Nvidia and ATI had better find a way to work together
WE HAVE WITNESSED and, to certain extent stoked, the endless Nvidia-ATI graphics war.
Currently battles are going on, especially at the high end, where Nvidia's GTX280 has to fight the 4870X2 alone until (if) the GTX290 comes out. And then the vendors' armies shift, lock stock and barrel, to the 40nm front in a few quarters.
Yeah, GTX300 series vs HD5870 series, it will be yet another interesting round. And then both will have to fight Intel's Larrabee.
But, hold on - there is also something called global financial meltdown going on right now. We can argue till kingdom come whether this event was purely accidental or, more likely, an engineered event where a select few behind the curtains will make trillions, as normally happens in most other business ventures called 'wars', 'revolutions' or 'crises'.
The one indisputable fact is that this 'meltdown' will make it a lot harder to justify anyone buying, among other things, a high-end GPU just on the pretext of, say, higher Crysis frame rates.
Spending half a grand US$ - whether that US$ stays on or goes down - on either a GTX280 or HD4870X2 just makes little sense when the house and car could be at risk - irrespective of which hits higher FPS in anything.
So, the so-called 'developed markets' like US and EU, the prime consumers of this high-end stuff, may have to make do with integrated graphics for a while. It will be: "Son, it's better to stay away from the games for a while and do some school work on Linux OpenOffice instead".
So, what's a graphics chip flogger to do then? Simple - find a more convincing "killer app" to get people to buy those high end - or for that matter, any - discrete GPUs.
One killer app is photo editing at near photo resolution, with real-time 2-D and 3-D effects of any kind right there on the fly. Unlike video manipulation where any 16:10 1920x1200 resolution monitor can cover the whole thing plus menu, dialogue box and button space, photos need a few more pixels. Since many cameras these days hit above 10 Megapixels even in the US$ 300 class, let's go to that direction.
Let's say we quadruple the pixel number to 3840x2400 - a nice 9 Mpixel golden ratio sized display, a good follow up to the famed IBM T221 which offered all that six years ago. This time on 30 inches and within US$ 2000 price range.
Quadruple the pixel number, and you quadruple the GPU processing power and memory size needed to handle the stuff. Then, without even using esoteric 16x or such anti-alias, explore the hyper realism that such resolution can offer the gamers - Nvidia even coined he term XHD2 for this. Then, add the NHK Japanese TV programming effort with 4K Ultra HD, fitting such monitors really nicely, not to mention 70mm movie runs.
The problem? Since IBM abandoned the T221 after the Lenovo sale, and the actual maker, iDtech from Japan was sold to the Taiwanese, there was no such monitor in the market - the time is now to revive it, straight into mainstream.
So, Nvidia and ATI should put aside their petty fight for a second, and join forces for one particular goal: get all the key gang, starting with Samsung, LG and such, to offer the 3840x2400 grade monitors to the market at an attractive price point. When one sees the otherworldly picture and 3-D quality on those - as I had the honour some years ago - you can't easily move back to the usual stuff. You want it and you want in there and then. It's a far more tangible and convincing approach than some funny anti-aliasing or texture mapping methods, as it benefits pretty much everything.
It will also help those monitor vendors differentiate in more sensible ways rather than trying some really ridiculous ways to create "new products". For instance, Samsung's 2343BW. This is a 23-incher with an unusual 2048x1152 resolution, an odd cut due to the insistence on the HDTV-optimised, but not PC friendly, 16:9 display ratio. Yeah, for those who like it odd, Samsung may justify charging another 20 quid for this. Why not instead create real new quality paradigm and charge a bit more for this?
Even in the times of crisis, people still buy - but when they do, they usually prefer something of quality and real value. A top end GPU will be seen as more of that proposition if matched with a monitor using its potential to the fullest by bringing the new generation image quality for all users. µ
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Hear, hear! Right on!

And let's take it a bit further: I use virtual displays under Linux, where the logical display is larger than the physical display and you "push" your physical viewport around in the virtual display with your mouse. I also do very detailed environmental modeling, so I need all the display area I can get. With the data sets I'm visualizing, I'd like to be able to map that 3840x2400 into a 5Kx3K virtual display. The last time I tried that, I found the cards (or their drivers, at least) wouldn't support virtual displays that large ;-(

20-megapixel cameras are coming (are now in use in the "Prosumer" category, actually); make me happy now and you'll make those consumers happy next year.
So, your "killer app" that justifies someone spending $2,000 on a monitor so big you can't get back far enough away from it to prevent retina burn, and a $500 high end video card that neither company will sell enough of to make any real money, is "PHOTO EDITING"?? Perhaps for a professional photographer, but in this day and age of camera phones and affordable digital cameras with less than 10megapixels, who needs a $2,000 30" monitor and $500 video card just to do "photo editing"??

If I had $2,500 free and clear of bills that need to be paid, I wouldn't be wasting it on some giant computer monitor and high end video card. I could easily get a gaming notebook computer for $1,900 shipped (NOT ALIENWARE) and still have $600 to pay off debts.
The T221 is an amazing display (and quite big enough for me - I've never wanted a 30"), and it's an ongoing source of sadness to me that I can't easily buy a second one. A significant problem with them, though - shared by the various 3840x2160 displays which are based on the CMO 56" panel - is that no single display connector can carry enough bandwidth to drive one at full refresh. At least, unless you count HDMI type B using HDMI 1.3's 340MHz TMDS transmitters - but nobody's using that, as far as I know. One of my gripes with DisplayPort is that it doesn't add enough bandwidth to get us out of this hole.

The only option that remains is to drive the display over multiple connectors (or at reduced refresh) - and making multiple connectors work properly for a single monitor relies on spanning support, which Microsoft broke in Vista. Which makes me think that higher resolutions aren't a priority for Microsoft, even though I know they've got a T221 in the hands of someone senior.

So they'll need to fix the connectivity first. Maybe a future update to DisplayPort might do it, or HDMI type B might finally take off. I'd like to see a T221-resolution monitor with modern filters/backlights and faster pixel response if someone solves this.

As for Samsung's 2343BW, it's nice to see a manufacturer not changing format just by removing pixels, but 16:9 is a pain. It doesn't make as much sense as 16:10 if you rotate them and pair them up, and more real estate is wasted on task bars and title bars - and it doesn't suit multiple print pages as well as 16:10. For media playback, 16:10 gives you somewhere on-screen for a GUI without impinging on the video.

My biggest complaint, though, is that if 2048x1152 is supposed to be for media playback, it's not a 1:1 scaling from the source - it'll look worse than a 1920x1080 screen would (in the same way that a 1366x768 display looks worse than 1280x720 when showing 720p content). Funny how everyone knows not to run an LCD monitor at anything other than its native resolution, but people are happy to do the same with a television.

Of course, QWUXGA displays solve this problem nicely: 3840x2160 is divisible by both 1920x1080 and 1280x720. It's probably cheaper to buy a CRT if you want good scaling of both formats, though.

Incidentally, when people talk about 10MP cameras, they tend to forget this is the resolution of the bayer sensor. With some sub-pixel rendering, a lower resolution monitor could use the same trick (especially if they moved away from the RGB stripes to something like the delta-nabla pattern on many low resolution camera screens). By this measure, a T221 is a 28 megapixel monitor, and I could stop worrying that my upgrade from a 6MP camera to a 12MP one means the images no longer fit on my screen...
The best new thing proposed in display technology in this Millenia! YESSSH!

I've been waiting for the Quad-HD+=3840x1200 LCD in 30" size to emerge ever since I got my 21" Sony tube with 2048x1536 at 86Hz.

QHD+ does not need a special scaling ship for HD to display 1->4 pixels properly, so it could very affordable like many of it's smaller 30" 2560x1600 cousins.

Maybe it needs HDMI*3 and new harware in the 2D output anyway, but it's the way to go!
Consider even the 40" size: not too large on desk, if you pivot it.
AND
you can use it as a TV, too!
That should bring in new customers!
3840x2400 monitors are awesome. I have 2 of them on one machine, and for 2D/3D CAD work there's nothing that can equal this setup.

Text quality looks good - a 3840x2400 22" is about the size of two letter pages side by side, and at over 200dpi it is virtually as good as a printout (and color quality is actually much better). I used to print stuff out a lot for reading, but not anymore.

I have also tried gaming on T221. With good modern graphics cards (HD 4870) you can play many games without issues, and with no antialiasing because none is needed. The quality was excellent and in my opinion added to the realism - real world doesn't have huge pixels.

I got good eyesight though. Not everyone will be able to appreciate the improvement.
I don't think ATI needs anything NVidia has.

The best thing Nvidia can do is go bust.
I just replaced my 7600GT with an HD 4670, since it was the first decent card since the former that doesn't require a PCI-E power connector. I was actually very surprised by the performance. Plays every game I throw at it without a hitch at 1280x1024. Where before I had to keep STALKER on static lighting, I've now cranked everything up to MAX and it's perfectly smooth (i'm still on XP). Who needs $500 graphics when you can have fun with your games for a measly $80?
I own 2 2560x1600 monitors, and I can honestly say that you shouldn't go any higher on a 30 inch than that, it would be a waste and darn hard to see the text. 3840x2400 monitors should begin at 40 inches. I'd gladly give up both o my 30's for one 40 at 3840x2400.
So .. I'm okay with math, but if I can take a stab in the dark...

if you bring out a 30" monitor with 3840x2400 resolution, then that monitor will be a ~128dpi monitor. 

Problem with this scenario is nearly all monitors are 96dpi. Then means the text on your 30" screen will be about 25% smaller than on a standard 96dpi monitor.

Ask anyone who has a laptop 15" 1920x1080 UWXGA+ screen how they like their text. They'll say it's too small.. and anyone who uses Vista (or XP) with said resolution & dpi, once you change the DPI setting in the control panel to something larger, many applications either don't follow the setting or if they do, they look weird, fields obscure or get hidden, or otherwise experience general application malaise.

Your montior would need to be 40" to be 96dpi and be easily readable.

Trav
This article illustrates why the average artist or gamer shouldn't be in the boardroom or directing R&D.

The argument sounds good on the surface, except for the reality that the huge pixel # 2D image isn't really a GPU raison d'etre, as mentioned they've been around since the T221 QUXGA monitor, and we had beautiful Matrox cards to drive those, and they did the job brilliantly. Once you can drive the panel in 2D then you're good, since this focuses on the need for photos, I don't see it as a huge boon for graphics card IHVs. As for gaming and 3D workstation work, sure it'd be nice to have a panel that big, but the power required to render the image and the geometrically larger memory footprint for buffers and such is prohibitive. MSAA is a cheap alternative that still lets gamers have solid picture quality and good fps, trying to drive a QUXGA image for gaming would be much tougher and offer very little return to the gpu makers. Can you imagine trying to push Crysis @ a QUXGA resolution let alone future titles. Until DX11+ offers performance improvements and memory saving techniques, this will not be practical to anyone other than the 2d photo and CAD people that are already pushing these monitors with cards similar to the old Matrox cards.
All it really takes for 2D is the addition of more TMDS or the synchronizing of the two sets of 2 already in the GPUs (or NVIO). 
I don't see that as being a revolution for selling more cards. If you want to sell more cards you need a killer app for the masses not some one-off 'neat-O' thing for a small number of the population thinking spending $2K for a monitor is 'ok' but not spending $300-400 on a new card. 

As the old adage say, sell to the class live with the masses, sell to the masses, live with the classes, which is similar to this situation. Going ultra specialized sends you down the Matrox road, it doesn't help you compete against intel.
Graphics processors(overclocked) are the least efficient computer chips and waste lot of power thereby contribute to success of Integrated Graphics. Perhaps it was time competion from Intel Lebaree will force AMD & Nvidia to use smaller processes and switch off the idle cores of the GPU or reduce frequency on the fly as the they do the CPU to reduce power consumption and save from the irritating GPU fan noise. HPC , notebook and netbook users may have a time to rejoice as the bulk manufacturing processes of GPU gain the advanced CPU optimised processes.
The T221 was certainly a thing of beauty -- unfortunately I never could convince my employer that I really needed one. The small pixel size leading to small fonts was a problem, and would certainly be much worse now with eyes that are almost 10 years older.

But all of this is thinking too small. Forty-five years ago Isaac Asimov proposed the "Prime Radiant", which provided a high-resolution, touch-sensitive display on the entire wall of a room. Of course this included hand-writing recognition and a variety of touch-based control functions.

A comfortable size might be 2 meters high by 5 meters wide. At 6 pixels/mm (about 150 dpi), this would be 30,000x12,000, or about a 360Mpixel display. A fair amount of bandwidth would be needed to move that many bits around, but that is what makes this industry fun!
> if you bring out a 30" monitor with 3840x2400 resolution, then that monitor will be a ~128dpi monitor.

True. Which is awful. The T221 is much better at 204ppi.

> Problem with this scenario is nearly all monitors are 96dpi. Then means the text on your 30" screen will be about 25% smaller than on a standard 96dpi monitor.

Respectfully, codswallop. Windows defaults to thinking it's running at 96dpi. I'm running a really dicky 19" CRT at UXGA, ~110dpi. At home, it's a better 19" CRT and ~140dpi. I have an elderly 110dpi LCD here too. OTOH, 19" SXGA screens are 86dpi. 128dpi is high, but not hugely so, and smaller text may not be a problem depending on your viewpoint - not every application benefits from being able to see the square shape of pixels. It's less a problem than something you can't fit on your desk, like the 56" CMO panels.

> Ask anyone who has a laptop 15" 1920x1080 UWXGA+ screen how they like their text. They'll say it's too small.

Funny. I have an mobile with an 800x480 3" screen, and it's fine. I bring my head closer. I'd love a UXGA laptop, but very few aren't 17" behemoths these days (I went for a mini-note instead). You're right that the application scaling is a bit dicky if you really want the GUI to be bigger, but for a large number of apps it's not the UI that matters - just zoom in dynamically. And some of us just like the extra screen real-estate - I'd love not to have to stretch my work space across six screens at work.

> Your montior would need to be 40" to be 96dpi and be easily readable.

Um. Lean forward.

Each to their own, and a display like this isn't for everyone. My eyesight was mangled by dodgy laser surgery, so I'm much better off close to the screen anyway - 30" would be acceptable compared with a T221 just for the immersion factor, but not at 2560x1600.
NVidia and ATI working together? Hello Colluding allegations.... again.
So let me get this straight. Times are tough... so what we need is a 2000$ monitor? Yeah, that'll fly off the shelf.
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This way you have larger everything on XP. This is how I use my 21" Sony at 2048*1536. I also have adjusted the Display otherwise by using

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