What's a really good 2D card for photo editing?

[pieman7]

I've been asked to build a PC for a pro-photographer who is just getting into digital photography. They bought a 12MP camera and as a result need a much better PC. They use mostly Photoshop for their SW app. They'd also like to use dual monitors. They don't have any use for a 3D card. I've heard that Matrox makes good 2D dual head cards. Any suggestions?:camera:

 

[Matthias99]

Matrox makes very nice (but rather pricey) cards that are, indeed, very good for 2D work, especially at very high resolution/refresh rates.

That said, I haven't seen much evidence that they're much (if any) better than recent ATI or NVIDIA cards in terms of VGA output. Some of the cheaper NVIDIA manufacturers have had issues -- FX5200s were notorious for having crappy VGA outputs. I don't know if the 6200s are any better.

If you're using DVI to connect to a digital LCD monitor, it's irrelevant. It'll look the same coming from anything (although ATI and Matrox both have better high-res DVI support than NVIDIA).

 

[mwmorph]

With DVI, all card are equal but with VGA, Matrox will be better. Also, driver wise they have some great software. ATI is supposed to be slightly better than Nvidia VGA output wise too.

 

[IeraseU]

I recomend an ATI or Matrox Dual DVI card in case you ever want to go the 2 monitor route, which does come in handy. New Nvidia cards also work well with thier DVI, but the FX5200 had some problems in DVI at very high resolutions (1920 x 1200) mainly, so I am less confident in recomending Nvidia for this type of work.