Triple monitors vs 1 big monitor - Page 4

It really depends on what you're doing with the computer. How much is productivity / gaming, and of course, what kind of both. Not to mention desk space and power consumption. Both are viable. My preference is one monitor. I've seen games run on triple monitors, and while cool at times, and I'm not impressed. My HP ZR30w, according to UPS, is out for delivery today and can't want to hook it up. It'll be replacing my 24" Benq.

The only way I would consider an eyefinity setup is with three HP ZR30w's, and I think I read somewhere you can run them in portrait mode. That would be sick. But I would need a whole new desk to fit three of em. And at the moment, I just haven't seen any games in the genre's I like to play to justify it.

If a new MechWarrior came out, and it turns out to be some insane game of the century in terms of replayability, I'd definitely consider it. Or some sort of equally insane flying combat simulator.

I like these people that claim to have seen triple screen setups (who don't own them). Where exactly do you see these things??? I've seen the craptastic setup (with 19" lcd's) at fry's and that's about it. You have to see it for real properly setup not a ****ty demo or youtube.

Go for the triples.

//waits for someone to say "oh it's my friend's setup", we all know that's bs considering the rarity of the setup//

1: I've got triple screens.

2: I still consider larger screens better for my needs.


Have you ever used a 2560x1600 screen? Your argument can also be used against you. You can't comment on both unless you've tried both.


1920x1200 is just so damn restricting that multimonitors ain't gonna help as much as big monitors are. The space on it is so limited. Feels much better to multitask on one large screen.

i have 3 19"s currently would love to upgrade to 3 23"s dont use eyefinity unless showing it to someone as i like to lean n and its hard to do with all 3 going

Tri monitors hands down. It's a no brainer, you get more screen space.

Always go with resolution over size. Anyway, I couldn't ditch my 3 23" monitors for 1 big monitor. I just love all the screen space and the amount of things I can have open at once.

Ever used a large monitor? I get so disgusted by the low pixel density (large text) and the cramped space of my LCD displays that they are now only for yotube videos and temperature monitoring, and occasional eyefinity.

1 big monitor is a lot more comfortable to use than 3x smaller ones.

If i really had the chance I'd get the best of both worlds and get 3 UltraSharp U3011's. 30 inches at 2560 x 1600 each. $4,500 for three of them, but would be sooo worth it. IPS monitors too!

I was kind of considering this issue as well - You pick an ultimate goal/dream, then you come back down to reality of how far your wallet can take you.

3 x 30" 2560x1600 monitors would be a dream with a Tri/Quad SLI 3GB GTX 580 setup in portrait.

Alternatively, I looked toward a thin bezel 1920x1200 16:10 monitor (they're so much better than 1080p 16:9 ones - my preference) - But it's kind of like just repeating my monitor 2 more times on either and increasing the FOV. This is something I've yet to experience, so I cannot comment on it, hence my interest and curiosity into that subject.

I have, however, used a 27" Apple @ 2560x1440 (16:9), the U2711 at the same resolution, as well as the 3008WFP. Productivity and real estate transforms the entire experience when you're on your desktop, surfing the web, benchmarking, doing work, multitasking all within one screen - and it beats productivity on 2 screens (I have 2x 20inch dell 1600x1200 screens at work and I can honestly say that the hugely superior 1600p/1440p screens are night and day - they make me smile )

I can't comment on gaming, but my preconceived perspective is the bezel issue - but most argue that the bezels seem to 'fade away' after minutes of the incredible immersion that surround/eyefinity provides. Like a couple others in this post, maybe you need to try it to find out - i know it's tough, but how far are you willing to pursue your interest? Then again, we could be the types that would rather evade the effort of trial only to find out a larger monitor is preference of the two, and the trouble of selling unwanted equipment is prevented if you are risk averse.

Another thing to consider is that surround 3 x 1080p will be pushing over 6 megapixels which is even more than a 30" 2560x1600 setup that is about 4+ megapixels (effectively a ~33% performance dip if you moved from 2560x1600 to 1920x1080x3 [[ or a 66% performance dip moving from a single 1080p to surround 3x1080p]] - sorry i had to add that to better envisage the inevitable processing power upgrade requirement) - no point dialing down settings to the lower end while using a 3 x monitor setup!

I'm very much envious that Palit released the 2GB version of the GTX 560 TI but the GTX 570 is cursed with only 1280MB while the GTX 580 gets 3GB - I guess the middle child is always left out. For me, my plan to upgrade my monitor after this made me thoroughly consider vram limitations - and this was discussed quite thoroughly in another thread I started about a month ago - and Brett, amongst others helped establish that a few of the top current games now will definitely eat into 1GB+ vram territory at resolutions of 2560x1440 and above (and going surround means you will need the headroom). This brings up another point that leads to AMD cards being an optimal choice due to a larger variety of cards they offer with 2GB of vram.

On the nvidia side of things, only the Palit GTX 560 has 2GB, the GTX 580 has 1.5GB and on Palit/Gainward/EVGA/ they've released 3GB versions of the GTX 580. so that's 3 cards (only made due to variants) with very large price and performance disparities offered by nvidia.

Hope I'm not dawning too much bad news onto you - but the point is that a fair amount of things have to be considered. Rumours of Kepler based GPUs scheduled for Q4 release (assumed 6xx series nvidia cards) make me hope that nvidia gets smart and slaps on more memory onto their reference cards because that is a strong offering that AMD has over nVidia at the moment (with the minor exception of non-reference cards).

-Bleah