I'm looking for a card that has excellent image quality on CRTs at very high resolutions (2048x1536x75Hz or 1880x1440x85Hz), is quiet whilst running things other than games and utterly reliable.
Game performance is not critical at this point - I'm currently running a FireGL 8800 (basically an enhanced Radeon 8500) so *anything* will be faster. Excellent image quality (matching a Matrox G400) and low noise (when not running games) are the main points. In 6 months time I might get on to running some modern games, and upgrade to something capable of running Oblivion at max details at sensible resolutions (i.e. 1280x1024 or 1024x768).
My monitors are an IBM C220p (22" CRT -2048x1536), a VP730 (17" TFT) and a Sun GDM20e20 (20" CRT - 1280/1024).
I was leaning towards the 8800GTS as that specifically has high resolution and 10bit colour support, but as the R600/8900 whatever are due soon I'm guessing now might be the time to hold off slightly. Any personal references here? It seems other non 8800GTS/X cards have inferior image quality? I'd consider ATI, but I had so much hassle with the FireGL and a Radeon 9250 that I'm not inclined to get another one!
What I am specifically *not* looking for is SLI (pointless; if an 8800GTS can run Oblivion at around 40fps, who needs the hassle?), any overclocking (reliability is very important) or TFT recommendations - I prefer CRT, in general.
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