Which Graphics Card?

[Retardotron]

Okay, so the card in my main computer burned itself out after a catastrophic fan malfunction, and its been about three years since I've purchased a graphics card so I haven't really been keeping up.
I need something heavy duty for all the time I spend modeling and rendering, but I don't want to break the bank, bulldoze its foundation, and salt the earth for a piece of equipment that will realistically last me about... three years.

Any suggestions?
Horror stories?
Warnings?

[Jyncus]

Hehe..well - you gotta start by making a clear choice between the average consumer cards or the workstation ones.
I really don't think you can start comparing cards between the two categories.. It's just a matter of how you wanna utilize it.
- 100% pure CAD/3D modeling? Go with an nVidia Quadro or an ATI Fire card (Don't know enough about specific workstation vid cards to suggest an exact model).
- A mix of 3D modeling/gaming? Go with an nVidia GeForce FX (I'd say 5700 or higher) or an ATI Radeon (96/700 or higher).

Err..don't get stuck in the whole nVidia vs. ATI argument. I've owned cards from bother companies...never had a complaint or problem from either one. There're also a few other companies that offer workstation/consumer vid cards - 3DLabs, Creative, and Matrox to name a few.

Judging from your post, it sounds like you're probably looking for a workstation card. Never having experience with one myself, someone else on threedy could offer you better advice than I could I'm sure.
Good luck to you!

[dhin]

For work stations I like the Quadro's by nVidia. They tend to to a good job and are fairly unexpensive (compaired to say the Fire or Wildcat cards.)

You also probably don't need top of the line either. Wildcats tend to be very picky about the hardware they work with and the Fires tend (not always but in my experiance) to be a bit slow and drivers are always stable (though the same could be said about nVidia drivers also.) You could also pick up a Quadro 4 for a lot cheaper that the FX and it should preform about the same if you aren't doing really heavy CAD modeling.

[Downup]

The best buy. If u are not a gamer u ust want to model in 3d.. THen buy

Radeon 9700 (non pro) and with simple files remake it to FireGl.. Games goes slow but 3d wow :> i did it once but i wanted to play games to so i changed to orginal files..

[Fusion]

you wont have to worry about anything expensive cause let me tell you, there isn't much difference between a cheap card and an expensive card......the performance is almost.......seamless.....I had to spend hundreds of dolars to figure that out

[Torlok2002]

The newer cards arent going to make majic, but if you pay close attention and have your cards running correctly you will notice a difference.

Ignore Fusion's post, he is having problems with his new card. (which may i mention is the fastest gaming card ATI makes now!)

[Torlok2002]

I personally recommend the GeForce FX 5700 or 5900. They are pretty easily overclocked (if you even want to step into the realm!).

My 5900 performs well in both games and 3d (i run all games including UT2k3, NFS-U, and several others in 1024X768 with all details on high and hardly ever drop under a smooth framerate). 3d performance is good also.

[Vitor]

If you want something to play games, i'd recommend an ATI 9800 XT. I have one and it has a great perfomance in games ( I can play Far Cry demo with all the sittings in high) and it also works great in 3dsmax.

[-En-]

If you want a good cheap moddeling card go with one of the 256Mb Geforce FX 5600 cards. They're not the fastest cards out, but the RAM will be nice for moddeling, plus, you can pick one up for less than $150. If you want to play games its not so great, you would be able to play anything out, but with the details turned DOWN.

But one question, What is the rest of your system specs, its hard to give good advice without knowing what the rest of gear is. POst your stats and you could get better advice.

[Xullion]

Lol I have a Geforce 4 MX 64MB (the cheap one yes) and all works well