I'm finally to the point of buying (any second now!) a video card to support my D|S work. I'd like to know what others have been using and/or can recommend. It's come up again and again that the latest and greatest isn't necessary to get great D|S performance so I'm looking for the most cost effective solution w/ sacrificing "real" D|S performance.

I'm on a 3Ghz P4 PC with two open PCI express slots.

I also have two related questions. First, will the onboard memory help renders at all or just scene navigation? Second, how does a higher version of Open GL support factor into the equation (say 1.4 vs. 2)?

Thanks in advance for any help/advice/insight you can provide.

  The main thing that seems to be "universal", is that whatever you get needs to be very, very Open GL oriented. After that.... well.... mostly NVidia based, though some  are having  reasonable luck with ATI, lately.  Vid-card / renders... well, the vid-card only handles , so to speak, what is on your monitor... renders are RAM  and CPU intensive.... how much, and how fast, govern how soon you complete a render... One thing to consider before you go haring off to buy a dual dual-core motherboard... there are STILL a major number of applications that can't work with dual-core, let alone a dual CPU. The pain in the fundament is that, no dual core = nothing over 2 GIG of RAM. Lovely catch-22, that. Lou.

go for an Nvidia card
if pci expres slot is available go for FX7950GS/GT with 256MB . This is the one i currently have (upgraded from an overheating FX6800 256MB) and I'm very happy with it.
always make sure you have the latest drivers installed.

I have a 7600GT(pcie), and before that a 7800GSOC 

(agp) both worked very well.

Hmmm, not having any problems with my ATI Radeon X1900XT 512M

Cheers

I have Intel Extreme..seems to work ok for me, but Id rather get a Nvidia :)

I'm using an old ATI 9600 AIW, and no problems so far. Of course i had to get the latest drivers for it. I'm hearing all the rage about NVidia. I might check it out. My mobo doesn't support PCI Express so i'm relegated to using AGP. What's the best one by NVidia?

I have used nothing but ATI Radeons with it and never had any issues other than I currenlty have a base (Radeon xpress 200) model and it doesn't display as many lights as I would like in the preview, and that is an issue with it being a low end (bottom end? lol ) card.

If you have 8 lights that's as many as you're going to get without a workstation card, I think.

This one gives me five lights... on a good day, usually four (don't ask me why the variation). :)

It's no big deal for me, that's what spot preview renders are for, that and learning the lights.

I thank you greatly for that pearl of wisdom though, I have a feeling that I'm one that would have been beating my head against that wall come time to get a new card. lol

I just got a BioStar GeForce V8502GT51 512MB, it's works really really fast with hardware renders, and its $100. Make sure you get RivaTuner to set the openGL back to 2.0 though.

I roll with a Radeon 1650X, and it works out really well.

I've got an ATI X1650 512Mb and it works great with DAZ|Studio.

Nvidia gforce 7600gt * 2 in SLi.......Super quick!

i run a BFGtech 7900GT oc model, however that is probably overpowered for what is needed.

for PCI-E

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx

for AGP

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx

those 2 wouldn't be bad choices for the dollar. keep in mind more videopower will also draw more power, make sure your power supply delivers adequate power for the cards.

best of luck with your decision.

regards,

waningmoon

as a gamer first and only just learning daz, im quite happy with my xfx 8800gts 640mb, maybe ill get a 2nd for sli eventully but not being able to use my dual monitors would be a pain...

I upgraded my gfx card from the ATI radeon 9600 to the X800GTO 256MB/256bit, even though the radeon served me well over the past few years with D|S and other apps i find that the X800GTO is much better. I also found that the price on the X800GTO was far better than getting a replacement radeon 9600..It cost me around $120AUD including postage..9600 would have been few dollars less but its an old card.