Most of the ASP.NET MVC paging solutions I have found by googling look like they get all rows from a database table in the form of a IEnumerable collection, perform some paging
ScottGu has a very nice multi-part blog series on using LINQ in Asp.Net (including MVC). I recommend reading the entire series starting at Part 1, but Part 3 covers exectly what you're looking for -- the section titled "Paging our Query Results" specifically deals with paging in the database.