If I get a 30'' LCD, which VIDCARD to get?

Hi guys, first post here.
Very informative Forum, congrats.

I am planning on getting myself a 30'' LCD (Samsung 305T). It has raving reviews and a fantastic resolution of 2560x1600. I am wondering which Vid card to get.

My main goal is to play Lockon Flaming cliffs (flight simulator) and its coming sequel (Black Shark), that are quite hardware intensive...

My actual system is a core2Duo E6600, 2 Gigs of good RAM, a fast drive and one nVidia 7950x2 graphics card. (and a 22 inches Viewsonic CRT at 1600x1200). I have a SLI motherboard but dont use it in this mode (dont really know if it would change anything in this context).

What do you guys recommend?


thanks in advance


JEFX

best thing you can do for great performance on high settings with a huge monitor like that is wait for the new cards coming out in a few weeks. The upcoming HD4850 and the GTX280/260 will probably have amazing performance even at that huge resolution.

Is GTX from nVidia or ATI?

I am wondering, besides graphics power, will my CPU up to the task?

thanks


JEFX

Yes, your C2D should be able to handle it because high resolution are much GPU-intensive and CPU-intensive, and yes, the GTX is from nVidia, just don't leave out ATI. They've got a pretty good chance at regaining the performance crown pretty soon.

Thanks!

On the other hand, what are the possibilities to make a set-up with more smaller monitors for my situation? I have seen set-ups with 2 24'' monitors (cheaper) left and right, but it leaves a very thick black stripe (casing) in the middle of the image?

generally with a dual-monitor setup, you wouldn't really have to worry about the division between them because any games you would run would only be on one screen, leaving the other open for other things you might be doing at the same time, which basically means you could be playing the game you mentioned, Lockon, while having a browser open on the other screen, IM programs, media players, etc. I don't know if it can be setup so that both monitors are used for the game, but if you could I would think you'd have to have an extremely powerful GPU, probably in SLI/Crossfire, or have to turn down the quality options.