My Dell 3007WFP is here!

My Dell 3007WFP where it belong: on my desk! My monitor arrived late Tuesday and I’ve been mesmerized ever since :-) I have been blogging a bit about it, and now it’s finally there, right infront of me…

It’s huge, really, really huge, please see for yourself on the image on the right (click to see the full size). You actually have to turn your head to look from one corner to another — that feels weird and wonderful at the same time :-)

Unpacking and setting it up went quick and easy. The big cardboard box was made so that instead of lifting the monitor up and out of the box, the box itself could be lifted up past the monitor so that only the bottom piece of the box was left standing. It was then easy to pull out the monitor.

Having connected the power cable and dual-link DVI cable (which came with the monitor) I turned the machine on. It came up fine with the BIOS and the kernel writing it’s usual status messages in gigantic letters. But when GDM was supposed to start the screen went blank.

“Hmm…”, I thought. Switching to the console worked fine, so I took at look at my xorg.conf file. With my old ViewSonic monitor I had had to issue a IgnoreEDID commands to the nvidia driver because the monitor reported some wrong values. Having deleted that setting I could simply set the resolution to 2650×1600 and restart X — it worked just like that.

Closer view I had been reading about how other people had to specify special modelines and other voodoo to get the monitor working… so I was glad to have it working without any battles :-) The built-in memory card reader also works fine, I transferred the pictures you see in the post via it. It simply showed up as any other USB mass storage device in GNU/Linux and I could easily mount it.

After having used the monitor for three days I think it’s super. The image is crisp and clear and the colors are as good as any other LCD I’ve seen. The viewing angle is large enough that I haven’t noticed any distortion of colors. Stéphanie and I rented The Da Vinci Code the evening I got the monitor and I saw no ghosting while watching it.

My conclussion must be that if you have the money and if you spend a lot of time at your computer, then this monitor is fantastic. I’m still trying to get used to administrating so much space, but I’m sure that I’ll get used to it with time :-)

28 Comments

  1. Thomas:

    That is so cool :)
    Can I have it?

  2. Martin Geisler:

    Ehh… let me think…

    No, you cannot have it! Sorry! :-)

  3. Thomas:

    Can I have Stephanies iPod then? (Of course I would repaint it in a less sissy color)

  4. Stéphanie:

    tut tut tut

  5. Thomas:

    Martin: You should post a full-resolution e17 screenshot to help of grasp its dimensions.

  6. Thomas:

    To help us grasp its dimensions.

  7. Stéphanie:

    Ok, Martin is busy but here you go: clickie - go nuts! :)

  8. Thomas:

    Martin busy? Oh yeah, we wouldn’t want to waste the time of such an important man. Although Rune did see him in FøTeX today so he is not that busy :)
    Thanks for the clickie, nice colours (not!)

  9. Stéphanie:

    Well there you have it — he was busy running errands… for me. ;)

    btw: I thought you didn’t like Borat — How shocking of you to quote him!

  10. Thomas:

    I am not quoting him explicitely, I just happened to use a phrase also used in that movie.
    Oh, and it is good to see that you keep Martin in his place, we wouldn’t want him to get independent and all :)

  11. Stéphanie:

    How am I supposed to know — I haven’t seen the film and probably never will.

    Independece? Gee, don’t you plant that kind of ideas into his head, you hear me! Shush!

  12. sheer:

    Can you show me your xorg.conf plzzzzzzzz… ??
    thx :-)

  13. Martin Geisler:

    Hi sheer. The xorg.conf file is really boring… here’s the part about the display:

    Section "Monitor"
        Identifier     "Dell 3007WFP"
        HorizSync       30.0 - 75.0
        VertRefresh     60.0 - 60.0
        Option         "DPMS"
    EndSection
    
    Section "Device"
        Identifier     "ASUS GeForce 7600GS"
        Driver         "nvidia"
    EndSection
    
    Section "Screen"
        Identifier     "Default Screen"
        Device         "ASUS GeForce 7600GS"
        Monitor        "Dell 3007WFP"
        DefaultDepth   24
        Option         "NoLogo"   "yes"
        SubSection     "Display"
            Depth       24
            Modes      "2560x1600"
        EndSubSection
    EndSection
    

    It actually just worked! :-)

  14. David:

    Hi, I found your website because I’m about to buy the Dell 30″ monitor and I also have the same video card as you (7600GS). I’d love to know if that combo is still working out well for you, before I buy mine. Specifically, have you played any games with it…and if so, how was it?

    Thanks so much!
    David

  15. Martin Geisler:

    I’m still very happy with the combination, it’s working well for normal 2D work including watching movies from DVD or from my TV tuner card.

    As for games, then I’ve been playing Spring recently (a clone of Total Annihilation with full 3D units and landscape) and it works fine at half the max resolution (1280×800). I can play it in 2560×1600 and it looks really cool until I get many units on the screen at the same time. Then the frame rate drops and the game is unplayable. I have a AMD X2 3800 CPU and I’ve seen that it’s running at 80–90% utilization when playing at 1280×800. So it might very well be the bottleneck for playing Spring at the full 2560×1600 resolution.

    Another game I’ve been playing is OpenTTD. This is 2D and it runs fine at its maximum resolution of 1920×1200.

    I hope this helps with your decision. All in all I will say that I’ve had no problems getting this monitor fully working under Linux. The built-in card reader is also nice.

  16. David:

    Hello again, Martin. Just a quick update to say that I did buy the 3007wfp-HC. It just got here today and I’m IN LOVE! The display is absolutely beautiful and took me all of 2 seconds to get use to how big this thing is. But, it was a loooong two seconds, in which I actually though “What the hell have I done…this is freeking HUGE!”.

    Thanks for your feedback, it did help me mack up my mind, as I have the same graphics card as you. I didn’t have to do ANYTHING to get it work. I just unplugged the old monitor, plugged in the new one and and it was instant (over)gratification. Worth every penny! :) Anyway, thanks again for sharing your experience with this monitor.

    -David

  17. Martin Geisler:

    Hi David — I’m glad to have helped! I was shocked too at first, but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it :-) But then comes the reverse-shock: working with a normal sized monitor at the office or elsewhere…

  18. David:

    LOL, that’s exactly what I’m expecting. I have to use a laptop for work (what I’m using right now) and it is a pretty dramatic difference. A different world!

  19. Andy:

    If you don’t mind a suggestion:
    Something fun to do with this monitor is to take a digital pic of the wall section covered up by the monitor. Obviously, this involves removing the monitor from the desk. Then use the photo for your desktop.
    It really works well if you have an outlet, or window frame or something being covered by the monitor as it now shows up as if, at first glance, the monitor is not there. Also helps to remove desktop icons.

  20. Martin Geisler:

    Cool idea! :-) But my monitor is set against a white wall at the moment, so it wouldn’t look cool right now.

  21. Jens:

    Hi Martin,
    OT:If you follow this link http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g127/Anderbilt/pre-view2.jpg you can see how the room comes alive.
    I found your monitor pic perfect for this job.
    It’s not finished yet, but will be in a week or so.

  22. Martin:

    Wow, that is crazy but cool! :-) Have fun with the picture!

  23. Steven:

    We’re trying to use this monitor for kiosks but the ATI card we purchased isn’t passing muster.

    I’m thinking about trying your Asus card but I wonder if xrandr will rotate the display 90 degrees.

    Would you try an “xrandr -o left” and let us know if it works with the nvidia drivers? Thanks!

  24. Martin Geisler:

    Steven: I’m away from home for two weeks, but I’ll try it when I get back. Feel free to remind me if I forget… :-)

  25. Martin Geisler:

    Steven: it works! I tried adding a Option "rotate" "left" line to my xorg.conf file, and it worked as advertised. It looks very weird when everything is flipped on such a big display :-)

  26. Jay:

    I love the pic. You’ve got one of THE BEST, most Luxurious monitors on the market, the real “no expenses spared” deal. Then you’ve got it paired with a little crappy standard white keyboard that you probably got free somewhere, ROFL. That’s like wearing a tuxedo while picking up your supermodel girlfriend, then getting on a rusty bicycle to go to dinner.

    And don’t worry, I’m not laughing at you, but with you. Thanks for the article BTW, I’m about to get this monitor here and I’m very excited.

  27. Martin Geisler:

    Jay: heh, I love the comment about the keyboard :-) You’re spot on — I think I payed $10 for it… I got it as a temporary keyboard after I broke my normal keyboard by pouring cola into it :-)

  28. Jack:

    Congrats on the new computer. Looks awesome. I am in bad need of an upgrade myself!

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