4 ms·

I think you're inflating prices. You can get a really good 4k 27" monitor for about $500,

by edu 9y ago

wlesieutre 9y ago
Maybe they meant "5K monitor" which is what the iMac Pro has and would fit this price range better.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Nope, the closest thing you can get to the iMac Pro display is likely something like a the Dell PrimeColor UP2718Q which costs about $1500 or the UP2715K which goes for around $1300.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    Isn't the closest thing just any other monitor with the exact same panel? The panel isn't everything - but it's a lot. https://www.amazon.com/LG-27MD5KA-UltraFine-International-Version/dp/B06XH8XBMR https://www.amazon.com/LG-27MD5KA-UltraFine-International-Ve... In any case: you'll need to put up $1500 to get this. Either a "better" Pro 4K or the equivalent 5K.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      I specifically didn't suggest it because you can't connect it to anything that doesn't supports Thunderbolt 3 monitors since it doesn't have a display port connection, so you can't use that with a PC in any reliable way.
      - PascLeRasc 9y ago
        Wait, so my 2014 13" rMBP won't be able to connect to it? A coworker has one and it looks amazing, I had it on my "if I win the lottery" list.
        dogma1138 9y ago
        Nope neither can my late 2015 MBP... System Requirements Operating System: macOS Sierra 10.12.1 or later Connection: Thunderbolt 3–enabled Mac https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k-display https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k...
        wlesieutre 9y ago
        Nope, Thunderbolt 3 exclusively. That's the 2016/2017 MBP, iMac, and iMac Pro. Mini-macbook is USB-C without Thunderbolt, Mac Pro and Mac Mini are still Thunderbolt 2.
      - alkonaut 9y ago
        Odd if LG makes a high end panel and doesn’t maximize the market for it by making e.g a regular DisplayPort monitor. Smells a bit like Apple has got an exclusivity deal to be the only platform with 5K IPS. Might be paranoid...
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Yes, that's what I said. Parent price breakdown comment had "~$1300 for a professional 4K monitor" but I'm assuming you meant 5K monitor instead of 4K.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      There aren’t good 5K monitors really for the PC they are either 30hz or requir 2 display port connectors which means you see 2 screens and there are calibration and sync issues the LG ones simply don’t work. So my closest thing would be a 10bit calibrated 4K professional monitor which is well over $1000.
      - wlesieutre 9y ago
        Ah, interesting. I've seen the 27" 5K Dell, didn't realize it needed two DP connections. I assume that in theory the graphics drivers should be able to merge the displays and present it to the OS as a single screen. That's how my UP2414Q works, which is two halves driven by multi-stream-transport over a single cable. It was rather unreliable in Windows though. EDIT - While my experience has been that the screen worked better on a Mac and sucked on Windows, other people have had similar experiences with multi-display problems in Mac land, so I wouldn't write it off as just a Windows problem. Recent discussion thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15881207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15881207 So yes, a built-in display that probably works more reliably is definitely a bonus for the iMac Pro. Counterbalance that with the fact that when the computer's obsolete you're dumping the screen along with it.
        dogma1138 9y ago
        Yes, but at least it can do 60hz http://www.dell.com/ae/business/p/dell-up2715k-monitor/pd http://www.dell.com/ae/business/p/dell-up2715k-monitor/pd The GPU doesn't emulate anything, it sees 2 displays so does the OS. Which causes the problem, you effectively have 2 panels which can have difference in color recreation and there are some sync issues which can cause tearing with full screen applications. For professional use especially video editing the best monitor I can think of is the UP2718Q. The UP2718Q is a true 10 bit panel. It supports a very wide color spaces: 100% of sRGB/Adobe RGB and Rec.709, 97.7% of DCI-P3 and of 76.9% Rec.2020. It supports HDR which is becoming important for content creators these days and has a peak brightness of 1000nits which would allow you to produce HDR content and verify the end result in the same workflow without having to push it to a secondary true HDR display. And since it's a PrimeColor display from Dell each monitor is individually calibrated at the factory and you get a full calibration chart with each PC monitor (they used to do it for each Ultrasharp, but these days it has to be US Primecolor) like this one: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/images/dell_up2718q/img061.jpg http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/images/dell_up2718q/img061.jpg And most importantly it supports full hardware calibration so you can actually go into the OSD start the calibration process and update the hardware LUT table in the monitor itself rather than having to rely on color profiles.
alkonaut 9y ago
Same thing there: to get the actual thing: a 5120 x 2880 IPS LED screen you have to pay a pretty hefty premium. Quick search shows the LG is around $1300-$1500. (?) You can get a computer with "80-90%" the specs of this, and pay 50% the price. But the point is if you want to match 100% of the spec you'll likely pay 100% if not 110% of this price too.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Yep 70-80% for 50-60% of the price is about right, you can replace the Intel Xeon for a cheaper i9 or even cheaper AMD TR or even cheaper Zen if you don't care about matching the performance. TBH most of the savings are from the CPU/motherboard once you drop the Xeon.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    You quickly get into the whole "It's definitely not professional without ECC" and the stupid intel market segmentation. Intel makes it really hard and expensive to build quick (as in single core quick) workstations with ECC. If you are absolutely hellbent on 5K and a 4Ghz+ with ECC then it's going to cost a bit. So while you could get a lot of the performance at a lower price point, things like the ECC makes it hard to compare in some aspects.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      I don’t think ECC is needed for FinalCut Pro or similar workloads but then I never had a render fail at the 11th hour so I wouldn’t know.
dogma1138 9y ago
I think you and me have very different definitions of what "good" stands for, so not I'm not inflating prices. http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-4k-hdr-monitor-up2718q/apd/210-amvp/monitors-monitor-accessories http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-4k-hd...
dawnerd 9y ago
Really good doesn’t mean professional. Reference monitors are well over 10k dollars and the factory calibration on Apple screens is fairly close. Certainly better than you’d get on a < 1000 dollar monitor.
Someone1234 9y ago
With 5120 x 2880 resolution and a P3 color gamut? Dell's UP2715K is very comparable and it is $1300 from B&H. So what similarly spec-ed monitor is $500?

I think you're inflating prices. You can get a really good 4k 27" monitor for about $500,

by edu 9y ago

I think you're inflating prices. You can get a really good 4k 27" monitor for about $500,

wlesieutre 9y ago

Maybe they meant "5K monitor" which is what the iMac Pro has and would fit this price range better.

dogma1138 9y ago
Nope, the closest thing you can get to the iMac Pro display is likely something like a the Dell PrimeColor UP2718Q which costs about $1500 or the UP2715K which goes for around $1300.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Isn't the closest thing just any other monitor with the exact same panel? The panel isn't everything - but it's a lot. https://www.amazon.com/LG-27MD5KA-UltraFine-International-Version/dp/B06XH8XBMR https://www.amazon.com/LG-27MD5KA-UltraFine-International-Ve... In any case: you'll need to put up $1500 to get this. Either a "better" Pro 4K or the equivalent 5K.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    I specifically didn't suggest it because you can't connect it to anything that doesn't supports Thunderbolt 3 monitors since it doesn't have a display port connection, so you can't use that with a PC in any reliable way.
    - PascLeRasc 9y ago
      Wait, so my 2014 13" rMBP won't be able to connect to it? A coworker has one and it looks amazing, I had it on my "if I win the lottery" list.
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        Nope neither can my late 2015 MBP... System Requirements Operating System: macOS Sierra 10.12.1 or later Connection: Thunderbolt 3–enabled Mac https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k-display https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k...
      - wlesieutre 9y ago
        Nope, Thunderbolt 3 exclusively. That's the 2016/2017 MBP, iMac, and iMac Pro. Mini-macbook is USB-C without Thunderbolt, Mac Pro and Mac Mini are still Thunderbolt 2.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      Odd if LG makes a high end panel and doesn’t maximize the market for it by making e.g a regular DisplayPort monitor. Smells a bit like Apple has got an exclusivity deal to be the only platform with 5K IPS. Might be paranoid...
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Yes, that's what I said. Parent price breakdown comment had "~$1300 for a professional 4K monitor" but I'm assuming you meant 5K monitor instead of 4K.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    There aren’t good 5K monitors really for the PC they are either 30hz or requir 2 display port connectors which means you see 2 screens and there are calibration and sync issues the LG ones simply don’t work. So my closest thing would be a 10bit calibrated 4K professional monitor which is well over $1000.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      Ah, interesting. I've seen the 27" 5K Dell, didn't realize it needed two DP connections. I assume that in theory the graphics drivers should be able to merge the displays and present it to the OS as a single screen. That's how my UP2414Q works, which is two halves driven by multi-stream-transport over a single cable. It was rather unreliable in Windows though. EDIT - While my experience has been that the screen worked better on a Mac and sucked on Windows, other people have had similar experiences with multi-display problems in Mac land, so I wouldn't write it off as just a Windows problem. Recent discussion thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15881207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15881207 So yes, a built-in display that probably works more reliably is definitely a bonus for the iMac Pro. Counterbalance that with the fact that when the computer's obsolete you're dumping the screen along with it.
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        Yes, but at least it can do 60hz http://www.dell.com/ae/business/p/dell-up2715k-monitor/pd http://www.dell.com/ae/business/p/dell-up2715k-monitor/pd The GPU doesn't emulate anything, it sees 2 displays so does the OS. Which causes the problem, you effectively have 2 panels which can have difference in color recreation and there are some sync issues which can cause tearing with full screen applications. For professional use especially video editing the best monitor I can think of is the UP2718Q. The UP2718Q is a true 10 bit panel. It supports a very wide color spaces: 100% of sRGB/Adobe RGB and Rec.709, 97.7% of DCI-P3 and of 76.9% Rec.2020. It supports HDR which is becoming important for content creators these days and has a peak brightness of 1000nits which would allow you to produce HDR content and verify the end result in the same workflow without having to push it to a secondary true HDR display. And since it's a PrimeColor display from Dell each monitor is individually calibrated at the factory and you get a full calibration chart with each PC monitor (they used to do it for each Ultrasharp, but these days it has to be US Primecolor) like this one: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/images/dell_up2718q/img061.jpg http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/images/dell_up2718q/img061.jpg And most importantly it supports full hardware calibration so you can actually go into the OSD start the calibration process and update the hardware LUT table in the monitor itself rather than having to rely on color profiles.

alkonaut 9y ago

Same thing there: to get the actual thing: a 5120 x 2880 IPS LED screen you have to pay a pretty hefty premium. Quick search shows the LG is around $1300-$1500. (?) You can get a computer with "80-90%" the specs of this, and pay 50% the price. But the point is if you want to match 100% of the spec you'll likely pay 100% if not 110% of this price too.

dogma1138 9y ago
Yep 70-80% for 50-60% of the price is about right, you can replace the Intel Xeon for a cheaper i9 or even cheaper AMD TR or even cheaper Zen if you don't care about matching the performance. TBH most of the savings are from the CPU/motherboard once you drop the Xeon.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  You quickly get into the whole "It's definitely not professional without ECC" and the stupid intel market segmentation. Intel makes it really hard and expensive to build quick (as in single core quick) workstations with ECC. If you are absolutely hellbent on 5K and a 4Ghz+ with ECC then it's going to cost a bit. So while you could get a lot of the performance at a lower price point, things like the ECC makes it hard to compare in some aspects.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    I don’t think ECC is needed for FinalCut Pro or similar workloads but then I never had a render fail at the 11th hour so I wouldn’t know.

dogma1138 9y ago

I think you and me have very different definitions of what "good" stands for, so not I'm not inflating prices. http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-4k-hdr-monitor-up2718q/apd/210-amvp/monitors-monitor-accessories http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-ultrasharp-27-4k-hd...

dawnerd 9y ago

Really good doesn’t mean professional. Reference monitors are well over 10k dollars and the factory calibration on Apple screens is fairly close. Certainly better than you’d get on a < 1000 dollar monitor.

Someone1234 9y ago

With 5120 x 2880 resolution and a P3 color gamut? Dell's UP2715K is very comparable and it is $1300 from B&H. So what similarly spec-ed monitor is $500?