I tried to take pictures to help illustrate what I’m describing, but my phone mysteriously hid the bulk of the problems when I took the picture. Must be some kind of auto-correction.
I bought two old Dell 3007wfp-hc’s about a year ago. They were originally meant for a friend of mine, but he ended up not liking them (for reason’s I’ll explain below) so I swapped them out for a couple others I had on hand.
The problem with these is they, well. . . look terrible. There isn’t any kind of OSD, just basic brightness control that isn’t persistent when they lose power.
These lead me down a rabbit hole of how the brain in a display works, display standards (ew) and calibration. I wish I could go back to not knowing that you even COULD calibrate a monitor, but I digress.
Even after picking up an i1Display Pro and calibrating these screens with many, many different settings, the colors appear blown to the moon and the text is soft and difficult to read. This is partly because there’s only so much you can do without in-monitor color control I suppose. I’ve also played with color levels in the NVIDIA control panel, but the software ended up being inconsistent enough that I abandoned that path. Felt like a bandaid solution anyways.
My question is: what’s the deal with these things? Anybody else used this model have a similar experience? I can’t shake the feeling that if the screens were ACTUALLY this bad then where would be news stories about people going blind. I have a couple theories.
The manufacturer cranked saturation and vibrance to make the screens grab your attention better on the shelf, but without an OSD it can’t be corrected with a mere ICC profile.
There is something fundamentally different with how computers sent a DVI signal when these were made in 2007.
Windows is doing something horrible to the video signal going to these monitors behind the scenes. I want to say I’ve tested these on linux at some point but I can’t remember. Worth checking out again.
I’ve probably googled this problem a dozen times in the past year. I found out today that Dell made a piece of software that can modify some OSD settings through the USB cable to the monitors hub. It only works on Vista. Not 7 or XP, only Vista.
I’ve never even heard of something like this before, I’m amazed how long this hid from me. What a bizarre design choice.
Just an FYI, they use a ton of power, unless you have excess solar or live in a third world country where government heavily subsidizes dirty coal electricity, or plan to only use them an hour a day… it might be cheaper to buy a modern 4k screen.
If these use 120w, and a modern 4k screen uses ~50w, it would take 4500 hours at my electric rate to save the ~300 cost that I saw on the microcenter website. Two years of office hours, likely a little more for personal use.
In my head I expected it to take more like five years to break even, not two. I keep my brightness fairly low, so I’m curious to see the actual power draw in use vs. advertised.
Funny enough, I started keeping my peripheral monitors on a separate power switch so I could turn them off when I didn’t need them. Not to save power, but to cut down on heat.
I have an old Dell 3007WFP-HC. Yes, the only control I have is brightness.
However, to my eye, I would say that the display is gorgeous. Especially given its vintage. Also, I only paid $100 for this $2200 display (used).
The only reason I stopped using it was because my new GPU doesn’t have a DVI output, and DP to DVI converters cost more than I paid for the monitor. That “forced” me to buy a 4k display.
Bottom line is that I cannot explain why such a fabulous monitor looks bad in your environment. Have you tried multiple GPUs?
EDIT: Also, be sure to use a good cable. I had to buy a fancy cable to get the monitor to work at all.
Another deal seeker I also paid $100 each for the two I have.
That’s the confusing part, I’ve read about plenty of experiences like you had. I’ve only tried Nvidia GPUs in a Windows 10 system, two 1060s to get the dual dvi connectors. Do you recall what GPU you were using at the time?
I fired up ubuntu on some old hardware and these monitors look quite nice in that environment. I also moved some hardware around and booted into another windows 10 machine and verified the same image issues.
Seems like windows 10 or nvidia drivers might be committing untold atrocities upon the video signal somewhere along the line. The device name seems to be correctly detected in the nvidia contol panel.
Both thick dual link cables without any obvious damage. They’re either both good or both bad in exactly the same way, and since the full resolution is available then I’m thinking I’m good there.
The 660 would make sense, I was testing with a 610 when I got good results in Linux. It’s 1660s that I’m using now, so I might be able to rule out Nvidia drivers if you’ve had success there.
I think it’s time I dig a little deeper than ICC profiles for how windows handles different monitors.
If I get a round tuit I may be able to test the 1660.
Sorry you are having this trouble. It sounds frustrating. The good news is that your monitors work, so that hopefully suggests that you may find a solution. Eventually.
That would be awesome, I appreciate that. I’m going to spend more time with different versions of Windows next, see if I can find a reproducible breaking point.
They were the same cables, yeah. These are the only two dvi monitors I own, along with the only dvi cables that I own Well, my other monitors HAVE dvi ports, but the dp ports are what gets used.
You must have been looking in the wrong places… Under $4 on eBay these days. Though I’d instead recommend DP → HDMI adapters and a cheap HDMI → DVI connector… much more useful these days to be HDMI compatible.
Adding more converters into the mix I would strongly advise against.
Go with a DP > DVI adapter now, and if you move to HDMI later throw these in the old tech drawer with the Firewire cables, serial cables, and xyz random old tech we all swear we’ll need at some point. . . .and never actually need until you clear that tech from your old tech drawer
The catch with those passive adapters is that they only supply a single link dvi connection. To get to the 2560x1600 resolution needed here, an active adapter is required. In this case the monitor won’t even detect a single link dvi signal.
I also have one of these monitors. I have put it into retirement since I got a Samsung 4K monitor. During the time I was using it, it was an attractive monitor but I somehow managed to break the stand and it is now stuck in its lowest position.
For a long time I used it with a Mac Pro and a Vega 56. The Vega of course has no DVI port, so I had to get a Dell DP->Dual link DVI active adapter with a USB connector for power. This solution worked quite well for a long time (though occasionally hiccuped when switching resolution or rebooting.)
That’s awesome, thanks for taking the time to test that. Having that data point helps a lot. Now I know that a 1660 works in 8.1 but, in my case, fails in 10.
My suspicion now is that something about the default Windows 10 plug &play monitor driver isn’t cooperating with this panel. My next step is to try using older default driver versions and spend more time digging into any proprietary drivers that are available.
I also paid $100 each for the two I have.
Well, my other monitors HAVE dvi ports, but the dp ports are what gets used.
