Best Flatscreen

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Anybody found a great (price is included in the definition of "great") flat panel display? Color fidelity is important to me as well since we do quite a bit of photoshop. Joel mentioned one for a fair price in one of his articles...

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2000

Answers

SGI's excellent 1600x1024 flatscreen is now on sale - at $1500, it's ridiculously cheap (used to be $2995).

Other than that we completely LOVE the Samsung SyncMaster 770TFT. This is a gorgeous piece of work. $1300.

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2000


i'm looking for something here too. i'm shying away from the sgi because it seems to use an interface that's only supported by one video board that's no longer being manufactured (have i got that right?). at the moment i'm leaning towards the samsung 170t, which on paper looks like it ought to be at least as good a display as the (widely-praised) 770tft, and has a digital interface (the 770 only has analog inputs). it looks like it'll cost about $1400. anyone know anything less theoretical about all this?

-- Anonymous, December 06, 2000

correction to my earlier post: it looks like the sgi display is a little better supported than i feared, but i'm still not sure what to think. http://www.sgi.com/flatpanel/superwide_savvy.html lists almost a dozen video cards that work with it via the "multilink adapter"; unfortunately, only one of them (the matrox g400) is listed as working with win2k, and you can't do digital output from it (although there's a dvi add-on to the g400, according to the fine print it only does 1280x1024...).

but wait, there's another option; 3dlabs makes a variant of their card that works specifically with the sgi display, and it sounds pretty reasonable, and they claim it works with win2k. and sgi will include it in the bundle for $1500 (instead of the multilink adapter).

and that would save me from having to figure out what graphics card to get. cards that support digital out (dvi) are scarcer than i would have expected. anyone got any recommendations there?

joel (or anyone else with an sgi): what card are you using with it? are you happy with it? (i'm not a gamer, so i'm not really concerned about unreal fps; i'll be doing mostly text editing & web browsing, with occasional photoshop (and maybe video editing?))

joel again: what do you LOVE about the samsung (more than the sgi)?

-- Anonymous, December 07, 2000


SGI 1600SW

I have the SGI 1600SW and I use it with the Number Nine video card that it came with. If you wanna play Quake, forget it. But if you want it for work, writing code, or writing a book, it is the most awesome display I have ever seen.

I've hooked up my SGI 1600SW flat panel on one video card and another Sony 20" CRT on a second video card, and its an awesome setup. The amazing thing is when you drag a window full of text (web browser) from the CRT to the LCD, you see the instant difference in clarity and readability that the LCD provides. I've gotten it to work in dual monitor config in Win2k. I've had it working fine in single monitor config on Linux also....

-Moazam

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2000


I use one at home with my Win2K system. I bought the monitor back when SGI suggested I use the Number Nine Revolution IV card.

Number Nine has since shut down operations. The card works with Win2K. The 1600xwhatever reolution works well, as does the 800x512. In each case, the entire physical screen is used. Other resolutions leave black borders around a small logical screen. Sometimes the borders take up as much real estate as the actual screen, and I find this annoying. The Number Nine software that purports to adjust contrast & brightness etc. does not install on Win2K.

Text is quite jagged at anything but the 1600xwhatever resolution. Some games give me trouble, but that could be something to do with Win2K for all I know.

SGI post-sale support was weak.

Of course, on the plus side, the monitor is slim, light, and beautiful. I can't complain about the output quality at high res. For browsing, programming, editing, etc, the monitor is very very usable. I don't use PhotoShop or any video-editing programs.

-- Anonymous, December 08, 2000



i've also noticed that recent high-end laptops from ibm, dell, and maybe others have screen resolutions in the same range (1500 or 1600 pixels wide). has anyone had a chance to compare these side by side? the laptop screens are obviously smaller; are there other drawbacks to them?

-- Anonymous, December 08, 2000

I have a Dell laptop with 1500x1400 (roughly) resolution. It's simply beautiful. However, many people I know of can't tolerate characters that small.

-- Anonymous, April 16, 2001

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