I'm hoping this is a good forum to post this thread in. I am in the process of getting ready to build my new computer. I will be using this computer for web design and graphical design. Basically running the normal programs, flash, dreamweaver, photoshop as well as 3d modeling (maya or lightwave). I have gotten most of my parts selected, but am having a difficult time selecting a video card.

I want to choose one that will be best suited for proffessional work as I do not indulge in any form of PC gaming. Problem is most video cards are either designed around gaming or cost more than the rest of my system will. I'm looking in the cost range of about $100 - $150. Hoping someone out there has some good advice or good sites that do some good comparissons of proffessional video cards (and not ones that compare the $2000+ ATI FireGL V7350 to the also $2000+ nVidia Quadro FX 4500) or at least what gaming cards also work very well for what I need to do.

Thanks!

I've bought a few of the NVIDIA e-GeForce FX 5500 cards and have never had problems. At $50 they are excellant cards. I don't think you need anything special for graphic design, I'm not sure about 3d modeling however.

Anacrusis, thanks for the great suggestion...but I unfortunately have already decieded upon a PCI 16x supporting motherboard...so that GPU will not match. Sorry I did not mention that before.

I was looking a bit into this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150141

Something like an ATI Radeon 9250 would do the job, very cheap and reliable, not the best for gaming so should be perfect.

I <3 my nvidia 7800GT

ATI Radeon 9550 256Mb only 99$