Again I may be speaking out of my bum but I think that the GeForce 4 will be quite sufficient. Especially if you are rendering to disk. A better video card is going to make creating the scene quicker (if you have OpenGL turned on) but will not affect rendering when rendering to disk. Of course the 9700pro is pretty sweet and you may have to make an excuse to get it or wait a month or two. Isn't there a 9800 out now? I've been using a laptop lately so I'm out of touch with the latest and greatest upgrades to desktops.