Widescreen Gaming Forum

Testing

It's here ! Cue Space Oddessey 2000 theme!! Cue Omen theme tune!! Da Da Da DA! Hide the women and children, the Dell 3007wfp has arrived!

Just kidding. I am excited but I am a little jaded by Pc monitors at the moment. I have had to return quite a few rubbish ones latley, and I thoght they were cool aswell. I hope this does the business, as if this doesn't work out I don't know what will.

Anyway wish me good luck. I am going to go open the box and set it up. I am going to do a fresh install of windows and all my games , as I want maximum performance.

Congratz TonyM16 and remember to post your initial feelings :D

Congratz TonyM16 and remember to post your initial feelings :D

Initial feelings: It's absolutley huge! Even bigger the I expected. It's very loght for it's size. Very happy at the moment. Can't see any flaws yet and I ma very picky about monitors.

Alright, I've tested a few on my 30'. Any game on the Source engine is perfect. Call Of Duty 2 is perfect. So is Unreal Tournament 2004. Oblivion is Perfect. Was not able to test FEAR Combat as it does not support widescreen without the tweak that I have not done yet. I have not tested it, but I am pretty sure that Trackmania: Nations will be fine too, as it works on my 20.1' at 1680x1050 fine with no hud streaching.

I am going to test Vampire Bloodlines today. I think I am going to have to edit the enginde dl myself though as the Res. patcher only goes up to 1920x1200. Does anyone know how to edit using a Hex editor?

Had some major problems yesterday while testing:

First of all I found some slight light bleed in the bottom left corner of my monitor. Thankfully it's not visible in games and can only be seen in a dark screen when I look from a certain angle and 3 feet back. Other than that the monitor is very good. Another thing I noticed is that game really ha to be perfect to look good on this monitor, as it's increased size really helps point out flaws.

It almost feels like I am beta testing as a lot of the games I tested yesterday failed to run at 2560x1600 without causing serious problems.

Deus Ex: Curiously could only go up to 1280x800 in game. so I edited the Deus Ex file to 2560x1600. Now when the game started it opened in a small window. I gave up very soon afterwards. I will try again soon.

the Godfather: Also only goes up to 1600x1200 in game. This is terrible for a modern game. I changed the config to 2560x1600 but found that the game ends up with a border on the top and left side, so I found that 2048x1536 to be the better choice.

Tomb Raider Legends: Can choose 2560x1600 in game. Works perfectly. The wide-screen option helps increase fov. Only problem is the game at this resolution gave me visual anomalies when I use crossfire. Without crossfire it's fine, but it now means I can't use AA or AF.


Oblivion: Perfect. Crashes do seem a little more frequently now as the PC is being pushed very hard and so memory leaks, and access violations are more common.

Hitman Blood money: Unfortunately it no longer is working as i used a cracked copy. I will look in to this and make it work again.

Fable The lost chapters: Amazingly I can choose 2560x1600 ingame. It has many choices of resolutions here. Even all the obscure ones. Game also looks very nice at this resolution. Can still use 6xAA , 8xAR and soft shadows so there is no huge performance drop either.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised of was how well my PC continued to run. I was expecting major slow downs. For eg in Oblivion I was able to play with HDR and 2xAA and 4xAF. I also had grass at 60%, max view distance, low shadow filtering, canopy shadows on and shadows at 35%.

First of all I found some slight light bleed in the bottom left corner of my monitor. Thankfully it's not visible in games and can only be seen in a dark screen when I look from a certain angle and 3 feet back.

Really? Does it look anything like this?

[quote]
First of all I found some slight light bleed in the bottom left corner of my monitor. Thankfully it's not visible in games and can only be seen in a dark screen when I look from a certain angle and 3 feet back.

Really? Does it look anything like this?

Very similar to what I got but of course I can't be %100 sure. Is yous visible when you are sitting down in front of it? I see min when I go back so that the whole screen is in my fov, but only on a blank screen or borer. If the game just uses black color thankfully it's not visible, but if the game uses no color than it cab be seen from a certain angle.

Do you consider this a deal breaker? Or is this a normal thing for this screen. I know for a fact that the Apple and HP screens all suffer from severe light bled, even worse than this. Do you think I should be thankful that the light bleed is slight or should I be demanding a perfect screen? I have a feeling that this is normal and that all ips panel weather old or new will have some light bleed.

It's visible from all angles but only in dark conditions and with a dark image on the monitor. Like, for instance, if I were to play Doom 3 with minimal lighting in my room then the bottom left corner would be clearly brighter than the rest of the panel. Of course with a completely black image such as in the pic I linked, the bleed is most severe.

One thing I'm sure of: I would take the monitor back IF I had the chance (it is substantially more than 2 weeks old so I can't take it back). I am pretty sure that Dell won't consider this flaw reason enough for replacement under the ordinary warranty. You see, when I pay $2700 for a PC monitor then yes I do want to to be PERFECT. This just isn't, with the backlight bleeding and all.

I have been thinking about contacting Dell about it but frankly the bleed is so rarely visible I always forget about it.