Forward planning

[jeckulz]

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

 

[jeckulz]

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.