Hi folks I am currently gaming on 3 x 24" Acer GD245HQ 3D monitors and whilst I do enjoy it I consisteantly get a little frustrated with the borders!! My thoughts are to sell off the screens and replace them with 1 x 27" Dell U2711 IPS panel for the fact that it has a larger resolution and more inputs for my XBOX and PS3 etc (spit). What do you guys think? keep what I currently have or change as I dont mind dropping 3d if I have to. By the way I have SLI GTX580's so dont really have a problem with frame rates.
Why not go the full way to a 30" screen? But the IPS panel will certainly be better than the 3 TN panels.
30" screens are epic. I saw a couple in the flesh for the first time at a LAN, they were so much bigger than my 24" it was unreal. The games were incredibly immersive sitting in front of a screen that size.
For competitive (and non-competitive) gaming (in general) larger screens are often a disadvantage as it is harder to notice stuff all over the screen at the same time than a smaller screen that displays the same content. 27" is about as big as you want to go really.
I can't say I've noticed this. I find the immersive experience of the screen filling your field of view awesome. I'd also recommend a 30" screen to replace 3x 24s.
I use a 32" TV as my main monitor, no issues for me with peripheral vision as it's way at the back of my desk, and the pixel density is fairly low so I can see everything just fine. Plus, the aspect ratio is just right for movies and it actually has decent speakers. HD 1080 is nice for gaming and general use at that size, but the WQXGA displays (U3011, Apple's 30", etc) just make everything too tiny. A friend of mine has the U2711, and IMO the gaming experience is about equal to my TV. The Dell blows away my display in terms of color quality and brightness though! With the type of work he does (tons and tons of spreadsheet stuff, and he's an amateur photographer) the U2711 makes sense. If you think it's worth the money for the U2711, based on what you really need, by all means go for it. It's a beautiful monitor in every way! I personally don't think the U3011 is worth paying 50% more. (You can do three monitors with SLI?)
I would go for the U2711, but keep one of the 24" to use it as an "off screen" > game on U27 > pron on the 24" ))
I found with the U2711 that because it's 16:9 and not 16:10, vertically it wasn't actually much bigger than the 24". The end result was being slightly underwhelmed by it in terms of a size upgrade. Your current screens being 16:9 though you probably won't have that issue. My old 24" was a 16:10, so the vertical size was only very slightly larger. This is what prompted me to get a 30". I'm glad I did. I'd miss the extra vertical resolution on a 27" when doing stuff that needs lots of screen space. It does make a difference. 16x9 sucks as a computer screen format.
@Pookeyhead I've found that moving the taskbar up to the side makes things a little more manageable on a 16:9 display. Windows really isn't designed to take advantage of widescreens (besides the widget overlay, but who uses that) IMO.. Hopefully Win8's developers kept this in mind, we need to use that horizontal space for something!