Dell U3011 Review: Dell's New 30-inch Flagship
by Brian Klug on January 13, 2011 9:17 PM ESTInput Lag Testing
Processing and display lag is a very important thing for gamers, and it’s most often nebulously reported if at all. We’ve discussed this in previous display reviews, but what matters most is how the display acts in real world testing. I’ve been doing previous tests by comparing LCDs with first a 17” Princeton CRT, then a Sony G520 20” CRT. So far the results have been a bit interesting, with the CRTs edging a pretty consistent - if small - lead over LCDs.
I measured the Dell U3011 the same way we've done it for a number of displays now, by snapping many photos of the same wings of fury 3DMark 2003 demo mirrored on the CRT and LCD. Average a ton of results from those images, and we get a feel for what input latency works out to.
I ran this test twice as well because the results somewhat surprised me - 23 ms is a pretty substantial amount of input lag. This was being driven over DVI-D from a NVIDIA GTX 470, as a reminder. I played a lot of games on the U3011 (well, as many as I could in-between smarphones, CES, and other work), and never noticed input feeling laggy or just plain off. Over HDMI I tested Halo Reach from an Xbox 360, on the PC lots of BFBC2 and DOD:S. It's a personal taste thing, honestly I still can't subjectively feel the input lag, even if it is there.
Like i'm used to seeing, there's one frame of lag which shows up when taking photos of the U3011. The ZR30w lacks a scaler and OSD, and has around half the input lag. Maybe there's something to be said for HP's choice there.
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InterClaw - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
The Dell has input lag and the HP doesn't have sRGB... :( LG please save us prosumer/gamer types!Any word on a refresh of the not-so-pretty LG W3000H?
cjl - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
As the owner of a U3011, I have to say, the input lag isn't bad. Yes, it measures as worse than the HP, but 20ms is really not noticeable to the vast, vast majority of people. It's not like the old 2408 for example, which was ~60ms if I remember right.Phoenixlight - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
I don't understand your problem with 1920x1080, it's slightly wider than 1920x1200 but that's it. There's no reason to be against it. Games on my Alienware OptX AW2310 look great.snuuggles - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
Agreed. If you don't game frequently, then fine, higher pixel pitch is great (though text scaling can be a problem as other posters have mentioned). But, *BUT*, if you mostly game, then high res is, at best, counter-productive - it basically forces you to either 1) use a non-native resolution or 2) scale *way* back on the graphical "goodies" or 3) spend $600 a year on GPUs.I'd really like it if there was some focus on stuff that *matters* for gaming:
- input lag
- pixel response
- refresh rate
resolution, color pallet, viewing angle etc are great, and I'll take em', but not when it sacrifices the ability of the display to resolve moving images quickly.
And, before you say it, I *would* just use a HDTV, except those are, on the whole, pretty junky, have terrible input lag, and are prone to "panel lottery" (where the manufacturer swaps out panels to save money but doesn't use a different model number. How is that even legal, btw?)
DanNeely - Friday, January 14, 2011 - link
They write the specs for it to have the lowest value for each panel of the right size; that way all of them meet the described specs on the product sheet and they can swap without worrying about false advertising claims.snuuggles - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
You're right, it's clear that what they are doing is legal. But as long as they don't specify stuff like input lag *at all*, even if you wait for a review to tell you this value, the manufacturer can, and often does, swap out a new, lower-performing panel.DanNeely - Sunday, January 16, 2011 - link
This is the 1st I've heard of input lag varying by panel make. I thought it was entirely due to the image processor used for overdrive/etc modes.DanNeely - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
The lower vertical resolution sucks for trying to do any real work on it.TegiriNenashi - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
Slightly wider? It's shorter!snuuggles - Saturday, January 15, 2011 - link
@DanNeely and TegiriNenashi,You are both right, I think the extra 120 pixels is both useful *and* not a huge burden on frame-rate. I was mostly thinking of the 2560x[whatever] resolutions that are real frame-rate killers.
I guess I'm just willing to accept the loss since I really don't do a huge amount of work on this computer - mostly gaming as I said, so 1080p is an acceptible compramise.