I am having a new dream computer built and need suggestions on a graphics card, midrange in pricing and your views on how it works with Poser 4 & 5. My old putor started acting up so it is being rebuild for the hubby. (Don't you love hand me downs :-)) I have no idea what is out there. Thanks for any suggestions.

well with poser 5 there is no direct3d or ogl support so that almost negates the demand on your card to perform as most 3d programs would require it to. start with a good 65meg 4x and go up from there...

erm, make that 64meg...

well neither program uses hardware acceleration so really almost any card will work though I have heard that Nvidia based cards seem to have less issues with P5 I would look for something with open gl as a lot of poser utilities including mimic 2 use open gl but pretty much everything has that these days.

realldepends on what you are going to do, but the ATI all in wonder 8500 radeon cards are great values. I've had mine for a year or so now, and love it. You get great opengl, very good 3d gaming (not the best, but enough to handle the good new stuff), and you can also record from tv or camcorder, and it even has a tv tuner card, so you can watch/record tv as well! In addition, it comes with a great video editor for home movies, or poser animation projects. I've had Voodoo3, Nvidia, and ATI, and the all in wonders are the best bang for the buck. They have a newer all in wonder, but it's 2-3 times the price. the all in wonder 8500 will have a good price, and do most of what you'll want for some time to come.

As a computer consultant, I build and maintain these things all day! I've been using an NVidia 32 meg card since I started in P5 two months ago without any problems. However, I had good week and upgraded RAM to 1 GB and P5 screamed through rendoring, then I added the ATI Evil2 Commando 128 MB video card and nothing changed except a massive power drain on my system. Pit your money into the RAM and add a decent 64 MB or 128 MB card like the NVidia 8500, 8900, or 9100. Happy posing and puting! "It's just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right!"

advice above is great... for poser... if you'd also like to work with daz studio... when it's released then you'll need a more update card... i orginaly had the nvdia 5200... good card works with poser and daz studio... 128 meg version... upgraded to the ATI9600 pro a few weeks ago... that's a great midrange card... with dx9 support... in case you'd like to play a few games... or take advantage of Windows longorn's new 3d interface... I personally would go with the ATI 9600 Pro ($150-$225). nick

ATI! ATI! ATI! ATI! ATI!

the BEST value anywhere are to get the ATI 9800 "Non Pro" they call it non pro- just cause no no knows there is a version besides the Pro, which everyone assume all Radeon 9800's are. Lasy & i looked, the diff wasn't as dramatic as before $144 for 9800128MB, vs $212 for the Radeon 9800Pro128. There is an enormous diff between the older Geforce4, vs the new generation Geforce FX/ATI 9800 . So you may as well buy the better card. I went cheap with the low end GF4 4200MX- & I regret it .

just checked, and pricewatch.com lists the 8500 all in wonder for $106 SHIPPED. That's without the extra bundeled software, but it comes with everything you'd really need, including the tv tuner recording software and remote control. I think we paid like $230 for ours about a year or so ago...

ATI 9600 Pro (128Mb DDR) - excellent choice

either ati card would be good. the 9600 will give a little more horsepower, but lacks the frame grabbing, video capturing, and tv tuner abilities. I find when working on graphic things, that this becomes invaluable to me.

get the all-in-wonder, you can watch tv on it! and it still has good frame-rates on games

Ours has even been able to handle Unreal Tournament 2004K's demo very well! And the opengl works great even with apps like lightwave

Thanks for all the info. I don't do any gaming at all, and will be using DAZ studio in the future as well as Poser 4 & 5.