Hello , bday, bonjour 你好 am pondering a new desktop monitor (either 24" or 27" for architectural work) to run with a Windows 10 PC. What resolution is best? Will any resolution not work? My current monitor is something like 1680 * 1050 and of a good vintage. Had looked at 1440 p though after reading some reviews my eyes glazed over and my mind travelled to another place. What screen size and resolution works best for you?
Broadly speaking, I would go for the largest and highest resolution screen you can afford, with a good graphics card to match that has top-quality OpenGL driver support which is what SU uses. Reports on this forum suggest that nVidia cards and drivers are likely to be better than AMD, but some AMD cards have good drivers too.
The only drawback to using a VERY high res screen is that SU may render its lines, and even more so its inference points, too small to see clearly.
I had good results in Windows 7 with a rather old BenQ Full HD 24" screen (1920 x 1080 or x1200 - can’t remember which). Then I switched to an iMac with a 5K 27" screen, which I am very happy with - but ONLY after using a fix posted in this forum to replace the default SU inference point images with bigger ones. Not sure if there is an equivalent fix for Windows 7 or 10. Before that, to make SU usable, I had to reduce the resolution, but now I use the full 5120x2880 resolution. This iMac has an AMD graphics card, but I’ve had no significant issues with its performance in SU.
I don’t use any rendering software with SU, though, just the inbuilt SU screen rendering.
PS. If you don’t intend to change your graphics card, check carefully what resolutions it supports fully at a decent refresh rate, and make sure you have the latest drivers for it. Get a screen with a resolution it will support.
Many thanks most helpful. It is an Amd card I had thought about updating it, though it’s less of a vintage unlike the fifthteen year old screen. I shall look to go large and try not to let my eyes glaze.
Search this forum for the model of AMD card you have, and see if anyone reports problems with it in SU. I had pretty good results on my older Windows machine with an nVidia GeForce 9600GT card - not anywhere near top of the range even at the time I bought it.
on this. I totally agree.
I have surface pro as laptop - high resolution screen, and it is too difficult to land the endpoints.
I use 23" 1080p screens (dual monitors) at home and 24" 1920x1200 (dual monitors) at work. There is minimal difference and I like how it is setup for architectural work.
neverever buy a monitor with TN panel, definitely go for a IPS or PVA panel. I personally do prefer the 16:10 screen format (instead of the common 16:9), simply more space vertically.
If eyes are not the best, for a 24" device the WUXGA resolution (1920x1200) is sufficient, for 27" the WQHD res (2560x1440) should be fine. Be aware, that ultra high res monitors (4k/5k) do lead to very tiny screen elements especially but not only with e.g. the browser based dialogs (which partly are not scrollable) of SU and generally with many older applications.
For a decent monitor check the Dell UltraSharp series and - if money is no issue - the NEC and Eizo devices. HP and Asus are partly fine too.
As graphics accelerator do not buy anything besides the proofen working nVidia GeForce GTX series, recent models would be the 950/960/1060 (slow<->fast) preferrably from Asus or MSI.
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