2560x1440 or 3D monitor?

[MistaSparkul]

Currently have a single 23 inch 1080p 60Hz monitor and looking to step up to either a 27 inch 2560x1440 IPS panel or 120Hz 3D monitor. Plan to use the monitor for gaming and got 2 questions about the set ups...

1. Which setup would be more demanding on the video card?

2. Which would give me a better gaming experience? I've heard some say that playing in 3D is pretty awesome and that the smoothness of 120Hz is the way to go, while others have stated that 3D gaming is a gimmick and the better color accuracy + higher resolution of the IPS panel will give the best experience.

 

[MauveCloud]

2560x1440 only has 1.77 times the pixels of a 1080p display, whereas a 120 hz 3d monitor has to maintain 2 separate 1920x1080 buffers, one for each eye, so I'd imagine the 120 hz 3d would be more demanding.

I haven't tried 120 hz 3d myself, partly because I'm concerned about flicker issues, and partly because I like to connect my game consoles to the same screen as my computer monitor (I don't know of any true 120hz 3d monitor that has the extra connections). I tried row-interleaved passive 3d, but that has drawbacks of its own. One thing I noticed that probably applies to 120hz 3d as well is that there is some eyestrain when adjusting to the stereoscopic 3d effect, because the focus distance for each eye is still to the screen, even when the binocular depth cues indicate things are further back. Also, some games have only partial support for stereoscopic 3d, because some things are rendered with DirectDraw instead of Direct3D. I'm told that this can vary depending on what driver is used (nVidia and AMD have their own 3d drivers, plus there's iZ3D and Tri-Def 3D), but I've only tried the iZ3D driver.

Color accuracy is more important for graphic design work than for games, but higher resolution is good for both.