What 3d Card should i Get?

[PixelDood]

Hey All,

Currently I have a Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra SLi (socket 939) Mobo, 2 gigs a ram, 2 Nvidia 7900 Grfx Cards, and an AMD 64 2.8 Dual core processor. I understand that Z-brush runs mostly off the RAM and HD...My question is-- I am going to purchase 3d Max soon and I want my Rig to be able to work effectively with 3d MAx. I hear that traditional 3d packages run much better off of Open GL based cards. So what card would be ideal (for under $800) What really concerns me here is that I'm a big gamer and I have a feeling Open Gl cards are not as good for gaming as the retail cards...is this true? Is there any way I can rig my computer now to get the best of both worlds, or do I need to build another comp? :(

Thanks for your time and advice,

PD

[billrobertson42]

Opengl is just a library that sits runs and utilizes the graphics hardware. So if the card runs games well it will still run games well even if it has a good opengl implementation.

Nvidia does opengl better on their consumer cards at least (and maybe their pros). You can also run cool things like Gelato on an nvidia.

[PixelDood]

Kewl, thx for the reply. My system runs games well with the dual 7900's, but will games run well on a 3d app specialized card, like a FireGL X3-256 256MB AGP Graphics Card

http://images.academicsuperstore.com/images/prod_bar_top_right.jpghttp://images.academicsuperstore.com/images/prod_bar_bottom_left.jpg

http://www.academicsuperstore.com/market/marketdisp.html?PartNo=720525


thx,
PD

[aurick]

I recommend not spending a lot for your video card right now. Even though a card might say "Vista Compatible" or something similar, that only means that it will run Direct X 9 under Vista. To the best of my knowledge, there are no Direct X 10 cards available as yet, and probably won't be until Vista launches.

So if you spend a lot of money for a card now, you're probably going to be kicking yourself when Vista launches in January and the new batch of cards hits the market. :)

[PixelDood]

Thanks everybody for the advice, much appreciated. I was wondering if anybody could clarify a point though. Do specialized 3d cards like Fire Gl's play games properly? The main question I need answered here is- Can I switch my Card over to a 3d application specialized card like a Fire GL and still play games on it? I would like to avoid it, but do I need to build a seperate system for gaming or is there some way to get the best of both worlds with a Fire GL?

Thanks again for your time peeps,

PD

[lemonnado]

I own a FireGL 7100 and it does anything I throw at it.
But I highly recommend you think about Auricks advice!
Lemo

[womball]

The 8800 gts is a direct x 10 card. Its 500 dollars though. Check out anandtech for reviews of it.

[tez]

Yes the 8800 gts is certainly a nice choice its a tad faster than my 7950 GX2 and DX10.