Well, he big 32-inch Dell U3219Q monitor that I ordered from Amazon (for $780) arrived on Monday, and I tried to get it to run with the stock Radeon 5770 card in my mid-2010 Mac Pro, just to see what screen resolutions were possible, but I found that I didn’t have the right cables to connect the monitor to the Mac.
The Dell monitor has no DVI port to match the one on the Mac’s 5770 video card, and the other ports on the monitor were not compatible with the ports on the card—at least with the cables I had—so I had to give up on that idea.
No doubt I could have gotten around the problem with the right cables, or with cable adapters, but I just decided to wait for the Radeon 7950 card to arrive in the mail that I bought off Ebay for $215.
Besides, since the old stock Radion 5770 has only 1024 MB of video memory, and can only drive a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display at 2560 x 1600, I doubt it could have done any better on the new 32-inch Dell. The Radeon 7950, however, with its 3 GB of video memory, has triple the power of the 5770.
When the card arrived I opened up the Mac, removed the 5770, and plugged the 7950 in its place. The old card had only one power cable running to the motherboard, while this newer, higher-powered card has two. Fortunately the seller of the card provided the two cables, so I didn’t have to go looking for them. Then I buttoned the Mac back up and connected the new monitor to it with one of the the cables that came with it.
Firing up the Mac for the first time with the new card and monitor was an exciting experience, because the startup chime just kept going and going, chiming over and over again, while the screen remained black. I finally had to shut down the Mac back by holding down the startup button.
I figured that I must have done something seriously wrong when I installed the video card, but when I hit the startup button the second time, to my great relief the computer started up normally, and the screen lit up. So what caused the Mac to sneeze over and over again like that on the initial startup? I guess I’ll never know, but I’m sure glad that whatever caused it went away, and it hasn’t done it again.
Once the desktop appeared I was immediately impressed with how sharp the text and icons look on this new monitor, compared to my old Apple Cinema Display, and looking into the Displays control panel of the Mac’s System Prefs, I was surprised at how many, and what high resolutions, this video card can provide on this monitor.
The Dell U3219Q is advertised as a 4K monitor, but when paired up with the Radeon 7950 card like this you are offered no fewer than eighteen different resolutions, all the way up to 7680 x 4320 pixels. 4K is about in the middle of all these possibilities.
Below are all the resolutions available with this video card and monitor combination:
729p
1080i
1080p
1334 x 756
1600 x 1900
2048 x 1152
2304 x 1296
2560 x1440
3008 x 1692
3200 x 1800
3360 x 1890
3840 x 2160
4096 x 2304
4608 x 2592
5120 x 2880
6016 x 3384
6400 x 3600
7680 x 4320
At the lowest end of these choices, 720p provides text with ridiculously large letters several inches tall, and at the high end, 7680 X 4320, text is too tiny to read. After some experimenting, I settled on 3200 x 1800 for now, which provides large enough text for me to read easily, and images with very sharp details. When I get into video editing and other tasks with this monitor I’ll try other resolutions, looking for the ideal ones.
I had no idea that text and images could be this sharp on a computer monitor. It makes the old Apple Cinema Display, with its maximum 2560 x 1600 screen that I’ve been accustomed for years, seem slightly blurry by comparison. Obviously there has been considerable progress in screen design over the last few years. This new monitor also seems to have accurate color right out of the box (judging largely by skin tones, since I deal with a lot of portraits) so this monitor looks like a winner for me.
Having read lots of monitor reviews over the last few weeks, I know that there are reported to be better monitors than this one (for a lot more money, of course), but after only one day of evaluation, this one sure seems quite good enough for me. I think I’ve found what I was looking for, thanks in great part to all the great help I’ve found on this forum, particularly from Nick. Many thanks!
