Read these reviews on the Acer:

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-HN274H-BMIIID-27-Inch-Monitor/product-reviews/B004YCMEJU/ref=cm_rdp_hist_hdr_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

I simply love this Acer. My only complaint would be it takes a little while to start up when you click the power button, but besides that, it's fucking sick.

The glasses are included! You are correct in regards to your 3 monitor question, however, I'll add that I would never dual/triple monitor my gaming personally, so that is really not something I researched heavily. I decided against the Samsung for a variety of reason, style, complaints about it's positioning, and lack of tech. In regards to the bad reviews you found, I just don't see it. This is by far one of the best monitors for the tech right now, and I would not recommend any other product to get dat 100% next gen tech.

I spend an hour or two a night just watching movies in 3d with my included glasses, or playing Fallout New Vegas in 3D, or running around in 120FPS @ 120Hz and just staring out into the distance. It's just epic man, simply epic.

I'd go out on a limb and say it's a Must Buy for any new system with a decent Nvidia card.

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 8:43 AM. Reason : -]

9/9/2011 8:25:05 AM

I would 2nd that, if you are looking to invest in a decent monitor now days, I would be looking for 120hz monitor. However, that Acer uses a TN panel and I can't live with that. I need at least a PVA/MVA, but I would rather go with an IPS panel above all else. Then LED backlite would be the 2nd need and then 120hz. I honestly haven't looked into a new monitor that would fit my requirements and since I haven't bought a new one in about 5 years. My Dell IPS' are holding up just fine, although they need a little bit of a warm up period now days.

As for the 3 monitor business, don't get me wrong. I love having crazy amount of windows spanned out over three monitors for productivity work. It's nice to reference like 5 pdf's at the same time while typing a report.

I just wish multigaming support for RTS' was there as well (Supreme Commander is the only one that I know of that does it currently but only supports 2 monitors). I mean you gain a huge tactical advantage to see more area, two fronts or stats in an RTS and realistically its more valuable than 3 monitor fps IMHO.

9/9/2011 11:46:45 AM

Non TN 120hz basically doesn't exist

i looked

9/9/2011 11:57:18 AM

I figured as much. I can wait. Its not like all three monitors will die at once... If it does. I'll have to use even my older pair of 20" dell's.

9/9/2011 12:04:31 PM

All my new parts arrived today and I'm putting everything together tomorrow.

9/9/2011 12:07:26 PM

lame, put them together now... You got 52 mins to do it from start to boot.

9/9/2011 12:11:48 PM

One of the most exciting parts of building a new computer with a Sandybridge w/ ASUS motherboard is right after you overclocked the processor and the memory in the BIOS.. simply wait for it to boot back into windows to see your raw OC score!!!!

"Up 37%!!!!!!!"

<- Nerd

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 12:37 PM. Reason : -]

9/9/2011 12:30:38 PM

Yea, 4.5Ghz is pretty standard, congrats on being average Come back when you've hit 5Ghz

Quote :

"lame, put them together now... You got 52 mins to do it from start to boot."

it's about the quality of the build like cable management and lapping heatsinks...

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:11 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2011 12:55:36 PM

It's actually 4.658, stable, and that's with Fan Cooling.

I suppose I could get ridiculous with liquid cooling, but nothing can really stretch my system gaming wise anyway, even with stock 3.4.

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:13 PM. Reason : -]

9/9/2011 1:10:23 PM

yea i know, you can at least do 5 stable on air with a i7-2600K, come on

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:21 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2011 1:14:25 PM

2500k? That was last century tech, come on!

Do you have stock in Intel? You want me to fry my processor!

Are you liquid-cooled @ 5?

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:17 PM. Reason : -]

9/9/2011 1:16:49 PM

i can hit 4.8 on air stable on my i5-2500K

what motherboard do you have?

P8P67 Deluxe & P8P67 Pro have a lot of people hitting 5.0Ghz w/ 2600K

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:23 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2011 1:21:52 PM

ASUS Maximus IV Extreme

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131692

I'm reluctant to mess with the voltage.

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:27 PM. Reason : -]

9/9/2011 1:23:50 PM

yea, that's a hangup. you should be safe up to 1.5, from what i've seen you should be able to hit 5Ghz at as little as 1.35v... if you wanted

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 1:31 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2011 1:31:33 PM

please, if you aren't rocking an i9-9900z... then you are too slowz

9/9/2011 5:14:29 PM

Quote :

"@neodata686: I don't know if you remember my triple monitor gaming rant from last year with you about the field of view issue, but yes it does seem to chop off your field of view. The problem is that by extending the field of view the way that they are doing it with one fixed perspective, its adding a lot of distortions, which is what you see as being stretched out. "

I do remember that now. We already talked about this. Haha. Yeah if I got a third monitor I wouldn't mind trying it out just for fun.

Question though. To do the Nvidia surround with 3-monitors you have to have all 3 plugged into the 2 sli'd cards right? So what happens when you leave the game? Can you run windows in 3-monitor mode? Or do you still need a third video card for a third monitor?

Quote :

"Read these reviews on the Acer: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-HN274H-BMIIID-27-Inch-Monitor/product-reviews/B004YCMEJU/ref=cm_rdp_hist_hdr_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 I simply love this Acer. My only complaint would be it takes a little while to start up when you click the power button, but besides that, it's fucking sick."

I think like JBaz I think of monitors initially from an image quality perspective than gaming second. I've been a user of Dell Ultrasharps for years and going from one of these to a TN monitor like that Acer would be a let down.

Sure it might excel in gaming but the poor contrast, colors, viewing angle, etc would more than cancel out the 120hz benefit for me. I would end up ONLY using it for gaming and sure it might have a quicker response time but it wouldn't LOOK as nice in terms of colors and black levels.

Also after reading a few more reviews the only reason people go with the Acer over the Samsung is the Samsung isn't officially supported by Nvidia, only ATI. If you disregard the 120hz of the Acer it's a pretty mediocre monitor in terms of image quality. There's reports of ghosting and slow[er] response time than specified.

I'm not saying it's not a great monitor for gaming and if you haven't owned anything other than TN monitors then you'll probably have no issue with it. I'd just rather wait for a better quality IPS or PVA/MVA monitor.

^,^,^^ I'm happy with my 950 at 4.0 ghz. I'll wait for socket 2011 and Sandybridge-E to upgrade and you'll all wish you waited.

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 5:23 PM. Reason : s]

9/9/2011 5:22:31 PM

Quote :

"Question though. To do the Nvidia surround with 3-monitors you have to have all 3 plugged into the 2 sli'd cards right? So what happens when you leave the game? Can you run windows in 3-monitor mode? Or do you still need a third video card for a third monitor?"

I haven't played with the nvidia surround triple monitor solution yet, but yes, you need to be running an SLI. If you are simply running 2 cards, you can run up to 4 desktop monitors to it, but for gaming, it will only put to three (2 from main, 1 from 2nd slot card). If nvidia does the same trick as amd to get 3 monitor gaming to work then I would feel bad for nvidia owners since they have a top notch driver/software developers there.

The AMD way is to force all three displays into one giant display that is split between the three monitors. However, this messes up your desktop display properties, icons, and spreads the windows bar on all three displays with the start menu on the left screen and the time on the right screen. So if you want to run a "normal" desktop display, but then enable infinity, you have to go to your properties and go through the whole hoop of setting it up each time.

As much as I like this card, I should have paid the extra 100 bucks (500) for the gtx480 last summer. I would have been just as happy with the speed even though its an overly power thirsty hog. At least, it would run cuda enabled software enhancements like on some adobe products (aka premier pro). Oh, dont forget actually working updates to their drivers on a constant basis. Fuck AMD and their useless drivers.

I guess I should be happy that my launch drivers are rock stable (5870).

9/9/2011 5:36:59 PM

Thanks! I still wish I could run 3 monitors normally without having 3 video cards. It seems so backwards that you can only run 2 monitors with 2 cards in SLI.

9/9/2011 5:48:30 PM

The newer SLI cards allows nvidia surround, but yeah, you are SOL. At least switching in and out of SLI isn't a painful process anymore. I remember when they first came out and required a restart, at least my room mates did. His was finicky when he changed the settings without a boot.

9/9/2011 5:51:19 PM

Yeah, I would boil it down to simply - if you get 100+ FPS in some of the first person shooters or very fast paced games you play, get 120Hz Acer. If you don't, get an IPS, as the input lag won't matter to you anyway.

9/9/2011 6:44:29 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, I would boil it down to simply - if you get 100+ FPS in some of the first person shooters or very fast paced games you play, get 120Hz Acer. If you don't, get an IPS, as the input lag won't matter to you anyway."

I don't know. I get 100+ on most of the games I play at 1920 by 1200. But it LOOKS good on my Ultrasharp. I don't know if I would sacrifice image quality (color, contrast, viewing angles, etc) for the 120hz. Get what I'm saying? I'm not going to make a judgement until I try it out but I'd rather have it all then have to sacrifice quality to get 120hz.

JBaz what games did you try surround on? I just tried it with Black Ops and it didn't really work (game doesn't officially support it so it looked all stretched).

I also tried it with Metro 2033 and it worked perfectly. It wasn't stretched at all and the left and right monitors were peripheral vision. I walked into a room in Metro 2033 and then turned surround off and surround really does increase your field of view. With surround on I was able to see stuff directly to the right and left of me but with only the single monitor it restricted my view like it normally does.

Quote :

"Personally, I can't stand it and it was the selling feature of why I bought AMD in the first place. Biggest let down and I still only game on one monitor."

Maybe AMD and Nvidia are different? I don't know. It looked nice to me:



[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 7:39 PM. Reason : s]

9/9/2011 7:38:17 PM

IPS monitors have greater input lag than TN monitors. It's not just the 120 Hertz, it's the response rate too. All I can tell you my friend came over and saw me play fallout new vegas in 120 hertz, and immediately ordered the acer from amazon, lol. I see what you are saying though, IPS monitors tend to have richer image quality, but this is primarily a gaming monitor.

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 8:13 PM. Reason : -]

9/9/2011 8:05:39 PM

I like your left monitor stand... lol

Every game I've tried it with still suffers from distortions. I haven't tried infinity mode in a while, but what I remember with BC2 was that it caused more deaths than kills. I also tried a number of driving games and a few other fps, but gave up after the 7th or 8th game that showed the same distortions.

I tried researching the issue to see if it was a driver issue or some setting I need to adjust, but even watching infinity tech demos on youtube from games that supposedly supports infinity showed the same distortions.

Its hard to tell from you photo of the distortions since your left screen lacks definition and shape to show the distortion and the right does seem a bit stretched on the horizontal axis. It's probably not as apparent to you since your monitors are almost on the same image plane. My 2 auxiliary displays are angled roughly about 30 degrees from the center since I'm in a corner L shaped desk.

9/9/2011 9:11:37 PM

^^Yeah you're probably right. I'd probably see it and want it right away. So is the 3D worth it?

Quote :

"I like your left monitor stand... lol"

It's not permanent. I usually only have 2 monitors. I was borrowing the third to try out the Nvidia surround.

Quote :

"but even watching infinity tech demos on youtube from games that supposedly supports infinity showed the same distortions."

I think I see what you mean. It's more of a gimmick. I don't think I could actually game that way.

9/9/2011 9:40:08 PM

you know, honestly, even on TN panels, if you use a proper calibration device, they can still look good. TN isn't as bad as it was when we bought our old dell panels neo but like you, IPS all the way.

As for 3D, I think that's just another gimmick, but my friend who has a quad 480 SLI system; he plays some games in 3D. It's a mixed bag since if the game truly supports the programming, it looks amazing but he mentioned that a lot developers are just slapping on the "3d" sticker when the actual engine doesn't support it. Then it defaults using nvidia drivers to force the 3d imagery. He said you loose a lot of depth and doesn't seem as 3dy.

He did note he gets a little dizzy after a while, so no long sessions.

9/10/2011 1:45:45 AM

The 3D is impressive on some games, on others it seems just ok, but that really falls on the developers. Now when it comes to blueray movies, that's where this monitor really shines. It looks great. In regards to games, I really like Batman: Arkham Asylum's 3D Ready Development. You can get great depth and the entire game seems tailored for 3D. The first thing I noticed is that the Joker seems right in front of your face when you get close, so the dev team really spent time on 3D. Almost all games that are coming out now will be 3D ready, and even older games are 3D ready. The issue with older games though is the game was altered after the fact to look 3D, where Batman was designed with 3D in mind on the front end, which is why it looks so nice.

[Edited on September 10, 2011 at 7:32 AM. Reason : -]

9/10/2011 7:29:10 AM

Yeah right now I'm debating between the Samsung and Acer. With the Samsung I won't get 3D but I think it's a better monitor all around. I don't know. I'll probably end up with the Acer.

^^Yeah I think the newer TN panels are much better than I think they are.

Been reading through here.

http://www.overclock.net/monitors-displays/1018108-samsung-s27a950d-120hz.html

Check out this guys computers. It's fucking nuts.

9/10/2011 10:24:07 AM

Need constructive criticism, please. I'm trying to build a rig specifically for BF3, Tribes Ascend, Firefall, and hopefully Phantasy Star Online 2 if it makes it to the USA. This is as far as I've gotten so far in terms of the basics. I do not intend to overclock as I have virtually no experience with it. I also don't intend to run any crazy display options other than just a single monitor at 1440x900. Are 2 of these graphics cards going to be overkill?

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?Source=MSWD&WishListNumber=21348027

9/10/2011 11:30:32 PM

I am going go SLI with this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130601&Tpk=580%20ftw

Also tell me how I am doing on cable management:

http://www.overclock.net/case-mods-general-discussion/96415-post-your-rate-my-cables-here-1717.html

9/11/2011 1:20:10 AM

Only 2? Go for the quad

9/11/2011 2:33:50 AM

Woah! single slot 580 and water cooled ready? damnz, looks sick. A little pricey compared to getting a normal 580 + a decent copper water block.

@Axelay : If you don't plan on OC or SLI for gaming and intend to be a mid-level budget gaming box, might I sugget save some money with a cheaper mobo and memory solution? It would be a waste of money to spend $260 for an extreme gaming mobo when features you'd like aren't needed nor will the "performance loss" will be noticeable since you only choose a single 460. Just grab a decent $100ish Asus, ASrock, Gigabyte LGA1155 Z68 mobo with usb 3.0 and sata 6Gb/s.

If I was building a cheap i5 gaming system, this is the mobo I'd most likely get:
Gigabyte Z68 D3H-B3, at $122, its pretty much set on the value-centric customer. It has all of the lastest features such as usb 3.0, next gen sata and I've always liked their mobo's.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128502

Also, I'm perplexed about your Ram choice. You say you have no plans on overclocking, yet you choose an overclocker friendly motherboard with an overclocker friendy ram set. However, you completely overlooked the fact that i5's only support dual channel ram. The set you have in your wish list is for triple channel. Besides the fact of the lubricious price of $160 for only 12GB, this is designed to be handled with abuse in an overclocked system.

It's basically like adding a large turbo on a small engine, then set the waste gate to 5psi and on top of that, add a speed governor so the car doesn't hit above 65 in its entire life as a commuter vehicle. You can use fast ram in a slow system, it will never hit its potential.

Do yourself a favor, and grab yourself some cheap ddr3 1333 or 1600 ram that has low CAS settings. You can get an 8gb dual channel set for around $50 on newegg. Look at g.skill since they make some good cheap ram that fits a budget box perfectly. Just make sure you get v1.5 rated ram with a CAS of 9 or less all across, but don't sweet it too much; we are only talking like 1% performance difference. I actually grabbed a pair of Corsair 1333 4gb modules two weeks ago for $10 AR each, which would work in your i5 system just nice.

With the $130 saved from the mobo and another $100-120 off unnecessary ram, I would suggest either getting an ssd or upgrade the 460ti to the 480 monster.

What are you other components? Budget in mind for the whole system? Or is this augmenting an existing system?

[Edited on September 11, 2011 at 5:02 AM. Reason : ]

9/11/2011 5:00:43 AM

Is everyone here totally set on Core i5/i7?

I priced out a new computer for work, and a 6core AMD machine kept coming up 2-300 bucks cheaper over and over again. I have a hard time believing the i7 is worth the huge price difference, or that there's that much of a performance difference between AMD and Intel.

Maybe I've just been out of it for too long.

9/11/2011 6:35:57 AM

You've been out too long.

No AMD offering is faster than the i5-2500K (at the time of release) and I don't think the story has changed in the last 6 months. Heck even in most $500 builds, I've seen most people go with the i3-2100T. So unless you're on a shoestring budget and don't need the performance, then get AMD. Otherwise you'll see a huge difference with Intel. AMD will save you a ton of money of buying Intel+Dedicated because from what I know the only thing good about AMD is their integrated graphics like in their A6 & A8

i7 is overpriced. the i5 is probably what you want and will still be faster than AMD's 6-core

AMD (A-series) is great for HTPC's though.

I mean look at the charts, it's quite frankly embarrassing for AMD, it's no wonder they are specializing in the niche market of integrated gpu/cpus
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/x86-core-performance-comparison/benchmarks,128.html

[Edited on September 11, 2011 at 11:42 AM. Reason : .]

9/11/2011 11:28:12 AM

Well in the computer chess world, and although most favor intel, its pretty common belief that the intel is faster BUT it makes more 'garbage' calculations while the AMD is relatively slower and produces significantly less 'garbage' calculations. It has something to do with one or the other handling floats better. Of course for gaming (ex. BF3) its a different scenario since moves are not be calculated. I whip up on intels all the time with my AMD, even overclocked ones, but I will admit the shorter the time limit for the game the intel usually has the advantage since they don't get under time pressure as easily.

9/11/2011 2:40:02 PM

^^That comparison is pretty misleading. When I looked at the overall CPU charts, AMD x4 Phenom chips are within 5% of the i5-2500, and at almost half the price.

9/11/2011 5:30:25 PM

yeah, those charts seem quite a bit off of what I've been seeing else where, even on Tom's own individual reviews. There's NO way X4/X6's are slower than C2D's in photoshop... and NO way the margin difference between C2D and i7's (1st and 2nd gen) are only off by a few seconds... SomTingWong in their numbers.

When I built my 1st gen i7 930 system, I was going to go with the new (at the time) AMD x6 1090T route since it was about the same price as the 930 ($320 i7, $349 x6). But after I snagged the i7 for $200, it was a no brainier. And still the x6 tends to lag behind the i7 from the first gen. Now that they are selling the X4's under 100 bucks and x6 under 150, they are unbelievably good value, but they can barely touch the i7's of their generation and they got nothing on the 2nd gen's. Specially since Intel aggressively priced the 2600k around the $350 mark at launch.

9/11/2011 6:34:45 PM

Nice card seedless, that's quite a beast.

9/11/2011 7:04:07 PM

the AMD Phenom II X4 925 Deneb 2.8GHz AM3 (6MB)

Is $89 at newegg. The i5 2500 is $209.

AMD Motherboards seem to be about 30% less than their intel counterparts too.

9/11/2011 7:17:25 PM

Motherboards for AMD have always been less. They have to be priced that way to even sell.

Yes you can buy a X4 for $89, but it's 22%-34% slower than the i5-2500, it's exactly like I said, Intel is faster, but if you DON'T NEED the performance, buy AMD. I'm not saying Intel is worth 100% more for 22% better performance, I'm just saying AMD can't touch Intel when it comes down to it except for price.

[Edited on September 11, 2011 at 7:42 PM. Reason : /]

9/11/2011 7:40:01 PM

Yeah, I too find it interesting that it was easier to find good AMD mobos for really cheap. The one I snagged up for the 1090T build was an $80 Asus, which a smiliar LGA1155 board would be around $120 with similar features.

I'm not sure how much of this is true, but my friends say that running SLI on an AMD cpu isn't as good as running it on intel. A quick search on newegg only shows Asus with SLI/Crossfire AM3 support using nvidia chipset. Anyone provide an incite?

9/11/2011 7:40:29 PM

Price means the most to me. AMD is still good for gaming for me even if it isn't fast and Intel. I can play the same games on my system as you can with a comparable Intel.

^^^^ Anyway, can't afford the water-cooled 580 I was just joking, but I may upgrade to regular 580 in Nov, maybe by then they will be around $300 :crosses fingers:

[Edited on September 11, 2011 at 7:43 PM. Reason : /]

9/11/2011 7:43:45 PM

I highly doubt that a specialty 580 will drop $350 in a few months, but I too am hopeful that the regular 580's would drop to $300ish as well. Any upcoming gpu's we should take notice?

9/11/2011 7:55:58 PM

^^ Yeah, I was about to say, that would be even crazier than me, and I'm admittedly nuts when it comes to video cards.

I wouldn't bank on the 580 dropping much at all, unless Nvidia and ATI each release 1 more card before November. Even then, you are looking at a minor drop in price, 100 maybe.

In regards to AMD vs Intel. It really isn't even a discussion anymore, Intel is simply superior. If you are looking to create a low-cost computer build, then I'd go AMD, but only if I was building it for someone else for a profit, lol.

[Edited on September 11, 2011 at 8:16 PM. Reason : -]

9/11/2011 8:10:45 PM

I got the U2412M....is nice, but I really hate the anti-glare coating. Coming off of a glossy MBP the entire thing looks sparkly and dirty.

Thus continues my question for a monitor I don't think there are any glossy IPS monitors out there so I may have to drop down to a TN or something

9/11/2011 8:54:05 PM

The only reasons you'd want a glossy screen is for:
1. increased contrast.
2. the ability to use a liquid cleaner easily.
3. the ability to see which one of your classy roommates is sneaking up behind you at night in the middle of an intense fire fight without turning your head.

otherwise I hate glossy screens. I much prefer matte.

[Edited on September 11, 2011 at 9:18 PM. Reason : ]

9/11/2011 9:17:50 PM

Yeah glossy sucks ass. Whenever I use my MBP in the car or outside it's horrendous.

9/11/2011 9:23:09 PM

the only reason i need to want a glossy display is because i want one

9/11/2011 9:47:05 PM

cause that makes perfect sense and completely logical... could you add some beef to that want?

9/11/2011 9:52:45 PM

Truthfully I don't mind it inside but it's a pain when there's any light source whatsoever behind you.

Oh didn't mention this. I ordered the Acer!!! After doing a bunch of research on the input lag of IPS/non-TN displays I wanted a TN display for gaming. The 120hz and 3D should be fun too.

9/11/2011 10:00:35 PM

Should have spent that money on hookers and blow...

9/11/2011 10:06:28 PM