Three Xl2370 or One U2410 or 30" monitor?

[sparkman]

Would it be better to get three Samsung Xl2370s in eyefinity with an active display adapter for about $940 or get a Dell U2410 for about $530 or get a 30" monitor for about maybe $1,150? If I get a monitor with a 30" res will two 5770s cut it? Would my CPU bottleneck my 5770s? I play games like oblivion (with lots of mods, so either back off with mods or I wouldn't be able to play it at 2560x1600), supCom2, prince of persia: forgotten sands, dirt 2, and nfs: shift. I'm not playing FPS games or MMORPGs. So should I get eyefinity or should I get a 24" IPS monitor or get a 30" monitor? If I get the 30" monitor I probably won't be getting it until around xmas time which means I will be gaming at 1440x900 for a long time and the new graphics cards are going to be coming out this october/november right? I heard they are just going to be reiterations; are reiterations worth springing for or just waiting until next years graphics come out?

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

30" monitors are indeed awesome. I have one and it truely is. Eyefinity doesn't get a lot of support. They don't like giving plays way more view angle. Starcraft 2 for example explicitly announced no wider support than 16:9 so eyefinity would just look over stretched without any quality improvement.

A bigger screen at 2560x1600 is 16:10, won't increase your view angle but would increase the sharpness of everything on screen, something that eyefinity doesn't do. Looks so nice at 2560x1600 and dual 5770s would probably do medium to high settings with low to no AA. Im sure you can ebay something 30" from ebay for cheaper.

Theres only one thing bad about 30" IPS monitors. Power and heat. Theres only a few models of 30" IPS monitors, most popular is the LG made panel which is used by the 30" LG of course but also includes the Dell, and a couple models of NEC. The thing uses 140W and that gets converted into heat. It isn't too bad but noticable.

You could go for the 24" dell, at 1920x1200 your not getting anything amazing but it is a high quality IPS screen as well.
I cannot recommend eyefinity for games since you won't get the correct resolution on it. Only a couple games can you use a tool to force the resolution and it isn't done all too well.

 

[sparkman]

How readable is text on 30" monitor? Would I want to keep one of my 19" monitors for different internet windows and different apps? What 30" monitor would you recommend under 1,200? Would Starcraft support 16:10 as well or only 16:9? Should I sell both of 5770s and get a 5870 (maybe crossfire eventually?) or a 5970?

 

[rofl_my_waffle]

A 5970 is probably necessary for a 30" monitor if you still want top settings. I was playing games on my monitor back when i still had my single 4870 so 5770 crossfire would run probably medium settings.

You can find monitors on ebay for considerably cheaper. The Dell 3008WFP is a good choice. You can find the LG W3000H on newegg which uses the exact same panel as the Dell.

Starcraft supports wide resolutions up to 16:9 but they explicitly said they won't support any more than that due to game balance. So eyefinity won't work.

Text on a 30" monitor is the same size as it would be on any standard monitor if you sit at the same distance.