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Programmers: What size monitors do you guys prefer?

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ewemoa:
Nice to have so much space!


On a side note, I've taken to trying to keep the length of my functions short enough so I can see each one in its entirety without scrolling.  I also try to keep my screens adjusted so the "viewable-without-scrolling" attribute remains true across a variety of screens (the smaller end being around 1024x768 with typical font sizes).  This has the side benefit of making it easier on other folks who might work with code developed in this environment -- also leads to more functions :)

TaoPhoenix:
1024X768 was my golden setting for years on older monitors.

These days on my newer (but dying!) 24" I'm at 1280X960, though I think the relative fonts are a hair big due to my less that fantastic vision. The monitor itself can go far higher, I think up to 1600X something, that I use about once a year for some extremely specific use case.

kyrathaba:
Really nice, Deozaan :)

Deozaan:
What resolution are you running at, deo?
-mouser (May 20, 2014, 04:27 PM)
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4K resolution, which is four times the pixels of 1080p. Or in other words: 3840x2160 (1920*2 = 3840 and 1080*2 = 2160)

At 39", it's basically like having a 2x2 grid of 19" 1080p monitors. :D

And don't ask me why they call it 4K. There's nothing 4K about it. IMO they should call it 2K since 2160 is just over 2K pixels and for HD they measured by vertical pixels when advertising 1080p.

Now you're going to have to find 4k resolution wallpaper that you like. :)
-Mizraim (May 20, 2014, 04:43 PM)
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I already went to VladStudio.com to re-download the majority of my wallpapers at a higher resolution. Sadly, they aren't offered in 4K resolution. So for now I've resorted to the largest images I can get (2880x1800 which is 16:10) with the option to "fill screen but maintain aspect ratio" which means that parts of the images get cut off, but surprisingly they still look pretty good.

How does it work for gaming?  (you knew that one was coming...)
-wraith808 (May 20, 2014, 04:59 PM)
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Even though my previous monitor was HD+ (16:10, 1920x1200), this is kind of my first HDTV. I bought an HDTV several years ago when the 19" LCD panels were still about $350. I wasn't willing to get one that small for that price, so I managed to find a fairly cheap CRT that was something like 32" (4:3) and could only handle 720p or 1080i at the best, so not fully HD. It worked alright, but honestly I never really tried much HD gaming on that TV until a couple of months ago when I got a WiiU and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. It was not a good experience because I couldn't read the text on the TV. It wasn't a matter of it being too small or me being too far away. It was literally illegible on that TV. So I did try that game again on this TV and even though technically it should look somewhat worse than on a 1080p screen due to having four times as many pixels (thus, the image is scaled at 2x which should result in more jaggies and artifacts, etc.), it's a vast improvement over my old TV and I thought it looked great and it was really nice, as this is also the largest screen of any kind I've ever owned. Console gaming on a big TV is really nice. It's no 70", but I'm perfectly OK with that.

My experience with PC gaming on this TV has been both glorious and frustrating.

The fan on my GPU started acting up a couple of months ago (actually it started acting up about a year or two ago, and only recently started failing almost completely), so it doesn't spin up properly and will often stop spinning entirely for a second or two before attempting to spin up, only to repeat the process again and again and again. This means that my GPU tends to overheat, especially when doing GPU-intensive things such as watching video or playing games. Combine that with the fact that the GPU has to work even harder to push 4 times as many pixels each frame, and it makes for a very hot GPU.

Honestly, I've been pretty busy this week and haven't done much gaming on it. But even before I got this TV I was having to drastically reduce graphical settings to keep games from making my GPU so hot (over 100 C) that my computer would shut down without warning. (I've since installed SpeedFan and set it up to beep at me when my GPU starts getting that hot, so I can alt-tab out of game, or move the camera somewhere less graphically intensive to let the GPU cool down a bit).

But the bad thing about this TV is that it uses an older HDMI standard (and no DisplayPort) which means that it can only run 4K and 2K resolutions at 30Hz refresh rate. This low refresh rate can cause some issues. I tried out CS:GO at 4K at max settings for a few minutes just to see how it ran. It was nice. But screen tearing always bothers me, so I enabled V-Sync (which limited the FPS to 30) and it made the mouse movement feel lagged. Even in the menu/UI, I'd move the mouse and wouldn't see the cursor update the position right away, so I'd often overshoot when going for a button on the UI, and go right past it. It was very difficult to play the game with that kind of delayed input.

I played an older game called Majesty 2 at full settings (with shadows turned down one notch, since somehow that made things go from super choppy to super smooth even though I couldn't tell any visual difference between the two settings). It's pretty awesome to see it so big and pristine. But there was one big problem! The UI didn't scale with the resolution. So all the UI seemed super tiny on the borders of the screen. It plays like an RTS, so unit information will be at the bottom, with action/build shortcuts in the bottom right corner, minimap and related functions in the bottom left corner, some special use items in the top left corner, and game speed controls and menus in the top right corner. They were so small, it felt like a real chore having to move my mouse cursor all the way across the screen to press the icons. It made me really wish there were more hotkeys for all the different actions.

Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about. It's hard to even see any UI on the top of the screen of the smaller preview of the image.

It's hard to express it properly. The UI actually isn't tiny. It's the size it always was on my 1920x1200 monitor. But it is tiny relative to everything else. And there's so much space between everything, there's so much distance that my mouse or eyes have to travel to see or click the pertinent information that it's kind of annoying. I'd rather it all sort of hug the top center and bottom center of the screen instead of being docked to the corners.

I've also been playing a lot of Dungeon Defenders lately, and... I have to say that local multiplayer is where this thing really shines! As I said, it's like having four 19" 1080p monitors. So 2-4 players on the screen at once, splitscreen, is awesome! (Interestingly, I have VSync enabled in DD as well, but I haven't noticed any input lag)

Or if the game can be played well entirely with a controller (such as Dark Souls), the cable on my Xbox 360 Controller (for Windows) is so long that I can go sit or lay on my couch and play. It's essentially the console experience of playing with a gamepad on a big screen but with the benefits of the PC experience such as mods or graphics/texture fixes/improvements, etc.

But like I said, I've been pretty busy this week and haven't had much time to do much real gaming on this thing yet. And that combined with my dying GPU fan means that I've testing some things out for a few minutes here and there, but I'll probably need to either find some aftermarket cooler for this GPU or buy a new GPU entirely.

Speaking of which, can anybody help me find an aftermarket cooler for the XFX Radeon HD 6870? So far I've found:


* Gelid Solutions Icy Vision: This one seemed highly recommended and is considered the better of the two (according to my findings) but there's a review that says it's not compatible with the XFX 6870 even though the product says it should be.
* ARCTIC Accelero Twin Turbo III: This one is just expensive enough to make me consider whether or not it would be worth it to splurge the extra cash to just buy a new GPU. But I'd really rather not spend another $200 on a GPU when the one I have would function perfectly well if the fan would just operate the way it should.
I'm still very happy with the graphical processing capabilities of my current GPU, and I feel like the only time I should have to upgrade my GPU is when I need more graphical capabilities out of it, not because it's impossible to keep cool (or impossible to repair/replace the fan)! It's so infuriating that they don't just use a regular fan mount bracket thingy so that I can buy a $10 replacement and fix it!

Hmm... Actually I just went to the NewEgg listing for the card (since I can't even find the card on XFX's website) and saw others complaining about the fan dying, with a response saying to contact their support for a free replacement fan. Technically it should still be under the original 3 year warranty, but I don't think I "registered" the product and the 3-year warranty only applies if you register within 30 days of purchase or some such nonsense. I've sent them an email and hopefully they'll fix it for free.

^ and how about viewing angles?
(so long as they're okay when you look from your 'fixed' sitting position)
-tomos (May 20, 2014, 05:17 PM)
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Viewing angles seem pretty good to me. Probably even better than my previous monitor. On my old monitor I could tell a difference in the color from the top and bottom of the screen, even from my "fixed" sitting position. The way I have things set up in the summer is my desk is in the living room, so if I'd have company over for a movie or whatever, we'd usually pull the couch out from the wall and put it in front of the computer since my monitor was better quality than my TV. But if I laid down on my couch without adjusting my monitor's tilt, the screen could appear pretty dark and hard to see the details.

But I'd guess this TV has about 160-175 degree viewing angle. As I move to the side while looking at it, there's a point at which it appears to darken slightly, then it stays at that same level of brightness and clarity until I'm almost completely at a 90 degree angle to it. And just to test, I move my office chair to the side and laid down on the ground (so, lower than the couch would be) and I could still see the screen just fine. In fact, just today my girlfriend and another friend and I watched a movie on Netflix on this thing. We were all tired since we'd just gotten back from hiking for a couple of hours around the mountains nearby, so my friend laid on the floor while watching, and my girlfriend and I were on the couch and we all could see it just fine from our various odd angles. I didn't even realize how that would not have worked well at all on my old monitor until you got me thinking about it just now. Cool!

If you need more information about the TV, you can check the specifications here on the Amazon listing (where I bought it) or from Seiki's own website. But I don't see any viewing angles listed anywhere in there. . .

techidave:
with the new one being so large, do you find its like in your face?  which can be uncomfortable.

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