Our Brave New World of 4K Displays

What is not true? Can’t comment on that since it is not clear, but:

Every single (and I don’t find Dell 5K cheap to be honest) MST display I had (and I had plenty: UP3214Q, PQ321Q, Sharp and UP2715K now) had same issues. Those issues are handled by firmware and graphics driver. It is a constant battle between driver and display manufacturers who is to blame (has nothing to do with the OS), but problems are real: sleep issues, boot issues, screen artifacts, broken syncs…

http://jmswrnr.com/blog/the-firmware-issues-of-dell-up3214q-and-up2414q-a00-monitors/

Check this out:

:slight_smile:

Except for bugs with the (currently labeled “beta”) driver from one manufacturer for a just-released OS version… And with an easy workaround (use the Win8 driver).

Obviously there have been a lot of issues in the past with 4K, regardless of MST or SST. Thankfully things are a good deal better now, though obviously not perfect yet.

The review you quoted (which is itself over a year old) specifically says that MST worked for them at 60hz, and that some drivers used to have issues. How is that a reason to stay away today?

If your system can support SST at 60hz and the monitor you want also supports it, that’s obviously great. But I think it’s very valuable information to people with popular hardware like the SP3 to know that they can get 60hz over MST monitors very easily, or 50hz over SST monitors with a bit of (unfortunately hacky) work.

Dell’s early revisions of the UP2414Q do have an annoying wake issue, where sometimes after it sleeps you have to power it off and back on (or undock/redock your machine) to get it to wake up again. As far as I understand that’s specific to the monitor though, and everything I’ve found indicates that Dell has fixed that in later revisions of the monitor (though sadly it’s apparently not something you can fix with a software/firmware update). That’s a monitor bug though, not anything specific to the MST protocol.

Otherwise mine’s been working great for over a year, running at 60hz from my i5 Surface Pro 3. The only time I’ve had glitches is when using Intel’s beta Win10 drivers, and I’m hopeful they’ll fix that problem soon. In the meantime, using their Win8 driver avoids the glitches.

Oh, and I thought it was clear from the context, but I was saying it is not true that MST displays are made up of multiple panels. Perhaps some cheap ones work that way, but the good displays do not (and some displays support both MST and SST modes - again with a single physical panel).

Well: they’re not made of multiple physical panels, but the picture is indeed assembled as multiple pictures, two vertical, side by side. All MST monitors work that way.

Unfortunately, it is not an isolated problem with a specific monitor, but all. And happens on Win 8.1 too.

SST never had problems, aside from requirements, of course. But, modern graphics cards (and Intel is quite a crap product GPU to be honest, faked driver features, bad quality drivers…) support all required.

Intel generally has the highest quality drivers and the best GPUs for high-end ultrabooks where gaming isn’t a priority but fast desktop performance and low battery usage are key. If your goal is 3D gaming or other 3D intensive workloads, then yeah, you probably want a discrete graphics chip. If you’re a software developer like me and just want a quality desktop experience with crisp fonts and ample workspace with solid desktop performance and reliability (and battery life), then Intel’s on-chip graphics are generally great and getting better at 3D stuff all the time.

I don’t know why you’re repeating what I said about how MST works, but okay. As I said that’s an implementation detail with no impact to the user. Just like dual-link DVI with high res monitors before DisplayPort came along.

I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that all MST monitors have the wake problem. It’s well-confirmed as fixed in the later UP2414Q/UP3414Q models (and yes, on the original A00 revision, it happens on all OSes, including Mac OS X, as it’s a monitor bug). See posts here from people who exchanged their A00 for an A01:
http://commweb-ps3.us.dell.com/support-forums/peripherals/f/3529/t/19536443?pi23185=33

I’ll skip commenting on Intel driver, too funny.

Where do I get the idea that all MST monitors have the wake problem? Hmm… from experience?
How many 4K or 5K displays you used in the last two years by yourself so you can talk from experience? Because, it would really come as a shock to me that I actually got all broken samples for all the models I had (and I had pretty much all).

I think it is wrong to say that it is without an impact to users. Plethora of issues come from the very core of MST implementation and that directly impacts users. - I’ve never seen a glitch with dual-link DVI. Have you?

And regarding the fix, no it has never been fixed. I’ve used an A02 revision even (my 2x UP3214Q both went for 3 replacements) and it has never been fixed in the end.

The very link you offer up there has a funny comment by a user that got a “fixed” A01 display:

"Well, i received monitor last night, it worked 5-6h(i imidalty swaped to 1.2 dp so i can have 60hz) , than problems started. It started to go to powersaving mode on random … during my work, and during my game , than it shows half screen, etc. I also having problems waking monitor up from sleeping mode ( works only if u restart/shut down pc )… "

Won’t go into operating systems again. I rest my case with a screenshot up there. (Confirmed on AMD cards too.)

Jeff,

I was looking at getting 2 X GeForce GTX 970 over 1 X 980Ti

What are your thoughts on that as you alluded to problems with multi GPU on last build.

Justin

Probably fine, my multi GPU setups were quite stable. However, there is always more complexity, more power draw, and according to Tech Report more variability in game frame rate with two GPUs.

Both Nvidia and AMD have worked on the multi GPU frame rate variability problem a fair bit since it was publicized in 2012 / 2013. So it might not be a huge issue today.

In general it is better to get a single fast card rather than two slower cards, though. Might be more expensive if that forces you into the super premium enthusiast high end cards, though, so it is a reasonable trade off to make.

The GPU guys must be super excited about 4K since it is a very legit reason to need even more obscene GPU horsepower than what we have today. If displays were stuck at 1080p you could basically stop buying new GPUs from this day on, forever, and be fine.

Besides gaming I am looking at this for video rendering and most software like Premiere takes advantage of multi GPU as well as thinking can push more pixels for 4K gaming.

I am concerned about heat and noise though as extra load on system and requiring a 750W power supply ups the factor.

Considering my last build was in 2011 with sandy bridge and a minor GPU upgrade about 2 years ago, I think a 6 core with 2 GPU will get me another 4 years.

I assume that the flo mounting system that you went for is the flo modular?

According to the flo website:

Flo Modular can support a triple screen cockpit for 22” screens in landscape or 24” screens in a portrait configuration

Did you just ignore that and hope that it worked with 27"

I am now thinking of going for the same setup as you but as I currently have 2 20 inch 4:3 monitors I am worried about the space requirement for 2 27" monitors. There don’t seem to be many smaller 4k monitors around…

27’’ monitors are simply too big. But I’d love to see curved 27’’ UHD monitor.

I really don’t understand why Samsung & LG try to push curved TVs to living rooms, when the perfect use case for the curved screen is computer monitor.

I am studying BSc Computer Science and often use the computer for more than 6 hours a day programming.
I need a monitor that will not do a lot of harm to my eyes. Any ideas? A good anti-glare monitor perhaps?

I’ve been pretty adament about prefering 16:10 displays, but it seems these are on the way out. Does anyone have experience coming from a 16:10 to a 16:9 4k or 1440p for programming and terminal work? Do you miss the vertical real estate?

Large horizontal viewing angle, 60+hz refresh rate, and no PWM or high PWM rate. Honestly I’m just getting back into understanding monitor specs, but these are what I’d look for.

Still not convinced on 4k compatibility for Linux, but I love it on my MBP.

Only it’s not really 4K (nor 8K for that matter).
From what I can see, it’s 3.8K and 7.6K respectively.

Are monitor and TV makers going down the path of HDD makers with the 1000/1024 “conversion”? If so, what’s the origin of this reduction?

Or just blatantly lying?

I’ve owned three ASUS monitors, including the one mentioned in the article. One was HDMI, the other two were DisplayPort and HDMI. On all of them, I experienced random issues, such as the screen going black, or going to sleep and never waking up (unless power was pulled.) This seemed to happen even more so when I used DisplayPort on a Mac. Buyer beware. I simply think ASUS’s DisplayPort implementation is wonky. Contacting their support, they wanted me to pay to ship it back (it was only a few months old) and they would only send me a refurb, and not another model/new display. Unacceptable for something so pricey, and likely to have the same issues.

I have had some intermittent display glitches, which I chalked up to the high bandwidth of 4k at 60hz times three for my three displays. But nothing systemic so far.

For what it’s worth, I sold my monitor and bought an Acer. Haven’t had any DisplayPort drop outs/issues since. knock on wood

Surface Pro 3 can handle a single 50Hz 4k display using the regular mDP, OR a 40Hz 4k and a 30Hz 4k daisy chained. Some Intel driver tweaks are required to manually add those resolutions.

This is without the need of a dock.

The limitation comes from the bandwidth capability of the port, and is less to do with the screen, rather the technology to drive the display.

Do you use any form of scaling with 4K UHD on your 27"?