Umm I am afraid that I really disagree with that. 30" (with 4 MP) is a lot less than my TH set up (5.3 MP). Apart from Crysis I play everything at max settings and often with a fair bit of AA and AF. 30" is no where near too much for today's GPU's. A single 280, 285 or a 290 or a 4870x2 and you are sorted.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYxMiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYwOCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
I have never used monitor speakers (or any for that fact..surround sound headsets FTW*) so that is a prob I didn't consider.
* 'For The Wife'..she'd kill me if she had to listen to the explosions and bullets of my games! :wink:
At 30" monitor is 2560*1600 for 4.09 Mpix
At 3-19" TH2G is3840*1024 for 3.93 Mpix
I wouldn't say either of those setup are yet too GPU friendly. For many games it is still on the edge unless you have top of the line GPU. I'm still running my 8800GT OC's SLi. Getting ready to upgrade to a single GTX280. Here is tom's showing Crysis:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-295,2123-4.html
And, YES, Crysis is the worst GPU hog... But, it also a indicator of what future gameing my hold in terms of GPU needs. And even on other games a single GTX280 at 30" and High setting is just pushing 30+. Maybe time for a GTX295, lol... NO, that would be a total waste of money right now. The x300 line will be coming out by Q2 of 09.
I guess the bottom line is i need something to be a good HDTV and monitor. I do need speakers for the TV use. For gameing, I will still use Headphones like you for a big portion of the time. Other then that i have game speakers already. Maybe I just by a nice 30" HDTV and call it a day. I need to see what gaming would look like on a 30" HDTV.