Dell 24" 4k User thread

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
14
81
Just got mine hooked up. My lord is it gorgeous. The PPI is simply stunning. I was only able to spend about 30 mins with it till we had to leave for the in laws for the night. Windows 7 dpi scaling isn't as terrible as I though it would be. Probably cause of how small the pixels actually are, 150% actually makes things normal.

As far as games are concerned, I pretty much only had time to run a couple quick benchies with zero time to tinker.

I run 780 ti's in sli.

Tomb Raider with max settings minus AA.
was 61 fps ave

Metro LL max settings minus AA with PhysX
was 51 fps

Crysis 3
The game was choppy on Ultra with no AA FPS seemed to be in the upper 40's however. dropping settings down to high resulted in a big fps jump to the 60's yet it still didn't seem smooth. Again I had no time to tinker, just wanted to check a couple games out.

Skyrim
I couldn't get the game to launch. I kept getting an error saying that resolution wasn't supported by device. Skyrim is a picky animal. Maybe I was overlooking a small detail.

My 30 minute eval left me dying to get home to spend more time with it.
The stand is very sturdy and is of excellent fit and finish. Has a very Apple feel to it. The pivot mechanism seems a little loose on mine and almost seems to not sit flat. I've had this problem before on a 2407 wfp. I should be able to rememdy it. Just wanted to make note

No DVI, at all. Meh, time to move on I guess.

I did a very quick dead pixel assessment which I can say with 90% confidence that there are none. I will have to look closer (literally) later. I don't even know if I could actually see one if there were any. The pixels are that small.

Back light uniformity looked spot on, at least nothing glaringly obvious.
I hope to chime in tomorrow night with a few pics of the screen in action and a better "seat of the pants" opinion.


--edit--12/26/13


I'm having a couple weird little problems that I'm still trying to work through. The monitor doesn't come out of sleep when I turn the computer on from an extender cold boot. I have to either pull the display port cable or power cycle it. Infrequently when it does come on the left half of the screen is slightly garbled but corrects itself with a power cycle/cable cble cycle/input cycle... Not sure if it either of these issues are monitor related or how my video card and or drivers are handling MST. It's always the left side of the screen.

Even if it is the monitor, I won't exchange it right away. I'd rather wait till newer revisions come out.
 
Last edited:

96Firebird

Diamond Member
Nov 8, 2010
5,709
316
126
Sounds like you are feeling under the weather and should stay home from the in-laws and any other family gatherings for the holidays.

^_^
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
14
81
very under the weather =). My house is only 13 miles away. Think I could sneak out in the middle of the night? The real kicker that I still have to make it through Christmas dinner tomorrow night at another relatives house before I can finally make time to use it. Hopefully by 10 pm. So maybe another 24 hours before I get me time again. =(
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
very under the weather =). My house is only 13 miles away. Think I could sneak out in the middle of the night? The real kicker that I still have to make it through Christmas dinner tomorrow night at another relatives house before I can finally make time to use it. Hopefully by 10 pm. So maybe another 24 hours before I get me time again. =(

That's not fair to get something for Christmas and not get to use it. No child should be expected to suffer like that.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,229
9,990
126
Sounds really sweet! I have wanted some really high-DPI monitors (mostly for text work and web browsing) for some time now, but I simply don't have that kind of money.

I dropped $280 (shipped) ea on a pair of 26" 1920x1200 LCDs which have done me right thus far. KDS is the brand, they've been quite exemplary, even though they are just TN.
 

alcoholbob

Diamond Member
May 24, 2005
6,271
323
126
I wonder what would happen if you tried to drive three of these...would Quad SLI 780 Tis even manage 20fps average? heh.
 

zebrax2

Senior member
Nov 18, 2007
972
62
91
No pics blasphemy! :D

Very nice monitor. How are the jaggies at that ppi? AA still required?
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,107
1,260
126
Post pictures! Although they don't really do it justice without having one in front of you.

My experience was similar in that AA in modern games is out of the question if you want playable frames. I never tried Tomb Raider, but in Metro LL I turned things down from VH to H and still was not really happy with it. Crysis 3 I had to run medium settings for it be playable and I had to dial settings down in the original Crysis as well.

I threw in the towel when I had to run Medium in BF3 to keep 60fps and sent mine back.

Would be interested to hear some BF4 results and settings.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
Nice results. Doesnt look so bad in the graphics demanding area. Specially if you lower settings a tad more. Or get 20nm GPUs :p

How do you feel about no AA? Completely useless feature on your 4K? Or still something you desire?
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
14
81
Pics after 9 or 10 est. :) the power demand is very similar to 4xAA 2560x1600.
 
Last edited:

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,939
6
81
Nice results. Doesnt look so bad in the graphics demanding area. Specially if you lower settings a tad more. Or get 20nm GPUs :p

How do you feel about no AA? Completely useless feature on your 4K? Or still something you desire?

Best thing is you can just reduce the resolution in game to 1920x1080 if you are struggling without having any scaling issues, and just add some AA.

Also OP, you can check Widescreengamingforum.com if you have any issues with games.
They don't just do widescreen these days, they also do triple monitor support, 4k and 21:9 etc. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything about Skyrim and 4k.
 
Last edited:

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
4,762
0
76
Would be interested to hear how a game at 1080p looks on the screen. In theory it should be the same as if you were using a 1080 panel but I suspect that the square pixel it produces might look different.
 

CitanUzuki

Senior member
Jan 8, 2009
464
0
0
^ I was under the impression that using a non native resolution always results in an inferior image? That is, running a 4k monitor at 1080p would look worse than a similarly sized monitor running at a native 1080p.

I am seriously considering a 4K monitor, but looking at comments like Grooveriding's gives me pause.
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,939
6
81
^ I was under the impression that using a non native resolution always results in an inferior image? That is, running a 4k monitor at 1080p would look worse than a similarly sized monitor running at a native 1080p.

I am seriously considering a 4K monitor, but looking at comments like Grooveriding's gives me pause.

If you run a 1080p monitor at 720p, then each pixel doesn't map exactly, so you end up with some blurriness and it doesn't work "properly".
Similarly 1080p on a 1600/1440p monitor.

However, with a 3840x2160 monitor, if you run at 1080p then each pixel is mapped (in theory) directly to 4 pixels, as 4k is 4x1080p.
So while most monitors running non-standard resolutions would look worse than a monitor of the same diagonal size with that resolution, with a 4k monitor it's not the case as the resolution is a direct multiple of 1080p.

Similarly, you could run a 2560x1440 monitor at 1280x720 and it would be a 1:4 mapping, meaning that it would look the same as a native 720p monitor would.
If you ran at 1080p on a 1440p, you don't get direct 1:4, you get 1:1.777, so the pixels don't match up.

A good example would be Apple's retina display. Apple uses "retina" displays which are exact multiples of their standard resolutions, so the iPad Retina got a resolution which is 4x the regular iPad resolution, so that things would scale up exactly. On their Retina Macbooks, they also picked a direct multiple of the standard resolution to ensure direct scaling up.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/6

Basically, if the 4:1 mapping of a 4k display showing 1080p was a problem, it would be something that would already have been borne out by people complaining about Apple's retina displays, because they do the exact same thing as their default mode, they do 1:4 mapping on the iPhone, iPad and Macbook, only on the Macbook (for example) it's 1440x900 and 2880x1800 as the two resolutions, rather than 1920x1080 and 3840x2160.

If you want to learn more then you can probably read countless articles about the first gen retina Macbooks/iPads etc which will explain it.
As I am talking specifically about gaming, where the game resolution is set, scaling issues in things like web browsers/etc aren't relevant. For desktop use their may be other issues with running at 4k resolution, but for gaming, 1080p at 4k is absolutely fine.
 
Last edited:

Gloomy

Golden Member
Oct 12, 2010
1,469
21
81
I've run 720p on my 1440 monitor. It's true, it doesn't produce scaling artifacts.

But it's literally four times less detail. So it still looked, to be frank, like crap.

1080p may be on the threshold of an acceptable compromise though-- 720p is just waaaay too low.
 

tweakboy

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2010
9,517
2
81
www.hammiestudios.com
Its 8ms response time. this thing is a po to me... Blurry graphics on quick movements,,,,

ghosting.... and stuff will happen... games will have a laggy mouse with vsync on.. gg
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
14
81
So, I have to say. SLi microstutters like crazy now. Only vsync can resolve the issue, sometimes. Argh. trouble shooting ahead
 

ZGR

Platinum Member
Oct 26, 2012
2,052
656
136
When you get the chance could you report VRAM usage for some of the games you tested? Is aliasing noticeable after 2xAA at all?

It sounds like your 780 ti's are gonna have to work hard from now on :p
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
14
81
When you get the chance could you report VRAM usage for some of the games you tested? Is aliasing noticeable after 2xAA at all?

It sounds like your 780 ti's are gonna have to work hard from now on :p

everything so far seems to top out at around 2000 to 2500 megs of vram.

BF3, Crysis 3, Skyrim (modded), Tomb Raider a little less

Those were with no AA as there really is no need for it. Only Crysis 3 so far has any aliasing to speak of and even then you have to really look for it. It's mainly the way the lighting shows up on stair cases and similar scenarios.

I haven't tried too much yet. Tonight is my first real date night. Shhhh, don't tell my wife I just said that.

I'm about to fire up BF 4 and a couple others. This monitor has absolutely the best picture I have ever laid my eyes on. I'm not even gonna bother posting any pics because they don't even come close to representing what you get first hand.

oh, and my reports of microstutter were user error... I'm a dope sometimes, lol
 

Teizo

Golden Member
Oct 28, 2010
1,271
31
91
I did the custom 4k down sampling trick on my monitor and even though it was not true 4k I could really tell the textures in games were allot better.

Using FXAA in SCBL I was averaging around 65fps. Nothing else worked and would cause a crash, but interesting thing is that even down sampling FXAA was more than enough.

With good prices, I think that will help adoption knowing, for me at least, MSAA and the like are not really needed.
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
6,893
14
81
Bf 4 (MP) on Ultra, no AA @3840x2160 is locked @ 60 fps with adaptive v-sync most of the time.

Selling my U3011. No need for it. I can live with the very minor short comings of this monitor. Gonna miss her but I really like getting my desk back with this beauty and well, she's a beauty.