Joined on 03/31/20
Excellent value
Pros: Clear text and vivid colors Vesa-compatible mounting for vertical display narrow 1/4" frame for side-by-side setup Built-in display adjustment menus
Cons: Difficult to adjust screen angle No legacy ports (therefore, possible incompatibility with some GFX chipsets)
Overall Review: I bought this monitor with the assumption that, if I liked it, I'd buy another one to go next to it; the visible frame is about 1/4" so side-by-side it would work well in a multi-monitor setup. It's got one of the smallest pixel pitches of any consumer-grade monitor which makes it an excellent choice for anyone dealing with many text documents simultaneously. It also displays an impressive range of color, noticeably more so than any other LCD panel I've owned before, so it's quite fine for graphics or video. So for my SOHO purposes it is quite adequate plus the price is right. However due its relatively light weight it's nearly impossible to adjust the angle of the screen without also grabbing the edge of the display area which tends to leave fingerprints on the screen. Also, lacking legacy ports, it requires e.g. an DVI --> HDMI cable adapter if you want to use it with an older video card. Some AMD chipsets in particular, such as the RX 560, seem to be incompatible with HDMI or Display Port devices. This is AMD's fault of course, but even so there's no workaround here since the VX2478 has only 1xHDMI, 1xDisplayPort and 1xMiniDisplayPort capability.
RX560 Chipset NOT SUPPORTED for LInux
Pros: Recent Linux kernels boot to single-user and VGA mode with a recent HDMI or DisplayPort capable monitor.
Cons: Recent Linux kernels as well as recent BSD all fail to boot X, or crash X at first attempt to run a windowed program, even while using "supported" modes on an HDMI or DisplayPort-enabled monitor. An X session booted using "nomodeset" will either lag to the point of being unusable, or crash outright, if one attempts to run programs in a windowed environment.
Overall Review: There's nothing wrong with this card -- except the price, which is low for a 4Gb card in AMD's 500 series. And there's a reason it's so cheap -- this chipset, on whatever card of whatever brand, has a history of crashing under light load under Windows as well as LInux...but especially LInux. So beware GPU versions "Baffin" and above, e.g. Polaris, combined with this chipset, if you want to run Linux. The motherboard I'm using is based on AMD's B450 chipset. Anecdotally I've verified that the RX 560 cards always crash an X session on a B450-based board, but the bad news doesn't stop there. Basically AMD claims to support the RX 560 for Linux, but neither their proprietary programs (e.g., downloadable AMDGPU-Pro) as well as their open-source drivers (amdgpu, on Linux/Ubuntu), do not support the RX 560 chipset after Linux kernel versons 4.15.x*. Here are the distro images I have downloaded and booted from a USB drive. All display similar behavior, which is crashing as soon as X starts (forcing a reboot to single-user mode or to X using nomodeset as a kernel parameter) or, more usually after a full desktop session has booted from the live medium. In the latter case, attempting to run any program by double clicking on a desktop icon causes X to crash, and also renders an existing ssh session defunct. There is a way to debug these crashes but why bother -- neither AMD nor the card manufacturers seem to care about the regression problem with this chipset/GPU combination (rx 560/Baffin/Polaris et. al.) ubuntu-19.10-desktop-amd64.iso ubuntu-18.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-31-1.9.iso GhostBSD-20.03-XFCE.iso clear-32900-live-desktop.iso ubuntu-20.04-beta-desktop-amd64.iso debian-live-10.2.0-amd64-kde.iso debian-live-9.3.0-amd64-gnome.iso .........All these fail to run a full graphical interface session using an HDMI or Display Port connection to the monitor. Again (anecdotally) it is possible that a DVI connection will work. The problem with rx 560 and Linux 4.15+ kernels may be in supporting HDMI and DisplayPort output -- but since I don't have a DVI-enabled monitor, I can't verify that possibility at all. But interestingly "ubuntu-16.04.6-desktop-amd64.iso" boots fine. That's a Linux 4.15* kernel ... which means that amdgpu driver is regressed for all subsequent releases of the Linux kernel. Any kernel after Ubuntu 4.15.0-45-generic will fail, as it stands. Clearly this is a problem with AMD's linux kernel driver development program -- but what else is new? In spite of all their much-vaunted efforts, AMD's support of Linux continues, after all these years, to be spotty at best.
Fine card for SOHO-Linux systems
Pros: Just works with any contemporary Linux kernel; proprietary drivers and utilities available as well 4x MiniDisplayPort supporting up to four 4K displays
Cons: No legacy ports on card, therefore: Requires adapter cables for VGA/DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort cables & devices
Overall Review: Bought this card to replace a less expensive (but technically, just about as capable) AMD card (RX 560 series) that turned out to be utterly incompatible with recent LInux kernels -- a small expenditure that cost me a ridiculous amount of time and energy simply to determine that it would never, ever work for my relative straightforward SOHO, multiple-display needs. While rather pricier, this Nvidia-based card worked out of the box. Even with relatively less on-card memory, it supports multiple displays seamlessly, that is, for my purposes of reading and editing many text documents and/or 2-D graphics files simultaneously. That being said, producers of high-end video would probably want a more capable card and a more expensive monitor array than the one I'm using for voluminous text and 2-D graphics creation (I'm using the affordable easy-on-the-eyes Viewsonic VX2478-smhd (24" WQHD 2560 x 1440 2K 60Hz 4ms). My own needs aside, I'm this card would be an affordable choice to go in a cheap, mini-ATX box used to display multiple 2-4K screens with video or graphics in a business setting (e.g., a sports bar, or sidewalk retail display, for instance).
Blisteringly fast
Pros: Great price, runs great on many different configurations and operating systems
Cons: Supposedly single-threaded apps run better on Intel's latest processors. But at 3.6 GHz who cares?! The apps I use most are multi-threaded so it's moot.
Overall Review: All things considered, it's a good choice if you already have or don't mind investing in a graphics card. Otherwise integrated graphics are a better way to go, in terms of value and convenience for building your own system. All major CPUs are compatible with FOSS -- Linux and BSD. But getting the right board and non-integrated GPU card to work with FOSS is another story, not always so happy.