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Hi Tobias,

besides several advantages (cheaper hardware, cheaper glasses, in general less headaches), the drawbacks of passive monitors are:
1) fine lines running across the screen that you will notice on a white bachground if the viewing distance is not that big
2) reduced viewing angle because of the polarisation sheet placed in front of the display
3) half the resolution in the vertical plane with stereo "on" that in addition may cause problems with the menus of certain programs

For the combination "professional stereo", "afordable" and "linux" the only sensible option (my humble opinion) is to buy a nvidia quadro card (the k2000d) and the Asus VG278HR (not HE!) with build-in emitter and one pair of nvidia glasses. This combination works under linux and windows. The price of the monitor plus one pair of glasses is ±500€ and of the quadro k2000d card ±450€ (both handle the dual link DVI-D standard). This combination is still cheaper than having to buy a professional card with a 3-pin stereo exit (nvidia k4000 @ >900€), a good stereo monitor (±350€ Asus VG278HE 144 Hz) and a seperate set of glasses with IR-emitter (±130€). The stereo of the k2000d-VG278HR combination is great (fantastic actually and much much better than a good old CRT because of the resolution and brightness) as the monitor drives the switching of the glasses... better than the latest 27 inch AOC passive stereo monitor (280€) I recently bought and operate at home..

If you already own an older quadro card with a DVI-D exit, you only need to buy the VG278HR. If you own an older quadro with a mini display port, you must also buy a CLUB 3D active mini displayport-dual link dvi adaptor 270 mhz (±115€; we own one and it works in contrast to cheaper variants) to link-up the monitor as a DVI-I exit will not handle the amount of data in true stereo mode, that is, 1080p @ 120Hz.

The k2000d (85% performance compared to older quadro 4000) is more than fast enough and the nvidia driver support for the quadro card under windows and linux is at a professional level, so no problems there.

- J. -

Am 21.11.13 11:49, schrieb Tobias Beck:
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Dear all,

We are looking into ordering a stereo monitor. I am aware that this question comes up every so often on this BB (and I read the post by Alice), but maybe someone has any comments or recent experience with passive vs. active monitors?

And: Which graphics card can you recommended? The monitor will be used with Linux and Windows, so support of the correspoding graphics card with both systems is required.

Thanks and best wishes,

Tobias.

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Dr. Tobias Beck
ETH Zurich
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