Dual vs Single Options

[Ragnar_Mike]

So I have about 500 bucks in my budget to get a new monitor or monitors for my build. I'll be driving them with a GTX 570.

Here are my options:

1) Buy a single IPS monitor like the Dell U2410, which has better color gamut and viewing angles, good for what I do for school. I have my old monitor which is a 20 inch TN (crappy old style LCD) as a second monitor, but i head Nvidia cards have heating issues when doing two different resolutions.

2) Buy two nice 250-ish TN or any other technology LCD's and run them dual screen. This is nice for all the windows and displays I use when working and it just generally cool. And being the same res and type will make running them easier for the card. Issues are that the quality of TN generally sucks in comparison.

I'm not sure what my best bet is right now. I would like a good quality monitor, but I don't know if they're really worth double the price. I feel like the ones the pros really use are more like 1000 and highly calibrated for professional work.

 

[alicarve]

Tn for gaming, ips for general use. I have never heard that having one card on two different res causes heat issues, I've been doing it for years never had that problem lol

 

[JackyBoy]

If you need the colour range from your monitor, then I would say get the best you can at the cheapest price for that 1 monitor. I have a Dell 2408wfp and the colours are awesome compared to my other cheap monitor. So it is definitely worth investing in something nice there.

But then 2 monitors also drastically increases my workflow. So I would say get at least 1 really nice monitor, then see how much you have left over to buy the other one, possibly having to save up a little more.

 

[Scoob]

1) Buy a single IPS monitor like the Dell U2410, which has better color gamut and viewing angles, good for what I do for school. I have my old monitor which is a 20 inch TN (crappy old style LCD) as a second monitor, but i head Nvidia cards have heating issues when doing two different resolutions.

Hi,

This heating thing is a driver "feature" - basically when more than one monitor is enabled the card will not drop into idle mode as it does with a single monitor. This means that as soon as the 2nd monitor is enabled the card will run up to its full clock speed all the time and not drop to a lower speed when just on your desktop for example.

Just to be clear, card will RUN at it's full clock speed and be warmer because of it. However this is NOT like running the card at heavy load or anything. It will run warmer (with more noise potentially) but it won't be gaming hot and loud.

I run a 2nd monitor on a 570 (now 2 570's) and I just turn it on and enabled it in windows as needed.

Cheers,

Scoob.