Looking for some graphics cards recommendations..

Hello everyone, long time lurker, first time poster.

After spending years dealing with a litle ol 19 inch monitor, I've finally got the cash/time to get myself a nice 24 incher.
Problem is, I don't think my little ol GTS 640mb is gonna cover that now.

I play games like COD 4, Crysis and Crysis Warhead, Fallout 3, Farcry 2, all fairly top of the line, intensive, etc. I like playing my games as far as I can push em, and that includes AA.
So, I'm come here for help in deciding what to go with. I was primarily looking at a GTX 260 or the radeon HD 4870 1 gig. I'm open to other choices, but optimally, I'm looking at spending about 700-800 bucks on both the monitor and card.

And if anyone has a good monitor to recommend, I'd appreciate that to. Thanks for looking, and oh! Here's my current system specs before I forget:

-Q6600 (Stock speeds...for now)
-650i ultra mobo
-4 gigs of DDR2 ram, not sure about speeds or timings, I'm at school right now...
-Nvidia GTS 640mb
-750 watt PSU

Thanks again folks.

So...that monitor only has a 6ms refresh rate, that seems fairly low. Although, I haven't bought a monitor in years, so perhaps this isn't such a big factor now?

And no offense, but I was looking for a little more info on the card...but thanks for the input.

+1 for that Acer P243WAid. At $340, it leaves enough room in the $800 budget even for a HD 4850X2.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] =4850%20X2

I have nothing but praises for the BenQ G2400WD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6824014173

Like aevm says, a nice cheap monitor will leave more $ for a better video card. You may also want to consider budgeting $27 for a Freezer 7 pro cooler and running that Q6600 at 3.0GHz or more if that mobo allows.


BTW, with an SLI mobo, a cheap used second 8800GTS 640MB would give you more GPU power than a GTX 260. Don't spend too much on one though.

The 4850x2 and 4870x2 are longet than your 8800. What case do you have? I would feel bad if I recomended something to you and it would not fit.

Err...an Aspire X-peria I think? lol, I really can't quite remember exactly. It's certainly not a huge nor fancy case, but I'll try to find the exact make and reply back to ya.

dagger, you know a 9800gx2 is no good

Yeah, Dagger seems to recommend this card to everyone these days. It's still a decent card but good luck finding one these days. I'm pretty sure they have been EOL'd as they have are out of stock just about everywhere. Newegg is down to carrying just one SKU for the 9800GX2, Microcenter is also down to one SKU, Tigerdirect is down to two SKU's, and ZipZoomFly is no longer listing any SKU's for this card.