Should I upgrade my GTS 250 graphics card?

[butlerkid]

Current PC: XPS 710
Intel core 2 Duo/6700@2.66gHz/4MB cache/4 GB RAM/GeForce GTS 250 1GB

OS: XP - plan to upgrade to Windows 7 within a few months

Questions: I plan to buy the NEC PA301 monitor.
http://www.necdisplay.com/p/desktop-monitors/pa301w-bk-sv

In order to take advance of 10 or 12 bit I understand that my current GTS 250 is not adequate.

I use Photoshop and various other s/w on very large photo files, but NO extensive gaming or video. I understand that CUDA is very beneficial for photo processing.

Do I need to upgrade the video card to take advantage of the new monitor and if so, which one would you recommend?

[David (PassMark)]

There are several cards that support 10bit colour, such as the AMD FirePro cards.

But only a few applications support it. And then most file formats won't support it. That is to say if you save the file you are working on, then it will go back to 8bit colour.

So I don't think 10bit per channel is such a great thing (yet).

Cheaper upgrade might be a quad core CPU + more RAM. But they would need to be huge photos before you would notice the difference.

[butlerkid]

Thank you so much for the response!

I gather that my nVidia GTS 250 will work with the NEC PA301. I may upgrade the card in the future, when things are a little more developed.

(FWIW - the photo s/w I use (Photoshop CS5) is compatible with 10 bit. However, I have not yet upgraded to Windows 7, which also supports higher bit depths.)

You have been most helpful! I'm so glad I found this site!