Originally Posted By: Dignan
From the research I've put into this purchase, the conclusion I've reached is that for the above conditions, when it comes to graphics cards I should be focusing more on memory than GPU speed. Is that correct? It seems to me that Windows alone prefers to have a good amount of memory to drive a 30" monitor. I've been looking at cards with 1GB or more of DDR3 memory. Is that where I should be looking?

There are two basic reasons for memory on a video card. The first is for the frame buffer for the display, and represents the uncompressed image size to cover your resolution and color depth. To calculate this for your monitor at 2560x1600 and 32 bit color is simple:
(2560x1600x32)/1024/1024=125MB of video memory needed for one frame.

The other main use of the GPU memory is for 3d acceleration, usually for storage of textures. With the exception of a few high end games with settings turned all the way up, 256MB of texture memory should allow for a decent experience during gaming.

One last thing to keep in mind is many video acceleration processes and 3d rendering tend to maintain a front and back frame buffer. This means you will need to double the frame buffer memory usage for these situations.

So, 256(textures) + 125(front frame buffer) + 125 (back frame buffer) = 506MB of RAM would be an ideal minimum for your video card assuming you will be playing games.

GPU speed is also important for gaming to provide the processing power needed to support your very high resolution. The other option is of course to set the game to a lower resolution to lower the burden on the card. If you don't plan on gaming with the system much, still consider they type of GPU carefully to get one that may help accelerate video processes. I don't know the state of this on the Windows side these days, but do know specific apps in the Final Cut Studio do use the GPU pretty heavily to assist in real time previews of effects and such.