Video Card - Your preference?

[sandy.sebastian]

If you could have any video card out on the market, what would it be? Why?

What would be a good middle of the road card?

[mjfarrell]

Right now I have the least expensive Quadro chip-set
card on the market. I am probably the happiest
with a video card as I have been my entire cad-life.
Why, because there are some things that I am sure
are not transparent to AutoCAD that appear to be with
this card and it's custom drivers. In the video settings I
have had to 'dumb' down the graphics acceleration very little
to achieve a great balance between display quality and speed.

As to a 'middle of the road' card, I alsways ask this question
about business equipment; will what you buy help you make money?

[sandy.sebastian]

Thank you for your answer. You sound a bit like my boss in disguise ;) They will spend the money on whatever we need, as long as we can justify it.

What kind of memory do you have in the card? 512? more?

[mjfarrell]

Here is the entire system specification:

CD MS|WINDOWS XP PRO w/SP1a % (Qty=1,Price=139.99)
MODEM 56K|DIAMOND SM56PCI V.92 RTL (Qty=1,Price=16.00)
VGA PNY|FX500 128M DVI/VGA 8X AGP R (Qty=1,Price=212.00)
KB LOGITECH|ELITE BLACK KEYBOARD RT (Qty=1,Price=30.00)
CABLE ANTEC|SERIAL ATA POWER ADPTR (Qty=1,Price=9.99)
HD 36GB|WD 10,000 WD360GD 8MB OEM (Qty=2,Price=224.00)
FD 1.44MB|SONY MPF920 Black % (Qty=1,Price=10.99)
DVD+/-RW 8X Sony DWU18A BLK baz SW% (Qty=1,Price=99.00)
CPU P4/3.0EGHz 800M 478P/1MB HT RT (Qty=1,Price=222.00)
MOUSE LOGITECH|MX300 OPTICAL RTL (Qty=1,Price=20.00)
MB i875P|5P1A4D IC7 ABIT ATX RTL (Qty=1,Price=118.00)
DDRAM 512MB ADATA|64Mx64 DDR400 (Qty=4,Price=356.00)
MNTR NEC|19" CRT AS900-BK RETAIL (Qty=1,Price=178.00)
RACKMOUNT ANTEC 4U22ATX400 % (Qty=1,Price=175.00)
Total ~$1900
This is a very robust workstation, justification is easy
this hadware paid for itself in under 90 days.