120hz vs 60hz

Is a 120hz screen worth the extra £400 for a 580 GTX + 120hz over the 6990 and a 60hz screen?

 

Simple answer is no. If you want 3D gaming then it is needed. The 120Hz screen is brighter thus giving the feel of better colour vibrance but is only essential for 3D. If you don't want 3D, and the nvidia features don't do much for you then get the 6990m with 60Hz screen. Save your money.

 

cool thanks.

 

The 60 Hz screen is gorgeous. Plus if you calibrate the screens for imaging work as I do, the brightness comes down a bunch anyways so any benefit of the 120 Hz screen (besides useless 3D) is lost.

 

BTW what are these nvidia features you refer to? Is there something the 580 does the 6990 doesn't?

 

Optimus, CUDA and PhysX comes to mind.

 

Well in the 120Hz screen, there is no optimus. Cuda is used in productivity apps such as photoshop and video encoding apps. Physx is present in some games but not a lot.

 

I'm not sure I'd consider Optimus a benefit.

Physx is nice for the games that support it. CUDA I doubt you'll notice unless you use certain engineering-type apps that utilize it.

 

just wondering how would you go about calibrating the 60 hz screen?

 

Totally agreed, it's an NVIDIA feature, I never said Optimus was a benefit. I know first hand how annoying and troublesome it can be.

Agree on the other two points.

 

120hz is great, if your game runs at 120fps then it looks really nice, much nicer than my 60hz desktop @ the same fps (smoothness of motion)

 

Movies look better as well since there isn't an 3:2 pulldown.

 

While I didn't get to mess with optimus I like the extra bit of battery from switchable graphics. I think optimus tries to do too much automatically. Just give me a button to turn on or off

 

Use something like a Spyder or i1Display calibrator plus software.

Datacolor Spyder3Pro Display Calibration System from DC S3P100

It has a sensor which watches the colors on the screen as the software goes through test patterns. Mine also calibrates luminance (brightness) and contrast to reference levels for idea color reproduction. Once it's done, it generates an ICC profile that you can set your monitor or laptop display to load on startup.

Mine has two profiles, one for my external monitor, and one for the laptop display. The idea is that they are both calibrated to the same standard so colors/images should appear identical on both, and also on prints assuming you got your color spaces and everything right.

 

thanks will look into this cause i used to have the RGB screen and when they replaced it with an R3 i miss that screen so much

 

I wonder why you say 3D is useless. Gaming, watching Blu-ray in 3D... all this leaves you cold?

I also want to purchase the M17x R3 with the 120Hz screen and 580M.

About Optimus, do you think Nvidia will be able to fix this issue anytime soon (drivers update)?

Can we still make the 120Hz monitor go 60Hz to save power using Intel switchable graphics?

Thanks

 

Optimus can not be fixed. The IGP is bypassed with the 120hz screen. It's impossible.

 

How much better does that look versus just bumping the digital vibrance or whatever ATI's equivelant of that option is?

 

you can run the 120hz panel at 60hz. then you do notice the difference in smoothness

 

It's not about how much better it looks (though it does look better), it's more about having it calibrated to a standard. It sets the brightness to a standard value of your choosing and makes sure the red, green, and blue channels are all even and resolve to a standard color temperature (6500K in my case). If you look at any LCD display on stock settings, the color channels are all over the place and it's usually WAY too bright; not ideal when working with images.

This is very important when you want to calibrate multiple different displays and have them look exactly the same, and also when you want things you print to look exactly like they do on the display. My software shows me the gamut coverage before and after when I calibrate, and there is a significant difference.

So to answer your question, sure you can make things look however you want manually in the CCC settings, but if you want colors represented truely and evenly calibration is the way to go.

 

I noticed with the 580m and 3d display, you need to set the refresh to 120hz or else you will end up with a screen error display

 

I have my 3D/580 at 60hz. No issues at all.