Coming from 27" iMac - 1x 27" screen or 2x 22-24" ones?

[loztheguru]

Hi All,

I'm moving from a 27" iMac to my first ever Hackintosh, and so far the community her couldn't have been more helpful!

One of the big questions is what to do regarding a monitor. A 27" 2560x1440 screen of reasonable quality is pretty pricey, much more so than 2x22" full HD screens. Anyone got any experience of switching, or care to outline the benefits of either choice?

I use my machine mostly for day to day stuff (web browsing, listening to music etc) and marking students essays, ocassionally video editing, gaming at the weekends etc.

Thoughts?

 

[DarfWeder]

For two screens to work you will need some form of a discrete graphics card. Let's leave in the middle what the brand etc will be.
If you do that it adds about $100-125 to the price tag. I see the GTX650 as the base line here. There may be other visions.

On the other hand, you could do with simply the internal gfx card, if your requirements are not that high. But, seeing that you want to edit some video, you like to play a game or so.... then I am not sure the HD4600 is going to cut it for you. It was one of the reasons I upgraded my main rig with the Z77 and the HD4000, with a GTX650Ti. I now use one monitor (HP ZR2440W) for main monitor, including Lightroom work. The old Samsung 24" gets used for VDO editing, as it is somewhat faster. The color difference side by side is quite remarkable. But, I knew that up front.

FCPX and also Adobe programs use the GPU to offload some tasks, this is where one or even two GFX cards (dual SLI) can really rock. Obviously for a price.

Personally. a good 24" monitor, with excellent sharpness or a 27", single monitor, is what I prefer. I prefer one monitor right in front of me, and don't like the constant ping pong game watching effect sitting in the middle of two monitors has.