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.