Questions about SLI & IPS Panels

[Blitz1776]

So I've been getting the upgrade itch for awhile, and I think I'm finally ready to go through with it. Considering that I've ran through just about other reasonable upgrade, I turned to looking at my monitor. I've got an 21" 1680x1050 TN panel (07-08 model). I'm looking to upgrade to a 24" 1920x1200 S-IPS panel.

I'm mainly wondering how much of a difference will I notice picture wise (Always getting told that it's a massive difference, but wanted to confirm it, before plunging with it). I get that I will suffer a bit more input lag, but I don't think that will be much of an issue (I'm terrible at fps).

Second part of the questions is concerning is I'm currently running two 460 (768 MB) oc'ed pretty good. Will I be taking a major hit because of the resolution or should it be more than adequate (I'm thinking in the sense of Battlefield 3, where I was expecting to run on fairly high settings due to the lowers res, etc)

Last question, with having the old monitor obviously obviously re-purposing it is always best, so making a dual monitor setup might be neat (although mismatched resolutions annoy me a tad). While gaming I don't plan on using the other monitor much, but what kind of penalty do you have for driving a second monitor, if it's just displaying a webpage or the desktop.

As always I appreciate the insight this community provides.

 

[stahlhart]

I think that the extended viewing angle thing is a bit overhyped, but conversely I have not noticed any real difference in response time compared to the TN panel it replaced.

I very much like the "natural" quality of the color, and also the extended vertical screen size -- a nice compromise between the width for gaming and the height for desktop work.

 

[zebrax2]

1.) The increase in viewing angle would probably be very noticeable
2.) Your cards in SLi is around 580 performance so it could probably play the game on high unless of course the 768mb vram becomes a bottleneck
3.) Your cards won't idle as low as before (higher temp and power consumption and possibly noise when idle)

 

[Blitz1776]

Yeah the 768mb bottleneck was the thing I'm more concerned about, wasn't sure if it would play a major impact, I know when I got them the 1680x1050 was never going to be a problem, wasn't thinking straight on that part (got them new at 150-175 a piece ).

Of course when you overclock a card you get use to higher power consumption (pulls 250-300 watts from the wall idling ;/) etc, although my build is surprisingly quiet.

I get the viewing angle part, but I generally at most only had slight issues with tn panels concerning that.

 

[Mr. President]

Input lag on IPSes is immensely overstated. I've heard of a couple of Dell models (27" and 30") that suffer somewhat but the general rule is that IPSes are no worse than TNs in any practical sense. Same goes for pixel response times which have basically been reduced to marketing blurbs rather than perceivable differences. As long as you ensure that it's not a particularly laggy monitor then you will have little to worry about in that regard.

Personally, I see a rather big difference in image quality between IPSes and TNs but it's not just because of the viewing angles. The image is just plain sharper and the colors are better. Less washed out and so forth.

That said, TNs vary greatly in quality and the TN in my Macbook Air is an order of magnitude better than my Dell TN at work. It's not as good as the Dell IPS at my desktop machine but it does come closer than I had imagined.

 

[Blitz1776]

Appreciate the help & I decided to go through with buying the monitor an used ZR24W, should be here in a few days .

However still leaves my last question concerning Dual Monitors

"Last question, with having the old monitor obviously obviously re-purposing it is always best, so making a dual monitor setup might be neat (although mismatched resolutions annoy me a tad). While gaming I don't plan on using the other monitor much, but what kind of penalty do you have for driving a second monitor, if it's just displaying a webpage or the desktop."

 

[Jovec]

but what kind of penalty do you have for driving a second monitor, if it's just displaying a webpage or the desktop."

Possibly a large increase in idle power draw from the GPU. My 5850 pulled an extra 30w at idle/desktop, regardless if the 2nd monitor was turned on or not. This is strictly due to higher GPU and VRAM memory clocks. There was some talk that with dual monitors at the same resolution newer GPUs might be able to run at the lowest idle clocks, but I can't confirm.

 

[tweakboy]

Your getting 5ms delay on that LED .. that is laggy for FPS games.mouse will be a bit laggy,, motion video will be 5ms.

LED for PC doesn't have technology to go below 5ms response time. :thumbsdown:

 

[Yuriman]

Most monitors have a lot more processing lag than pixel response time lag.

This is a good article to read: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2787/1

^ In summary, most (all?) screens will have at least one frame of processing lag, which comes to ~16ms, so response times below that are just marketing.

 

[Blitz1776]

Decided to report back a bit, and still never really got an answer to my SLI part about a performance penalty concerning dual monitors (in the sense of second monitor idling how much if any it penalizes for).

In any case the ZR24W I got came in pretty good shape (there's a slight scratch on the screen about 1.5 inch straight horizontal toward the bottom), but the only time it was noticeable was when the monitor was off or on the blackest of blacks. From first impressions this monitor is extremely bright and I think I will need to adjust the monitor even more. I can definite see what they mean by more vivid colors, although it wasn't as big of a jump as I like (quantifying it to around 10-15%), but I truly believe it's due to my old TN panel being a really nice one overall. It's nice having this much larger screen and resolution, though it's taking some getting use to.

Some major misses in my book, having a larger monitor and resolution took a pretty heavy hit on my dvd quality anime ;(. From what I can quantify using Bad Company 2 I can no longer grossly max out the game (32x msaa and 16x anistropic filtering), though I'm thinking the increased resolution counteracts any losses in that department. Overall looks to be a 15% hit most likely due to the lack of vram.