Graphics upgrade - what would you do?

I learnt last week that I had won an HP competition which means that I've now received a rather fancy XW6600 workstation (Dual 3GHz Xeon QC CPUs, 8GB RAM, Raptor HDD, etc) and an ATI FireGL V7700 graphics card (mentioned in Hexus news here).

Question is: I wonder if I'd be better off selling the graphics card to get a nice new monitor. I currently have 2x Dell FP2005 20" 1600x1200 monitors which I really like, but one of them has started playing up with vertical colour banding.

My main use is for photo editing and the ocassional movie playback and ocassional gaming. I would far prefer very good colour reproduction than fastest panel for gaming.

I'll probably end up using the XW6600 as my new photo editing PC, it will have enough oomph to handle anything I can throw at it with photoshop / lightroom. But that means getting another monitor to use with the PC. So if I were to do that, I guess I could sell the card to raise some cash for a decent monitor (new they're still over £500 :eek: )

So what would you recommend?

I would look at getting an HD4850 Vapor X or GTS250 for around £80 to £90 or perhaps an HD4870 or GTX260 for around the £100 mark. IIRC CUDA can be useful as well as OpenGL for accelerating Photoshop although it depends on the version you are running.

If you are looking at getting a new monitor look at either the 22" E-IPS Dell 2209WA or S-PVA HP LP2275W for around the £200 to £250.

If you have more money you can get the H-IPS HP LP2475W which is the 24" best screen under £500 IMHO for around £360 using a discount code and Quidco straight from HP:

http://forums.hexus.net/graphics-car...00-budget.html

If you can get a good amount for the graphics card then I would sell it. However you may invalidate your warranty though on the PC.

I agree with the 2209W, LP2275W, and LP2475. However there is also to consider the Dell 2408W.

S-PVA Panel, 24". Had slight problems with Input lag, but fixed with A01 revision. I personally use a 2408W for my moniter.

Each has their advantages, E-IPS is better for fluid movement (Dell 22", HP 24"), S-PVA is better for vivid colours (Dell 24" and HP 22"). And disadvantages. (S-PVA has slightly worse grey-2-grey times, E-IPS doesn't have as good black). But both are miles ahead of TN panels in terms of both grey-2-grey and black, as well as being better build quality (S-PVA and E-IPS tend to be less likely to have dead pixels that TN, but that is likely because they don't sell defective panels, even wholesale).