Question : Problem: Most Important Video Card Specs for Multiple Monitor Multiple WIndow use

I am specifying a new system with 2 video cards so that I can have a total of 4 monitors. I need to know what video card specifications are the most important for my situation. I am more concerned with fast reaction time as I move from task to task - I am not concerned with motion video because I rarely have any running. Here is my situation:

1) I am NOT running video or games
2) I AM usually working on 4 monitors with about 15-20 windows open including: several firefox windows (each with up to 10 tabs open), several Internet Explorer windows (each with up to 10 tabs open); a photo editing program; several PDF's, Outlook (12 GB inbox); an excel sheet with 18,000 line items, and online radio running.

The question is do I put a different weight on video card specs if I am not using video and am more concerned about switching from one window to the next. For instance is it going to be more important to go with DDR5 than DDR3 than a greater number of streaming processing units. I am currently locked into ATI cards, 256-bit, PCI Express 2.0 x16. Which of the following are going to get me the most bang for the buck for my application:

1) Memory type: ddr3, ddr4, ddr5
2) Memory clock speed
3) Core clock speed
4) Number of stream processors

Remember, I am not running games, just still images and webpages.

Answer : Problem: Most Important Video Card Specs for Multiple Monitor Multiple WIndow use

Won't really make any difference.   You didn't say what size monitors you're using ... but if I assume 22" displays, then at the native resolution (1680 x 1050) and 32-bit color depth, it only takes 7MB to render a display ... so each card would be using 14MB to render two displays.   So even a 512MB card has 36 times as much memory as it needs for the basic display rendering ... the drivers do take advantage of this to help make window-switching faster; but that's a lot of headroom already.

As with getting a faster card, it certainly doesn't hurt anything to go with the 1GB card ... but I doubt you'd notice any difference in real-life performance.

As a real-world example, a few months ago I switched out the card in my main system (the one I'm using now) from a 512MB 2600XT to a 1GB nVidia 9600GT -- just "because" (the sale price on the 9600GT was just too good to pass up).   I only have two monitors (22" widescreen).   I typically have 6-10 windows open, including a couple of instances with a lot of tabs in both IE and Firefox, an Excel sheet, and often an instance of Photoshop.   I have noticed NO difference between the two video cards ... although I did run some benchmarks just to see how much "better" the 9600GT is => it nearly quadruples my system's score on 3DMark2006.   But, like you, I'm not a gamer ... so that big improvement in 3D performance simply doesn't transfer into any real-world gains.