ATI

Hi i want to run two 24" monitors at 1920 x 1200 i don't play games but do a lot of photoshop work and video work so want something able to handle these. I don't know a lot about graphics cards and wondered about a 512mb ATI 4850 or a 1gb ATI 4870. Any comments would be appreciated.
Thanks
John

Doesn't matter, because you aren't doing 3D work at that res. Any cheap $50 card will work, no need for any 48xx card. PS depends on your CPU and ram, video doesn't really come into play.

Ok, allow me to rephrase. Most photo and video programs don't need high end video cards. Check the programs that you do use, to see if they can take advantage of GPUs. For example, if they support CUDA apps, you'll need an Nvidia video card, the 48xx won't do anything for you.

You should probably re-re-phrase that since nV has limited their current CS4 support officially to Quadro cards, however you can make it work on others, especially in the photoshop segment itself where it's limited to OGL driver recognition, it's Premier and After Effects though has this artificial requirement like other NLE software.
The question was specific to 'photoshop work and video' which would give you a hint to what app he's focusing on, and for CS4 and the previous generation of AfterEffects do benefit for OGL acceleration, and it works just fine on ATi cards just fine, and the 1GB HD4870 or HD4850 would be better than it's 512MB counterparts in this case for that reason, which in turn would be better than something like my HD2600 or a GF9600.

IMO the best choice would be to save a little money, get the HD4850-1GB and then put the savings elsewhere like a better scratch disk or better CPU or more RAM, or even towards other software. I would say the HD4850->4870 difference would be rather small.