Upgrading My Graphics Card And I Have Some Questions Please

[marcbkk]

I am running an ASUS P4S800D-X motherboard with a Pentium IV 3Ghz CPU and 2GB of ram. I currently have an Asus A9550 AGP graphics card with 128MB of RAM and which has one DVI port and on VGA port.

I had been running a single Apple Widescreen 20” cinema display on the DVI port for a year or so.

Now I just added a second monitor which is a Dell 24” Widescreen Ultrasharp display to make it a dual monitor setup. The Dell is capable of running on both a VGA or DVI signal, but since my graphics card only has one DVI port, I have the Dell running on the VGA port and the moment.

I use the computer mainly for Photoshop and working on 50-150MB image files.

I found that images look sharper on the Apple, even though it is almost 2 years old already. My guess is that the Dell would be much sharper if I had it running also on a DVI port.

I have been looking at AGP cards that I can upgrade to, although there are not many to choose from. There is one by ASUS I have been looking at with 512MB of RAM which is the Asus HD2600. I am also looking at a Sapphire X1950 Pro also with 512MB of RAM.

Before I make a new video card purchase I want to make sure I am going to get the right thing.

If anyone could answer the following questions it would be much appreciated:

1 – If I put the Dell monitor also on a DVI port will I see a noticeable difference in sharpness over the VGA signal it is running on now?

2 – Will a graphics card with 512MB of RAM versus 256MB of RAM make a noticeable difference in performance for the type of work I am doing which as I said is primarily Photoshop with large photo files?

3 – I had heard that the Sapphire X1950 Pro is one of the fastest graphics cards. For the work I am doing do I need something as fast as this?

4 – I also heard that the Sapphire card requires lots of power and could be a problem in some machines. Is this something to be concerned about?

5 – If I upgraded to say a graphics card with 256MB of RAM and 2 DVI ports, would this be enough of an upgrade to increase the sharpness on the Dell and overall increase in performance I am looking for?

6 – Are there any other graphics cards available that would offer to DVI ports with an AGP slot with either 256MB or 512MB of RAM worth considering instead of the ones I mentioned above?

Thank you for your time and hoping to get some good guidance on this.

[Generator]

The faster the cpu and the more system memory you have,, ie 2 gig plus a good graphics card like the radeon pro x1950 is ideal for photoshop, you want the large files to display fast and a fast refresh or redraw rate. so 512 mb will be better than 256 mb on the card. you can never have enough memory these days. get the best you can afford i say. the radeon pro x1950 would need a decent psu, 450 watts is the minimum recomended . if you have that or 500+ watts or more your ok. if the radeon pro x1950 is to powerful, go for the radeon pro x1650 512, but in graphics apps and multimedia apps like video conversion, encoding etc the more powerful cards are better.

[marcbkk]

Thanks so much Generator. After what I read, I think I am going to stay away from that X1950 card becuase of power consumption issues. Unfortunately the X1650 only offers 1 DVI port and the other is a VGA port. I was hoping to upgrade to a card that has 2 DVI ports since both monitors are capable of accepting a digital DVI signal.

[marcbkk]

The 2600Pro and 2600XT cards by HIS though do offer Dual DVI ports.

[Generator]

yeah thats the prob with the 4/8x agp slot,the pci express radeon pro x1650 has dual DVI ports.