisplayPort MST, which would allow you to daisy-chain two WQHD panels.

 

[jgreco]

Well, I had spent some time looking at the various offerings, but admittedly I'm more of a server geek than a graphics wiz.

I'm not interested in 3D gaming style graphics so obviously-targeted-at-gamer stuff didn't thrill me. AMD has stuff like their FirePro line but of the units I chased down specs for, it didn't seem to be quite suitable. That particular unit came closest to what I'm looking for, except only four displays.

I'm pretty solid on hitting a card that can handle six displays, but it merely needs to be reasonably competent 2D graphics.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, I had spent some time looking at the various offerings, but admittedly I'm more of a server geek than a graphics wiz.

I'm not interested in 3D gaming style graphics so obviously-targeted-at-gamer stuff didn't thrill me. AMD has stuff like their FirePro line but of the units I chased down specs for, it didn't seem to be quite suitable. That particular unit came closest to what I'm looking for, except only four displays.

I'm pretty solid on hitting a card that can handle six displays, but it merely needs to be reasonably competent 2D graphics.

If you can track down an AMD GPU with three (or even six, but they're hard to find) mini DisplayPorts, you might be able to get away with paying half of what you'd pay for the Matrox. The decently competent GPU is just a side effect.

Catches:

• Limited to six WQHD panels or three 4k panels from three DisplayPorts
• All but the last link in the chain must support MST pass-through (or use hubs with any DisplayPort monitor you like)

And here's a specific model with six DisplayPorts: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129274

The only real catch is that it's an older model whose driver may be approaching EoL.

 

[Starpulkka]

I hope theres has been galactic massive progress on ips panel, last time i tried ips panel it was some 1000€ model every web site was jeepus it highly like it was a god screen. And then i tried it my home, tried expensive cables, tried friends nvidia quattro.. nothin helped there was a maassive ghosting on that panel, and i returned it back to seller. And that was my first and last ips panel on my house. (later i found 1 web site who got balls to tell that ghosting broblem, all famous sites just high prised that screen). If you going to buy screen isnt apple retina screen best?

 

[Ericloewe]

I hope theres has been galactic massive progress on ips panel, last time i tried ips panel it was some 1000€ model every web site was jeepus it highly like it was a god screen. And then i tried it my home, tried expensive cables, tried friends nvidia quattro.. nothin helped there was a maassive ghosting on that panel, and i returned it back to seller. And that was my first and last ips panel on my house. (later i found 1 web site who got balls to tell that ghosting broblem, all famous sites just high prised that screen). If you going to buy screen isnt apple retina screen best?

Many IPS panels these days are perfectly acceptable for stuff like gaming. Asus even has one 144Hz IPS monitor, but that's still far from normal.

My ViewSonic VP2770-LED (not IPS, but PLS, which is similar) is fine in that regard. More recent panels seem to have improved a bit, though.

 

[jgreco]

If you going to buy screen isnt apple retina screen best?

Just like if you're going to buy a NAS, an EMC VNXe 3100 is "best" ...

Sometimes it isn't though. First off, I don't think Apple even sells their "retina" displays separately yet. And even so, what's so special about the Apple Thunderbolt display? It's a basic 2560x1440 WQHD IPS display whose chief claim to fame appears to be the astounding $999 price tag and the Thunderbolt interconnect, which isn't going to hook up easily to much of anything PC related. The HP Z27i is often available for around $550, or almost half the cost of the Apple display, and from what I can tell it's a more flexible bit of gear. I have to assume any sort of Apple Retina display would end up being 80% markup over a conventional screen.

And the thing is, for what I need, it kinda needs to be Windows friendly, because, you know, managing IT sucks and everything's made for Windows. And I am old; my eyes are probably going to de-socket themselves if I have to stare at a 4K display in a 27" format because everything will be tiny or everything will be scaled and either way it'll suck.

 

[jgreco]

If you can track down an AMD GPU with three (or even six, but they're hard to find) mini DisplayPorts, you might be able to get away with paying half of what you'd pay for the Matrox. The decently competent GPU is just a side effect.

Catches:

• Limited to six WQHD panels or three 4k panels from three DisplayPorts
• All but the last link in the chain must support MST pass-through (or use hubs with any DisplayPort monitor you like)

And here's a specific model with six DisplayPorts: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129274

The only real catch is that it's an older model whose driver may be approaching EoL.

Hmmmmm, that's relatively interesting, it's the closest thing to what I'm looking for that's cheaper than the Matrox. I have to say, looking at PC video cards is a depressing task because they seem to crap them out in even vaster array than mainboards. Appreciate the find, @Ericloewe , guess I'll have to see if I think the potential to support 6 4K displays is worth a few hundred extra.

 

[Ericloewe]

Hmmmmm, that's relatively interesting, it's the closest thing to what I'm looking for that's cheaper than the Matrox. I have to say, looking at PC video cards is a depressing task because they seem to crap them out in even vaster array than mainboards. Appreciate the find, @Ericloewe , guess I'll have to see if I think the potential to support 6 4K displays is worth a few hundred extra. :)

The one I linked will probably also do 6x 4k. I'm not absolutely sure, but it should. The DisplayPorts are almost certainly 1.2 (the GPU certainly supports it, so it's virtually guaranteed), so they can each handle any 4k DisplayPort monitor on the market (the old ones with double display controllers that use MST over a single physical link to feed both or the newer ones that just use the full bandwidth to a single controller).
The GPU itself is probably more capable than anything Matrox ever produced, so I'm relatively confident it can handle that many 4k monitors - but nobody seems to have tried yet.

I just noticed something, though: The Matrox doesn't do 6x 4k@60Hz. Only 3x 4k@60Hz or 6x 4k@30Hz.

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, I noticed the 30Hz thing and it didn't really bother me too terribly. Were you daring me to try six 4K monitors on your suggested card? (grin)

I guess the other thing is that the glass is much more expensive than the controller, overall, so in the event I decided to do some sort of upgrade in the future, maybe a newer card would be available. That's probably viable.

I don't really want to go to a dual card setup because my ultimate goal is to have a hypervisor running my workstation, and the inside of this is already going to be rather more busy than I prefer. By the way, I really don't care for the fan-on-heatsink on all these frickin' GPU's. Does anyone have any words of wisdom about maybe attaching something more real to this? Is that a practical idea? Stupid? My goal for silicon is to get stuff that'll work for five to ten years. A single fan is a single point of failure that I usually assign a two year lifespan to.

Some other notes-to-self about the 7750 and/or ESXi :

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multi-headed-VMWare-Gaming-Setup-564/

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/297154-esxi-55-with-a-2gb-radeon-7750-in-gpu-passthrough/

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah, I noticed the 30Hz thing and it didn't really bother me too terribly. Were you daring me to try six 4K monitors on your suggested card? (grin)

I guess the other thing is that the glass is much more expensive than the controller, overall, so in the event I decided to do some sort of upgrade in the future, maybe a newer card would be available. That's probably viable.

I don't really want to go to a dual card setup because my ultimate goal is to have a hypervisor running my workstation, and the inside of this is already going to be rather more busy than I prefer. By the way, I really don't care for the fan-on-heatsink on all these frickin' GPU's. Does anyone have any words of wisdom about maybe attaching something more real to this? Is that a practical idea? Stupid? My goal for silicon is to get stuff that'll work for five to ten years. A single fan is a single point of failure that I usually assign a two year lifespan to.

You can't really find GPUs that handle that many displays that come with passive coolers.

The board design on the 6x miniDP cards is probably a custom job, so aftermarket heatsinks might not be available. Can't hurt to check though, and you might get lucky with the Radeon (probably not with the Matrox, though).

I do understand the fan hate. I have a GTX 460 1GB lying around (two actually, but one's still fine). The thing has two fans (it's the typical Gigabyte cooler design). One of them literally fell out of its axle after two years or so.