30 inch LED backlit LCD monitor for professional photography

gred

Distinguished
Apr 15, 2009
2
0
18,510
I am looking at putting together a system for professional photography, based on a 30 inch LED backlight LCD monitor. It looks like, if I can afford it, a good monitor would be the Samsung SyncMaster XL30 monitor - anyone agree or disagree? But to run the native resolution of 2560 x 1600, and use color management throughout the system, would a gaming or workstation video card be better for this system - using photoshop, etc. What are the main differences between the GTX 2800 and FX4800 when used for a professional photography syste,? Thanks for any help.
 
The XL30 is SPVA, it's a nice monitor, much better than the DELL and HP panels, it's really nice (haven't seen it with a pro LEDlit NEC though). But like the NEC they aren't cheap, but if it's in your budget it's one of the few good LCDs worthy of CRT replacement for colour, but it's not great for fast motion video.

Really for 2D photography any current card from either company would be fine, the time it matters is if you want to use some stream processing supported apps in which case you need to figure out which features are supported for which cards. For CS4 those features are actually done in OpenGL, so there's not technical benefit to the Quadros or Fire cards , one issue is that nV have limited their 3D video features to the Quadro cards, but that's an artificial block to milk people for money (which is something ATi and nV like to do in the professional segment).

Technically the QuadroCX not FX is designed for such scenarios, but really, they're not really worth it unless you need the driver opened up for a specific app, which is usually the video editing side of the equation.
 

gred

Distinguished
Apr 15, 2009
2
0
18,510
Thanks TheGreatGrap for the reply. It sounds like the GTX 280 will do the trick since most of my applications will be related to still photography and not video. I haven't seen the NEC LED monitor, but may look at one before I decide - gred