Video card resolution matched to 20inch ACD?

Question

Hi all. I've been reading some of the great info here about video cards and cinema displays, but I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for yet, so, I apologize if I'm repeating what someone else may have already asked...
My business partner is looking at getting a 20" ACD next week. He's using a Dual 1.25 MDD. I'm not sure exactly what video card he has but I do know it's got 64 mb memory.
I was told earlier this year from my local Apple dealer that the card had to be capable of "matching the resolution of the monitor" in order for the monitor to work at it's optimum, keeping it's calibration etc.
Is there any truth to this? And, if so, what type of card should he consider if he's getting the new display? Or will his card drive the monitor fine? I'm sorry that I don't know exactly what card is in his machine, but I will try to find out tonight when I go over to do some editing with him.
Thanks for any kind of reply or guidence.
ren.
17 PB 1.67 2GB RAM, 14 iBook 600 dl USB 640 RAM, LaCie 500g, 400g, 250g, 60g FW HD's, iPod 15GB   Mac OS X (10.4.2)  

Answer 1

Radeon 9200 AGP
32MB VRAM
DVI-D
it is driving the native 1680x1050xMillions of Colours
this is a pretty low-end chip bundled in some Macs, what you need to do is just go to the manufacturers web page (ATI, Nvidia, etc.) and plug in the chip name and model number and you get the specifications.
This chip tops out at resolutions of 2048x1536. That said you usually want a chip that can perform resolutions much higher than what you intend to run it at only for the reason that from a performance standpoint the highest end will usually have some performance/speed issue of one form or another. Running at a mid-range resolution means you normally won't encounter any performance issues or very mild ones.