Right.
My mobile contract expires in March, and my lady renewed hers the other day at fones4u, got a deal where you get £300 chucked at you as you leave the shop (and as a result our house is currently awash with shoes).

Which got me thinking. When I get a new contract, Im thinking its time I upped my graphics performance as Im currently on crappy onboard linked to a 19" Hanns.G HG191A (VGA -1440 top res.) which I intend to use as a secondary in the new set up.

What I want is
-as big a new monitor as I can get (Ive got actual room for up to about 24")
HDMI/1920 res. is a MUST HAVE.
-A GPU that will push both monitors to their full res.
I dont think that the games I'll be playing will test a GPU to its full (Steam titles, mainly FPS, perhaps some C&C- but the ability to try some new games would be nice). However my system gets used for a lot of photoshop and more recently some video editing too, so visual performance is a must.
Also, I dont want to be able to hear it from the next room.

I need both, all in for £300 or under.
Only suggest spending more if youve found them somewhere else but my total cost must be no more than £300.

Cheers

Acer H233HEbmid 23" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black (HDMI & 1920x1080) - £129.24
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-058-AC&groupid=17&catid=1425&subcat=

MSI GeForce GTX 460 Cyclone 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £170.36
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-092-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1830

The MSI GTX460 comes with a higher than average spec so I'd recommend that specific one rather than a similar priced one with some free games but less clock speed. Also the fan is pretty nice on that card and it will stay quiet!

Take a look at some benchmark results in reviews for the card, I'm sure you will be pleased with the performance.

TBH jeckulz any advice you get today would be no use if you don't intend to buy until March. Post again when you've money to go.

Having said that mupet0000 is right that you can expect to be able to get a 23-24" monitor and enough power to fully drive it, all for £300 come march.

Cheers,
vfm

Thanks fella's.
I know march is ages off, but truth be told, I know sweet FA about GPUs.
Theres just too many of them and too many specs within each one to work out the best value for my cash...
Amount and speed of RAM, and which DDR number, number of cores, speed of the GPU. Has it got the outputs that I need? (to add to this problem, Im told there are different types of DVI?) Should I be thinking about SLI/crossfire?

So I thought I'd better start swatting up now and ask you guys what you think so I can get a better idea before I buy anything.

Cheers anyway.

The different types of DVI would be single link and dual link. The only reason you would need a dual link DVI is if you are running past resolutions of 1920x1200, anything at that res or lower will work fine on a single link.

The best thing you can do for graphics cards is take a look on websites for cards in your budget, then look at reviews and compare performance at the resolution you want to play at. You wont need SLI/Crossfire and even if you did get 2 good cards it would cost close to if not more than £300.

By March there will probably be a range of new cards out by ATI and monitor prices would have changed, but there is a VAT increase in January so I'm not sure how bad that will affect things.