I have WoW working fine on my 23" ACD at 1920 x 1600 rez
First of all, let's get the numbers straight. It's 1920x1200.
Is this typical of widescreen gaming? I have a Geforce 5950 Ultra w/256MB and my monitor is connected thru a DVI port
No, it's not. I get 65~100+ FPS with my X800XT PE, and FX-55 at 1920x1200 with 4xAA + 16xAF.
I think its capped because the FPS display just sticks on 30. Never budges.
Vertical sync is enabled by default in WoW.
If you want leave V-sync enabled, also enable triple buffering. This will help with FPS when V-sync is turned on.