Two monitors or one higher res? Will my GFX card handle it?

[sp2011]

Hi All,

I have a bit of a dilemma and I would really appreciate some advice.

Firstly, here are my system specs :

Dell Studio 1749 laptop
Core I5 CPU M540 @ 2.53Ghz
GFX : ATI Radeon HD5600 550Mhz / 1Gb DDR3
8Gb Ram
Boot Drive : Crucial M4 256Gb SSD
Drive 2 : WD6500AAKS Hybrid HDD
Drive 3 : (Esata) Seagate ST95005620AS
Opsys: Win 7 HE 64 Bit

I do a lot of coding, image editing and general use of Office 2010.

I play a couple of games - Mainly :
World Of Warcraft
SWTOR
Dishonored

Here is the thing:

I currently use two monitors (one 24" and one 22" via hdmi and one via displayport). Both running at their native resolution of 1920 x 1200.

When gaming I only use my primary screen for the game and usually have Skype or Outlook running on the second screen.

It all works great at the mo.

I am thinking of replacing my dual monitor setup with the following 2 options :

Option A :

1 x 27" monitor running at 2560 x 1440


Option B :

1 x 27" monitor running at 2560 x 1440
1 x 24" monitor running at 1920 x 1200

My question is : Will my system be powerful enough to run the above options at the same speed as now? I know the general desktop stuff will be fine with either option but what about gaming? I will be running the games on the primary 2560x1440 monitor.

Any help or advice much appreciated

 

[signal101]

If your going to be playing games on a high resolution's on multiple montiors I would recomend that you get a card with more memory.

 

[abbadon_34]

the higher resolution is almost twice that of what you are currently using, so there will be a very noticable gaming difference.