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Author Topic: Comments on NEC 2180WG review  (Read 2962 times)

darrenr

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Comments on NEC 2180WG review
« on: July 18, 2006, 01:15:27 pm »

Matrox and a few other brands have video cards with special drivers for photoshop for "10 bit".  Does this equate to having a 10bit per channel video output available on DVI connectors?  Or just analogue or not at all for output?

On the topic of expensive monitors, has anyone tried the Viewsonic VP2290b?
At 3840x2400 (9.2MP), that's more than enough for many DSLRs that are being used professionally.  They don't quite beat the Nec (sub-$6000), but IBM's now discontinued model that supported this resolution was >$8000.  Does anyone have any experience with this?  Does the price tag of the NEC make it significantly more worthwhile than the Viewsonic, because of colour accuracy, despite having a smaller display?

Darren
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jliechty

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Comments on NEC 2180WG review
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2006, 07:19:44 pm »

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Matrox and a few other brands have video cards with special drivers for photoshop for "10 bit".  Does this equate to having a 10bit per channel video output available on DVI connectors?  Or just analogue or not at all for output?
The Matrox Parhelia can output 10 bit color on the analog connection only. It supports a 10 bit per channel mode and includes a plug-in that allows Photoshop to display images in high color.

ATI's FireGL graphics accelerators have 10 bit capability on the analog and digital outputs (assuming your LCD supports it, that is), but there is no way to get more than 8 bit color out of Photoshop. I have heard that one can create 10 bit textures in OpenGL or Direct3D that can be output without downsampling on a FireGL, but I'm very uncertain about the truth of that speculation. Needless to say, this would require a rewrite of Photoshop, and that's not likely to happen.
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On the topic of expensive monitors, has anyone tried the Viewsonic VP2290b?
At 3840x2400 (9.2MP), that's more than enough for many DSLRs that are being used professionally.  They don't quite beat the Nec (sub-$6000), but IBM's now discontinued model that supported this resolution was >$8000.  Does anyone have any experience with this?  Does the price tag of the NEC make it significantly more worthwhile than the Viewsonic, because of colour accuracy, despite having a smaller display?
The Viewsonic is indeed a very nice monitor, judging from the specifications. I've never seen one in person and probably never will, but I don't doubt that it would be great for photographic retouching and display. Reviews are almost nonexistent, but I've heard that it has a very low refresh rate (no flickering of course, but quite "laggy"). One version required four DVI connections to work optimally; I'm not sure if they can now make it work on two dual-link DVI connections or not.
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digitaldog

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Comments on NEC 2180WG review
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2006, 09:17:48 am »

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Matrox and a few other brands have video cards with special drivers for photoshop for "10 bit".  Does this equate to having a 10bit per channel video output available on DVI connectors?  Or just analogue or not at all for output?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


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While the Matrox board has 10 bit DACs (as do ATIs), this is of course only
useful for older analog monitors. Modern digital DVI monitors are not able
to take advantage of this.

Additionally, the data going into the 10 bit DACs is still 8 bit data from
the frame buffer but going through an 8 in x 10 bit out LUT. While having a
10 bit LUT on the video card is a great step forward, it is useless on
todays digital monitors since single-link DVI is an 8 bit bottleneck.

The ATI Avivo chipset mentioned that features 10 and 16 bit output is
currently only really useful for motion video, since the video stream data
can be processed (gamma, de-interlacing, color conversion, scaling etc.)
within the card at higher than 8 bit depth.

However until the core OSs and applications are updated to support frame
buffers of >8 bit depth, this is not of much use to all of us using
Photoshop etc.

Will Hollingworth
Manager of OEM Product Design & Development Engineering
NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc.
[a href=\"http://www.necdisplay.com]http://www.necdisplay.com[/url]
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