What nvidia cards aer you talking of? I am not aware of anything competitive to the matrox cards, sorry Please elaborate... Note: half height, passive cooling mandatory
I personally run a battery of Dell 2007FP's (NOT wide screen) and am very satisfied. 1600x1200 at 20,2" is a nice sweet spot. Anything bigger would be unwieldly. Rather get more of them and have them form a battery
OK, this is not if you want a high powered machine for trading etc but this is how 95% of people should buy a PC. I say 95% because that's what most people use them for, ie - Email Internet Word/Excel And maybe a bit of music/video etc Go buy a bog standard Dell but make sure it's got at least 3GB of RAM and NOT an Intel Celeron chip. Expect to pay around £350 - £375 here in the UK (probably $400 in the US). Believe me that's all you need. I know my computers and this is what I buy for myself And as a rule of thumb after 4 years, 5 years max dump it and buy another one using the same strategy. Some people don't like Dell's but I view them as workhorses, not tht pretty but good workers and effective. Don't believe the marketing hype of the PC companies as they're masters as making us all believe that if you don't have the latest model then you're an idiot. But the models I suggest you buy WERE the latest and best models of about 18 months ago. And then, all the press and marketing guys were raving about how suberb they were.
::I meant the Extreme i7 processor, which is I think 3.33Ghz. ::Overclock it to 3.7-9ghz. Do NOT do that. Seriously, this borders stupid. You are a trader. Stability is core. Do NOT overclock. THere is hardly any reason to do so.
If you run 4 of those in portrait mode, it's about the same area as 2x 30"ers... for about 1/2 the cost. (4800x1600 vs 5120x1600)