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The state of external retina displays

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Re: The state of external retina displays

#241

Post by yurishimo »

setr wrote: post #222
wtallis wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A current-generation $500 MSRP GPU is actually selling for no less than $900, and it's not due to inflation or the pandemic—it's due to cryptocurrency.

I thought crypto’s impact on GPUs largely ended, as they moved into far greater cost/efficiency ratios provided by ASICs? Is it for the non-bitcoin cryptos?

For casual miners, they can use mining pools to make money that still pay pretty well. Gamers especially, are buying these cards and then joining a mining pool when not playing games to recoup some of their money.

This unfortunately leads to a cycle of more mining, even if the card isn’t optimized for it, as no card is a net negative cash flow atm even factoring in energy costs.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#242

Post by jen20 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #96
urthor wrote: post #73

> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software. You're often working 100% remote, using your m…

Some work tools get treated like capital or heirloom and some get treated like consumables . Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down. Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways. Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "goo…

I bought a 30" Apple Cinema Display in the mid-2000s, and gave it away last year to a colleague who wanted to resurrect a period-correct Power Mac after upgrading to 5K screens. Not holding out much hope for the build quality to be the same sadly, but monitors certainly can be decade-long investments! FWIW 5K screens were 1100 apiece from Microcenter - vastly less money than the Cinema Display was in the UK back then!

Re: The state of external retina displays

#243

Post by joshmlewis »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #38
wikibob wrote: post #10

The only currently acceptable external display is the LG 27-inch 5K. Sadly the firmware is flaky, the webcam sucks, it has huge bezels, and is very thick. Rumor is apple might have a new consumer priced external display next year. Let’s hope it’s true.

The 5K monitor model number and presumably the actual monitor has been updated a couple of times. Any chance the most recently updated design actually has corrected those issues?

I've been researching this for a couple days before this post and am close to pulling the trigger on the LG 5K. The consensus from Googling and Twitter seems like with the M1 and newer at least people are saying the issues have been resolved. I'm still torn though because if they are coming out with a new monitor in the next few months that also has some dedicated graphics processing and better display, that will be really tempting. The resell value of the 5K will go down pretty quickly as a result after purchasing (< 6 months).

Re: The state of external retina displays

#244

Post by minimaul »

Macha wrote: post #196
never_a-pickle wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed re: the medium-term issues of OLED. But I can get a $1000 4k, 120hz OLED screen. Sure, it might be 42-48", but I could just as easily buy a deeper desk, wall mount it 4-5 feet away for the same effect. I'm currently sitting 3.5 feet from a 24" monitor. In this instance, the TV becomes "retina" past 3 feet. https://www.designcompaniesranked.com/resources/is-this-reti... Let's assume when used as a monitor witho…

For many many people, 2 years is not a reasonable life expectancy for a $1000 monitor. My current home monitors are 1 (€400 27" 1440p165 IPS), 4 (€500 27" 1440p144 IPS) and 7 (€250 21" 1080p60 IPS) years old

Ditto this. My home monitors are:

27" Ultrafine 5K - bought in 2018, so 3+ years old, $1000+. 27" LG 4K - bought in 2019, so 2+ years old, $600+. 27" Dell Ultrasharp 1440p - bought in 2016, $800+. 24" Dell Ultrasharp 1920x1200 - bought in 2013, $400+.

All of these are in active use still - even the 8 year old 24" is still a solid AH-IPS monitor with decent wide-gamut colour support and LED backlighting.

I'd be very disappointed in a $1k display that was showing irreparable issues after 2 years. I'd be positively angry at a $1k display with issues after 6 months.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#245

Post by ramraj07 »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #160
urthor wrote: post #73

> Ridiculous Option: Apple Pro Display XDR I'll admit, a monitor that costs more than my first car is beyond affordable for 99% of the population. But saying that, many of the people reading this are pulling truly exotic salaries right now. After devoting untold hours to reaching the top of their profession. Let's say you're a professional earning $300k plus in software. You're often working 100% remote, using your m…

The startup dude with the Embody and topped out M1 Max with four roommates mates is such a meme today, though. That's because it's incomplete. A $5k screen is not so much a tool of the trade as an accessory for someone signalling themself to be valuable or valued. More commonly, coming to own these things is the result of little professional envy. Our software engineers spend all day developing. They sit in $2-300 ch…

I hope you understand you’re very alone In a crowd of sane people if you want to say that your engineers are happy in a $300 chair. A steel case or Herman miller is tablestakes for a decent software shop and if you’re too ignorant or miserly to see it then it’s probably not a great place to work at. A good chair makes a huge difference for ones quality of life. Please don’t skimp on it.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#246

Post by chrismorgan »

minimaul wrote: post #79
petschge wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a MacOS problem, not a "220dpi is not enough" problem.

This specific issue is definitely a macOS problem - instead of doing proper resolution independent rendering, macOS just renders at 2x the 'looks like' resolution, and then scales the result to fit the panel. But even on Windows, the choices at 27" 4K aren't great. 100% is too small. 200% is too large. 150% is quite nice, but I find apps regularly don't scale properly, and text still isn't as nice as 200% on a 5K dis…

> Fractional scaling is a mixed bag and a lot of apps have broken or compromised UI when it's in use.

I use 1.5× scaling in Sway, and haven’t observed even the slightest problem in any Wayland app. (I also use the high-DPI patches for XWayland, and run it at 3×, so that it’s an integer multiple of my scaling factor, a minor visual improvement on the very few X11 things I use that is probably not worth it.) I will note, however, that Firefox is rendering content at 2× and downscaling; setting the experimental widget.wayland.fractional_buffer_scale to 1.5 distinctly improves rendering, but had some very annoying bugs when I tried it several months ago which became debilitating maybe a couple of months ago, so I gave up on it.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#247

Post by chrismorgan »

floatboth wrote: post #118
fourfour3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on macOS, your choice for a 27" 4K is realistically either the 'looks like 1080p' high DPI mode, or the 'looks like 1440p' high DPI mode. The 'looks like 1080p' mode makes all of the UI elements huge. The 'looks like 1440p' mode makes text slightly fuzzy as it's being downscaled from 5120x2880 to 3840x2160. It's not terrible , but it's nowhere near as nice as the 27" 5K.

I'm using a 28" 4K (with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS) — used to use 1.5x with downscaling but switched to 2x "huge UI" for perfect crispness and honestly? It's not bad. It's actually good. Don't fear the big buttons :)

> with Wayland, which does scaling exactly like macOS

I believe that depends entirely on the desktop environment. Sway does real fractional scaling rather than the idiotic downscaling way.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#248

Post by fomine3 »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #61
eckmLJE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although you make an ok point, you're greatly exaggerating FPS. I'm on a beautiful 1440p 144hz LG and I really only need 150fps. This still often requires less-than-ultra video settings even with a 3080 ti. There is a very small niche of competitive gamers who want 240hz at 1080p and the fps that justifies it.

Oh there are people who want way more https://blurbusters.com/blur-busters-law-amazing-journey-to-...

BlurBusters is amazing resource to investigate HFR.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#249

Post by seanmcdirmid »

floatboth wrote: post #217
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does 1X scale mean? If your application is resolution independent, it doesn’t seem to be a meaningful distinction.

In a "logical pixel" system (macOS, Wayland, …Android??) the scale is the relationship between logical and physical pixels. In an "app go draw bigger stuff" system like Windows, it's just the factor of how much bigger the UI elements should be. E.g. in Windows settings you can set 150% scale and all UI elements will be 1.5X as large. And the "good" scale depends mostly on PPI of the monitor, as well as user preferenc…

WPF and some other windows APIs support resolution independence, so you don’t have an arbitrary size defined set as 1X. It seems weird that Apple hasn’t been able to do resolution independence yet, and there is some arbitrary 1X that is based on monitor tech that was popular this decade (and definitely not resolutions like 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 resolutions that we used in the 90s).

Eventually, we should at least rename 2X to 1X and move on like we did before.

Re: The state of external retina displays

#250

Post by derekdahmer »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #134

My utterly unrealistic dream is: now that the first batch of 5k iMacs is approaching “old age,” some business would start selling kits than had the tools and instructions necessary to gut old iMacs, and a new controller board that would convert the remaining screens to basic DisplayPort displays. At $300 and around $500 for an old iMac on eBay, this could be somehow both more economical and likely more reliable than…

Check your local craigslist listings. I bought a lightly used LG Ultrafine 5k in 2019 for $600 in SF.
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