Samsung and ATI team on SyncMaster MD230 mega-displays for wide-eyed gamers
When it comes to gaming, it's hard to overdo it on the display front. Sure, Samsung and ATI have given it their best shot with the new SyncMaster MD230 displays powered by ATI's updated Eyefinity6 tech, but somehow we'll still be hungry for more by the time next year rolls around. Still, the MD230 is pretty wild, with six-screen or three-screen configurations retailing for $3,099 and $1,899 respectively, with each screen running at 2560 x 1600 for a total of 12x the resolution of 1080p across the six displays in total. It obviously takes a brand new ATI card to accomplish this (and a little help from that beefy DisplayPort plug), but we're sure if you're willing to drop $3,099 on your display, you can scrounge up the cash for the GPU. The displays should start shipping early this year.





























Its not 2560x1600 put 1080p see http://ces.cnet.com/8301-31045_1-10429182-269.html
@viperia Ya, it appears Engadget made a mistake on that one. In the case of 1080p monitors, this really is not much of a bargain anymore. Resolution makes a bit of difference here.
Glad to see Display Port finally coming through, should get really interesting to see where it fits in tech this year vs DVI and HDMI
It is good to see ATI now putting 2 DVI, 1 HDMI and 1 DisplayPort as standard connectors on the back of all their mid to top range of cards. What is is Nvidia doing.. removing connectors! Their top end card which went from a dual PCB to a single PCB design in a recent upgrade ended up losing the HDMI connector leaving only 2 DVI connectors and not a single DisplayPort in sight in any of their range. A DVI to HDMI dongle doesn't help me keep multiple displays connected at the same time. Good going Nvidia!
ATIs top end card outperforms Nvidia top end card, is cheaper and has all four connectors.. gee let me think which card I would like =/
Until games other than flight sims support multi monitor setups like this who cares?
Three monitors, nine monitors, or GTFO. You can't play a first person shooter on this $3,000 display. That's sad. (Because of the bezel in the center of the screen.)
Oh, and to the commenter complaining the display isn't 120hz... don't worry about it. Your computer is never going to hit 120 FPS when its pushing 7680 x 3200.
@Smurf
It wouldn't matter if they were 120hz. I don't believe even the latest displayport spec has enough bandwidth to output 2560x1600 @ 120hz. Assuming that was the native resolution of those panels, I mean. It isn't.
I guess the point I'm making is that we won't be seeing 120hz 2560x1600 displays available until the bandwidth limitations in the current displayport spec (which is already faster than dual-link DVI) are dealt with.
@Smurf
120hz would be for 3D. Its not Nvidia but im sure AMD wont be left behind in that arena.
Or you can get 2048x1152 pixels in the Samsung 2343BXW for $199 each. Very fast, stable, crisp, bright displays, low power and thin bezels. Six displays brings 14,155,776 pixels packed into 23 inch display -- even then you have to sit back to keep everything in your peripheral vision.
@adamgreen222
Judging by the contrast and response time specs posted on the CNET link, I believe these displays are PVA, not TN, so they will have much better colors, viewing angles, and contrast when compared to that display. This (somewhat) justifies the higher cost.
@grumbles The specs are certainly better, but only incrementally. I think if the price premium were say 20% -- as it no doubt will be in a matter of months -- then it's okay, but it's still only incrementally improving panel solutions. Big panels are still a heavy, expensive solution. I think the next step is projectors capable of this number of pixels.This is a weak proposition in terms of bang for the buck. If the product had no bezels and didn't have a seam straight through the center of focus, it would be impressive, but have those bezels break up the landscape is the on-going problem. I'm looking forward to a projector that will deliver this order of pixels in a seamless presentation -- this leads to interactive devices instead of just incrementally "better" panel technology.
What's the highest pixel count on a single (consumer) projector today? Has any vendor delivered a paired projector yet? (Something that combines an array of two or more projects to deliver a single contiguous image with this range of say 6000x2000 pixels?
correction I meant 23" based on the model number as well...
Does anyone know if I can use this as a Display Wall for TV and run a single TV show span across all 3 monitors or 3 separate TV shows on each monitor?
I don't get it, as much as everyone would love to have this setup in their home, maybe 5 people out of all of NA will own this....so...is it made to appeal to arcade owners or something? Serious question...
That screen could be very useful for watching pr0n (;
wait 3x30" @ 2560x1600 for $1,899 ... I think thats a bargain
This is great. It could be my next setup if i can also remove the bars between the screens.
Hmmm... Maybe i'm in deep waters here but is ATI and AMD really not completely different things? seems like Samsung has it mixed up a bit, look at the pictures from the stand, the writing on the wall says "AMD Eyefinity"!
The price isn't too bad actually. I was expecting it to be over 6k.
Time to start saving.
I've had a similar setup with 6 screens for a few years now..
http://www.ranker.com/list/how-to-build-a-kick-ass-workstation-for-_5200-_april-2008_/damien
6 screens @ 1680x1050 each for a desktop size of 5040x2100. It's hooked up to two ATI quad-DVI cards @ PCIex16, each card has dual ATI 2600XT chips (4 GPUs total, 2GB video RAM total). Not bad for back when I built it, but the MD230 display above will definitely be replacing my current setup sometime soon I hope, along with newer video cards. The 6 screen setup has been worth every penny. I have 10 Megapixels and I love em. I can only imagine what a 27 megapixel display would look like.. can't wait to find out.