Not to take away from other important IT projects, but many of us can use a bit of thought about upgrading our video subsystems.

These recommendations are for PCI-e card types; there is nothing wrong with the AGP format, but not much new development is headed there of course.

As well, I prefer the newer DVI format of connector, vs the older VGA 15 pin style.

While I tend to prefer the Nvidia GeForce line versus their most common competitor the ATI Radeon, either have a range of products from the lowest priced to the highest performance in the industry.

To dovetail with the general mid-line monitor article, I will talk about a mid-line graphics card : the Nvidia Geforce GTS 250.

It easily supports dual monitors at high resolutions, and is plenty fast for many uses. Again, this may not be enough performance for a professional graphics user, or a high level power gamer running intense graphical games on multiple monitors, but for the average person this should be enough for a good while.

This line of cards does work well under Windows 7 in my experience, in either 32 or 64 bit versions, and can easily handle high resolution HD video delivery full screen at max resolution. I have not tried running two HD movies side by side, but looking at the performance impact with my GTX 275 in doing this, I think the 250 should be able to handle that fine; luckily, I’m generally not running two “serious” graphical screens at once, but sometimes one plus browser / email, etc.

I hope this “value article” gives you some idea of the economical but powerful capabilities of current graphics cards; for more detail you can always check out somewhere like Tom’s Guide for the deeper content and graphs; I particularly like their “best cards for the money” type articles listed there, which are updated fairly often.

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Now playing: Pink Floyd – Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict
via FoxyTunes

I know it’s an old question for many of us : one bigger, say, 30+” LCD single, or dual smaller monitors for our desktop work?

This is of course a largely individual question : I won’t attempt to tell some graphical artist who needs a 32″ display to render all of their project at one time that my solution will work better.

As an I.T. person, even between career opportunities [ahem] I have a distinct preference for screen real estate. The payback / ROI on this is a little more demonstrable in most business scenarios I’ve seen, vs. upgrading to that very slightly more powerful processor, that is double the cost of the slightly lesser model. I tend to spend quite a few hours per day (even while recuperating at the moment from a second throat surgery) on these gizmos, so they are an important long term component investment for me.

A couple of suggested ways to go : if, like me, you don’t require the biggest single display, and can go with two : I’d recommend the 24″ range in LCD’s. While they aren’t the least expensive examples in the line, neither do they even come close to their more expensive cousins in the line.

Acer X233H bid 23-Inch LCD Monitor

The above Acer is similar to an older model that I’m using on the second desktop at home. While writing this mobile on an Eee PC works (for the moment) I miss even this size of monitor! Even this size of monitor can properly display the best typical HD content, at 1080p. While it is not going to compare to a nice [bigger] TV for group viewing, I’ve snuck in more than a few late night office movies using a similar setup; at 18″ away, for a single viewer, these are pretty “big screen”

Many quality graphics cards in the Windows (7) world, or even under XP (atm, the netbook is still on a tweaked XP) will easily drive a pair of these monitors for typical tasks these days, with no special software needed to run as two virtual desktops. Even Microsoft seems to agree. Great performing but reasonably priced cards sounds like a second article [soon]

Moving up a bit in size, you could look into the higher 25″ range, and still possibly go dual monitor / single graphics card.

Samsung Touch Of Color T260 25.5-inch LCD Monitor

Two of these, personally, has worked out better than my limited experience in using a single “still larger” monitor. Many typical PC users would be well served by even a single one of these Samsung’s. Price does go up here, but so does real estate space, and quality level by a tad (though frankly I’m also perfectly happy with the smaller monitor, listed at top).

Also honestly, my heart just isn’t easy with recommending the next monitors; while the first pair above is somewhat economical, and the middle pair are “still within the realm of reason” for my budget, the various 30 inch LCD monitors available really start to swell in price, even for a single.

While the resolution is indeed higher, there is little for me here personally other than running that single screen (convenience factor for a single app screen / movie).  I do understand that this may be very important to others, so I didn’t want to leave out the higher end NEC or Apple Cinema type displays. Sure, I’d love to have one there, but I have a hard time justifying it for my needs / wants, even if it were similar in power usage / price to the smaller models.

I hope that this gives you some basis for monitor thoughts if you haven’t upgraded in a while. Generally, I would much rather work with a docked notebook (inferior ram / cpu / etc. but dock connected full keyboard, mouse, etc. and say a 24″ monitor) than a full power desktop, using a 21″ LCD. It does have that much effect in my work, at least.

For the hours I spend staring at displays, I do want to choose quality, even for my eye health, which is certainly a concern within the IT world over decades of use. Thanks for tuning in!