September 2010 Workstations
Since the August Workstations article I've written about home PCs, Laptops and the interesting nVidia GTX 460 2GB. That video card (available on Amazon.com or Newegg) is immediately useful to Octane Render users and the otherwise pretty small set of users who have software with CUDA requirements; apparently there are some kinks being ironed out of the CUDA implementation being used by Octane that (as of August 2010) don't allow access to all cores on a GF104 GPU; still, this is being actively worked on, and the 2GB 460 is so appealing for CUDA use, you wouldn't be going wrong if you bought one anyway.
The Workstations
A few updates this month. The Budget system has always been a good option for low energy consumption; this month I'm upgrading it some, and making it silent as well; with the Antec Sonata case and the excellent power optimizations of the latest AMD/ATI hardware, you can fill your office with these and make a very low impact on your noise level and electric bills. Intel still has no 6-core CPUs under $900 announced, so AMD continues as the price/performance leader for everything up to the Midrange config.
One more thing. I get questions about whether components from manufacturers others than the ones listed can be substituted, and I've noticed that I have a tendency to recommend components from certain brands, such as Asus, XFX, Lian-Li and Antec. I don't want to give the wrong impression here - there are many good vendors for all of these components, and none of these companies are site sponsors, but all things being equal these are my go-to brands because I've never been disappointed by any of their products, or by their customer service. I'm going to continue to go with those manufacturers when one of their parts meets the requirements and makes budgetary sense, but if there's another vendor you prefer you an almost always substitute another company's version of the same part without adverse effects.
What I don't recommend, except where budgetary constraints require them, are cheap cases and power supplies. A poorly made case is likely to add to the time it takes you to assemble to PC, make servicing the PC more difficult and contribute to overheating which can reduce the life expectancy of the parts and lead to hard drive failure. A bad power supply might provide inconsistent voltage and lead to operational glitches or failure of motherboards, memory or CPUs.
The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
The Intern budget is up slightly, but the improvements are worth going slightly over the $600 mark. (Don't worry, these are not changes that make the intern's job easier, they're changes that make the IT department's job easier.) Availability is becoming a problem with the Athlon II 440, and now we're looking at a $5 difference, so the Intern is being upgraded to the 445. Taking my own advice, the case and power supply are improved for reliability and the video card is an XFX that will get you reasonable performance with low power and noise. The 5550 is actually not ATI's least expensive 40nm, DirectX 11 GPU, but the 5450 is too low end, even for the Intern. If for whatever reason you want nVidia, look at the GT 220. The AMD CPU beats the Intels at this price, the motherboard is good but a money saver. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system, and at about $600 it's the lowest I'd go in an office setting.
The Budget (3D/Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
As with last month, I'm splitting the Budget line into one machine for rendering use, and another for users who do photography and other intensive graphics tasks but not rendering. What they have in common is that both are practical, energy efficient and budget-minded approaches. Both of these configurations get a new case and power supply this month that will improve reliability, make assembly a bit easier and make the computers run quieter.
Here is why there are two different recommendations at this level:
There is an important distinction between CPUs for rendering, and CPUs for other uses. Current render engines are very efficient multitaskers - they're able to use all of your CPU's GHz, regardless of how many cores those GHz are spread across. Most other software is not this efficient, but most other software - web browsers, Microsoft Office, the usual stuff - doesn't require even the Budget level of performance, and is perfectly happy on the Intern box or on my netbook. (Granted, it's a very nice netbook, but still...) The primary exceptions are the sorts of apps a photographer or graphic designer might use. Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator can weigh down a single core, and there are occasions when they utilize a few cores, but to put a 6-core CPU in a Photoshop box when a 4-core costing less money will outperform it would be unwise.
So, the first of the two Budget-level machines is the machine for those who will hit the Render button.
The AMD 1055T remains the price/performance winner at $200. The video card is upgraded to a Radeon 5750. Be sure to get your ATI drivers from the web site, not the included CD - recent driver versions fix a glaring bug in 2D performance. (This goes for all Radeon 5xxx series GPUs.)
The Budget (Photoshop Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
The photographer, the graphic designer and the photoshopper have different requirements from the renderer. This work involves lots of loading and saving of many large files, and CPU intensive operation that do not make efficient use of many threads. You need more power in fewer cores, a lot of memory and a very good hard drive. What you don't need is an overpowered video card - the only app you might care about that actually uses the video card is Aperture, and that won't run on this anyway because it's a Mac exclusive. This month I've gone with a very quiet version of the Radeon 5670 that's going to work well with the Sonata case in keeping the background noise down so you can concentrate on your Photoshop and your Daft Punk, or whatever it is you graphic designers are listening to these days. Since we're going quiet, the Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU cooler fits this situation well.
The two RE3 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Use RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE3 drive, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.
The i7-870 is an excellent option for Photoshop use, but if you're feeling adventurous you can gain even more performance by choosing the i7-875K, DDR3-2000 memory instead of DDR3-1600, and through a combination of increasing the memory speed and dropping the multiplier in the BIOS (possible on a K series CPU), overclock the RAM instead of the CPU. This is an advanced technique.
Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.
The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU. Hardware tweakers will love this CPU, which has the same unlocked multiplier feature as the i7-875K, and it's a bit of an obvious choice - it will hold its own in single-threaded operations with its Turbo Core feature and for rendering there's nothing that beats it in this price class. The motherboard is the newest model, with a few new features like front-panel USB 3.0 ports. All the SATA ports are 6GB/s, and there are three PCIE-x16 slots in case you ever want to go nuts on the GPUs.
But here is where we have to start making some decisions about video cards. The question I got the most of last month was whether it was really best, when spending about $400, to get the FirePro v5800, or whether to get a Radeon 5870, or a Geforce 470, or a Quadro FX 1800, and the answer is, there's no one answer. If you need CUDA, the Geforce 470 (or two 460's). If you want the fastest GPU for the money and don't care about workstation class and software certifications, the 5870. If you do care about certifications but must buy nVidia, the FX 1800. But for this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing.
Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page. Use one of the incremental backup or file sync programs to keep copies of your project files on both drives for another layer of safety. I didn't want to blow the budget here, but for speed, one thing you can do is substitute the hard drives used in the Photoshop workstation and make them a RAID 0.
The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
Now that nVidia's shipped the new Quadro 4000, there is a full range of video card options in the right price-point ballpark for this configuration. So how do we choose? People with heavy GPU computing needs - and at this point, this means Octane users, software developers and people in beta programs - should consider multiple Geforce 4xx cards. For the rest of us, GPU computing is still not enough of a factor to base a decision on, and what we need in a video card is 3D display performance.
At this level, here are some good options:
High end consumer level video cards:
-Radeon 5870 2GB version
-Geforce 480 1.5GB
-Multiple Geforce 460 2GB cards
Midrange workstation video cards:
-ATI FirePro v5800 1GB
-ATI FirePro v7800 2GB
-nVidia Quadro 4000 2GB
I'm still impressed with the value of the ATI line and I'm going to stick with the v7800 as the recommendation for most users, but depending on your needs anything on that list could make sense.
The area with fewer options is CPUs. A single six-core CPU is most appropriate at this budget level, and though Intel has only two options and they start at $900, they have a significant performance advantage over AMD. I'm sticking with the i7-980X for its speed advantage over that 970, which makes it a slightly better value in terms of rendering speed per overall system price, and the overclocking advantage of its unlocked multiplier, for those who are into that kind of thing.
Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0.
The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
If you run the numbers, you'll find that with current pricing it's possible to make a render node based on either an i7-980X or dual 12-core Opteron 6172's with reasonably similar amounts of rendering power per dollar. The Opteron box will cost a bit more than 50% more and render a bit less than 50% faster. If you want one render node, buy the one that fits your budget, but looking at the hypothetical comparison between two Opteron boxes and three i7 boxes, the two box solution has obvious advantages in saving space and electricity that will likely outweigh the three box solution's minor price/performance advantage.
I've provided the parts list for the Opteron solution To build the i7 solution choose the High End but substitute the Opteron build's cheap video card, hard drive and peripherals, and the case and power supply from the Midrange system - with a single hard drive and low end video card, that case and power supply is enough to support the high end CPU.
But don't buy more than a couple of these. They quickly start to take up too much space and require too much maintenance. To add many nodes' worth of rendering power, you want a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.
The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
Several months ago I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, and some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.
No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.
Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The FirePro v8800 is a new addition - a "pro" version of the Radeon 5870, the fastest single GPU available (with 1600 stream processes and 2GB memory) and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're never held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the two SSD's and the two hard drives in two RAIDs.
On video cards, the same thing I wrote for the High End applies. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch, but a FirePro v7800 2GB,
Quadro 4000 2GB or the more powerful Quadro 5000 2.5GB or multiple Geforce cards or a very high end Radeon or two would be valid choices, depending on needs.
Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses a set of 12 DIMMs.
If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.
Displays
A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:
-Screen size.
-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?
-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.
So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:
-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.
-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.
-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.
-Dell 27" U2711. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.
-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.
As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.
The Workstations
A few updates this month. The Budget system has always been a good option for low energy consumption; this month I'm upgrading it some, and making it silent as well; with the Antec Sonata case and the excellent power optimizations of the latest AMD/ATI hardware, you can fill your office with these and make a very low impact on your noise level and electric bills. Intel still has no 6-core CPUs under $900 announced, so AMD continues as the price/performance leader for everything up to the Midrange config.
One more thing. I get questions about whether components from manufacturers others than the ones listed can be substituted, and I've noticed that I have a tendency to recommend components from certain brands, such as Asus, XFX, Lian-Li and Antec. I don't want to give the wrong impression here - there are many good vendors for all of these components, and none of these companies are site sponsors, but all things being equal these are my go-to brands because I've never been disappointed by any of their products, or by their customer service. I'm going to continue to go with those manufacturers when one of their parts meets the requirements and makes budgetary sense, but if there's another vendor you prefer you an almost always substitute another company's version of the same part without adverse effects.
What I don't recommend, except where budgetary constraints require them, are cheap cases and power supplies. A poorly made case is likely to add to the time it takes you to assemble to PC, make servicing the PC more difficult and contribute to overheating which can reduce the life expectancy of the parts and lead to hard drive failure. A bad power supply might provide inconsistent voltage and lead to operational glitches or failure of motherboards, memory or CPUs.
The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
The Intern budget is up slightly, but the improvements are worth going slightly over the $600 mark. (Don't worry, these are not changes that make the intern's job easier, they're changes that make the IT department's job easier.) Availability is becoming a problem with the Athlon II 440, and now we're looking at a $5 difference, so the Intern is being upgraded to the 445. Taking my own advice, the case and power supply are improved for reliability and the video card is an XFX that will get you reasonable performance with low power and noise. The 5550 is actually not ATI's least expensive 40nm, DirectX 11 GPU, but the 5450 is too low end, even for the Intern. If for whatever reason you want nVidia, look at the GT 220. The AMD CPU beats the Intels at this price, the motherboard is good but a money saver. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system, and at about $600 it's the lowest I'd go in an office setting.
The Budget (3D/Rendering Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
As with last month, I'm splitting the Budget line into one machine for rendering use, and another for users who do photography and other intensive graphics tasks but not rendering. What they have in common is that both are practical, energy efficient and budget-minded approaches. Both of these configurations get a new case and power supply this month that will improve reliability, make assembly a bit easier and make the computers run quieter.
Here is why there are two different recommendations at this level:
There is an important distinction between CPUs for rendering, and CPUs for other uses. Current render engines are very efficient multitaskers - they're able to use all of your CPU's GHz, regardless of how many cores those GHz are spread across. Most other software is not this efficient, but most other software - web browsers, Microsoft Office, the usual stuff - doesn't require even the Budget level of performance, and is perfectly happy on the Intern box or on my netbook. (Granted, it's a very nice netbook, but still...) The primary exceptions are the sorts of apps a photographer or graphic designer might use. Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator can weigh down a single core, and there are occasions when they utilize a few cores, but to put a 6-core CPU in a Photoshop box when a 4-core costing less money will outperform it would be unwise.
So, the first of the two Budget-level machines is the machine for those who will hit the Render button.
The AMD 1055T remains the price/performance winner at $200. The video card is upgraded to a Radeon 5750. Be sure to get your ATI drivers from the web site, not the included CD - recent driver versions fix a glaring bug in 2D performance. (This goes for all Radeon 5xxx series GPUs.)
The Budget (Photoshop Edition)
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
The photographer, the graphic designer and the photoshopper have different requirements from the renderer. This work involves lots of loading and saving of many large files, and CPU intensive operation that do not make efficient use of many threads. You need more power in fewer cores, a lot of memory and a very good hard drive. What you don't need is an overpowered video card - the only app you might care about that actually uses the video card is Aperture, and that won't run on this anyway because it's a Mac exclusive. This month I've gone with a very quiet version of the Radeon 5670 that's going to work well with the Sonata case in keeping the background noise down so you can concentrate on your Photoshop and your Daft Punk, or whatever it is you graphic designers are listening to these days. Since we're going quiet, the Thermaltake Silent 1156 CPU cooler fits this situation well.
The two RE3 (Raid Edition) hard drives have improved life expectancy over normal hard drives, necessary for reliable use in a RAID 0, which is the goal here. Use RAID to improve read/write speed on those large PSD files. Even with the RE3 drive, I would be remiss not to say that you really do need an external backup system. In an office environment, this can be as simple as a nightly backup of project files to the server.
The i7-870 is an excellent option for Photoshop use, but if you're feeling adventurous you can gain even more performance by choosing the i7-875K, DDR3-2000 memory instead of DDR3-1600, and through a combination of increasing the memory speed and dropping the multiplier in the BIOS (possible on a K series CPU), overclock the RAM instead of the CPU. This is an advanced technique.
Whatever else you do, an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 is indispensable, and a Wacom Intuos4 Tablet is a very good idea. Consider an IPS display from the Displays section below.
The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU. Hardware tweakers will love this CPU, which has the same unlocked multiplier feature as the i7-875K, and it's a bit of an obvious choice - it will hold its own in single-threaded operations with its Turbo Core feature and for rendering there's nothing that beats it in this price class. The motherboard is the newest model, with a few new features like front-panel USB 3.0 ports. All the SATA ports are 6GB/s, and there are three PCIE-x16 slots in case you ever want to go nuts on the GPUs.
But here is where we have to start making some decisions about video cards. The question I got the most of last month was whether it was really best, when spending about $400, to get the FirePro v5800, or whether to get a Radeon 5870, or a Geforce 470, or a Quadro FX 1800, and the answer is, there's no one answer. If you need CUDA, the Geforce 470 (or two 460's). If you want the fastest GPU for the money and don't care about workstation class and software certifications, the 5870. If you do care about certifications but must buy nVidia, the FX 1800. But for this money, for a video card to drive your 3D viewports and AutoCAD or Revit without doubling as a space heater for your office, the v5800 is the best thing.
Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page. Use one of the incremental backup or file sync programs to keep copies of your project files on both drives for another layer of safety. I didn't want to blow the budget here, but for speed, one thing you can do is substitute the hard drives used in the Photoshop workstation and make them a RAID 0.
The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
Now that nVidia's shipped the new Quadro 4000, there is a full range of video card options in the right price-point ballpark for this configuration. So how do we choose? People with heavy GPU computing needs - and at this point, this means Octane users, software developers and people in beta programs - should consider multiple Geforce 4xx cards. For the rest of us, GPU computing is still not enough of a factor to base a decision on, and what we need in a video card is 3D display performance.
At this level, here are some good options:
High end consumer level video cards:
-Radeon 5870 2GB version
-Geforce 480 1.5GB
-Multiple Geforce 460 2GB cards
Midrange workstation video cards:
-ATI FirePro v5800 1GB
-ATI FirePro v7800 2GB
-nVidia Quadro 4000 2GB
I'm still impressed with the value of the ATI line and I'm going to stick with the v7800 as the recommendation for most users, but depending on your needs anything on that list could make sense.
The area with fewer options is CPUs. A single six-core CPU is most appropriate at this budget level, and though Intel has only two options and they start at $900, they have a significant performance advantage over AMD. I'm sticking with the i7-980X for its speed advantage over that 970, which makes it a slightly better value in terms of rendering speed per overall system price, and the overclocking advantage of its unlocked multiplier, for those who are into that kind of thing.
Install your OS and software on the SSD and use the 1TB drive for your working files. For a bit more speed, order two of the 1TB drives and put them in a RAID 0.
The Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
If you run the numbers, you'll find that with current pricing it's possible to make a render node based on either an i7-980X or dual 12-core Opteron 6172's with reasonably similar amounts of rendering power per dollar. The Opteron box will cost a bit more than 50% more and render a bit less than 50% faster. If you want one render node, buy the one that fits your budget, but looking at the hypothetical comparison between two Opteron boxes and three i7 boxes, the two box solution has obvious advantages in saving space and electricity that will likely outweigh the three box solution's minor price/performance advantage.
I've provided the parts list for the Opteron solution To build the i7 solution choose the High End but substitute the Opteron build's cheap video card, hard drive and peripherals, and the case and power supply from the Midrange system - with a single hard drive and low end video card, that case and power supply is enough to support the high end CPU.
But don't buy more than a couple of these. They quickly start to take up too much space and require too much maintenance. To add many nodes' worth of rendering power, you want a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx. Get this if you want to add one or two render boxes, making individual nodes more practical than a farm.
The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg
Several months ago I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, and some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.
No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.
Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The FirePro v8800 is a new addition - a "pro" version of the Radeon 5870, the fastest single GPU available (with 1600 stream processes and 2GB memory) and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're never held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the two SSD's and the two hard drives in two RAIDs.
On video cards, the same thing I wrote for the High End applies. I'm sticking with the FirePro v8800 mainly because I don't see a compelling reason to switch, but a FirePro v7800 2GB,
Quadro 4000 2GB or the more powerful Quadro 5000 2.5GB or multiple Geforce cards or a very high end Radeon or two would be valid choices, depending on needs.
Oh, one more thing. These Xeons use triple-channel memory and each CPU has its own memory controller. When using two of these CPUs, there are six memory channels, so the RAM used must be matched DIMMs in multiples of six. This configuration uses a set of 12 DIMMs.
If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.
Displays
A while back, one of my friends sent me a link to this article debunking pretty much every metric and slogan used in HDTV marketing. The market for LCD monitors is no less confusing, so concentrate on three things:
-Screen size.
-Resolution. This is not the problem it is in laptops, but what would you rather have - a 22" screen that's 1680x1050, or a 21.5" screen that's 1920x1080?
-IPS/PVA or TN. What you want here is an IPS or PVA panel, not a TN panel. Inexpensive monitors are TN panels, which have much worse color gamuts and viewing angles than better screens. A consumer LCD monitor likely isn't even processing and displaying color in 8 bits per channel, and if you move your desk chair 6 inches to the side the levels change.
So, here are a few options, all good quality IPS displays usable for professional graphics work:
-Eizo 24" CG243W. Let's get this out of the way first. This is a very expensive monitor with freakin' fantastic color quality. This monitor is appropriate for use in high end video, photography and publishing production environments. It is not necessary for most visualization are graphics work, but if you want the best that's available to you without costing more than your car, this is it. Pairs well with The Maxer.
-HP 22" ZR22W. This takes the spot that the Dell 2209WA used to occupy in my recommendations: a budget friendly model that beats a TN display and pairs well with the Intern and Budget systems. However, the newer HP model is a better panel, has a higher resolution and costs less. It's a winner at the lower end.
-HP 24" ZR24W and HP 30" ZR30W. As the names suggest, these are larger models from the same line as the ZR22W. All are great value options and significant steps up from consumer grade displays. You can size you ZR to your budget.
-Dell 27" U2711. With improved color reproduction and a resolution usually found in 30" displays, this Dell is a step up from the entry level IPS displays but more reasonable than the Eizo. Best with the High End or the Maxer.
-NEC 30" 3090WQXi. NEC's answer to the 30" Apple monitor. H-IPS panel for high end color and good viewing angles. A step up from the 30" HP, and a step up in price.
As usual, whatever you choose, calibrate it! We're not talking about one of those software functions where you look at the gray square and try to make it the same value as the lines, we're talking about a dedicated hardware calibration device. I use the Eye-One Display 2, but some users prefer the Color Munki, which can also be used with printers and projectors. I can't stress the importance of this enough - without calibration, you'll never be able to match your prints to your screen, whether you're using your system for 3D rendering, graphic design or photography.
posted by Andy Lynn at 10:38 AM
0 comments
