Best card to drive a 30-inch Dell?

Next month I will be attempting my first build, an HD video editing rig - Quad on a P5K with 4Gb in a Silverstone Grandia HTPC case running Vista64.

It seems you don’t need too much graphics horsepower to generate a 1920 x 1080 HD picture on a 30” screen and even the soon to be released lowly Radeon HD2400 is capable of powering a 2560 x 1600 display and offloads HD video handling to its on-card UVD hardware. I am not a gamer but I’m given to understand that serious horsepower cards are required to game at the native resolution of these screens. Whilst my requirements are primarily for HD camcorder footage editing and HD film playback, it seems my intended rig would be none too shabby for gaming, so with the correct choice of card I would achieve a secondary benefit.

I would not spend more than £250 which would get me a 640Mb Asus EN8800GTS (the Asus “Splendid” video playback processing emulates the more vivid colours of proper HDTVs). A Radeon HD2900XT would not be a choice due to its lack of UVD, huge power consumption and hence noisier fan. The Radeon HD2600XT may be the sensible choice as it consumes only 45W yet will operate at the screeen’s native resolution.

Am I correct in assuming all cards offer 1:1 pixel mapping so I could game in, say, a 1280 x 800 box thereby increasing FPS and detailing with the less powerful cards? Any constructive suggestions or observations would be gratefully received by this technonumpty n00b.

As long as the card has DualLink DVI it will be able to drive the screen. DualLink is not the same as dual DVI ports for two screens :)

For gaming i have no idea, someone else can fill in the details on that score.

There should be something to allow 1:1 pixel mapping in the Dells menus.....by default I know it will stretch the image.

Running in 1920x1200 on a 640MB GTS should be sufficient though for most games.

it depends if you really like to game, if so your gonna want the 8800, if your a casual gamer go for something cheaper and lower the resolution.

IMO it would be a shame not to use the monitor for gaming and to do that properly the 8800GTS 640mb would be an excellent choice.

another consideration is that the 8800 will have far superior image clarity than a lower priced card, and if your a HD video editor you will notice the difference :)

8800 for the win, and yes the dells have 3 modes for ratio, 1:1, aspect and stretch

Well that settles it then, I'll get an Asus 640Mb 8800GTS. I was hoping the Radeon HD2600XT would be the killer card but it turns out the UVD aspect cannot yet be implemented in Vista64. Hardly what you'd call Vista compatible, IMHO. Mind you, I don't think the Asus "Splendid" playback processing has been perfected for Vista yet either but I have to assume it eventually will be.

At least in ATi's drivers you can do the pixel mapping at driver level, so no need for messing around in the monitor's menu's - just set 'centred' rather than 'stretched' in the driver and whatever resolution you set, and it'll stick in a sort letterbox mode in the centre of the screen. I've never tried it, but nVidia's old control panel (the one in Display Properties) has centred as the option too - I presume the new control panel has the same option too, but I despise that with a passion, so wouldn't know. I haven't used the option with the nV drivers, but there's nothing to suggest it won't work - it's on by default on this card. :)