Hi Folks.....My company will  be getting a new work station soon and I was hoping
someone could help me in  choices pretty please.

Its a Dell T7500
Dual Xeon 5650 2.6GHz
12 GB Ram

What would be the best graphics card to use with Poser10, Carrara8 and other 3D progs?
and why? Boss likes the look of the Quadro FX 4800 but its
very expensive and I wondered if that extra cash would be better spent on a faster processor
or more ram...next level of Ram is 24GB 
These are the choices they provide below.

768MB PCIe x16 NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800

1GB GDDR5 ATI FirePro V5800 -

1GB Ati FireGL V8700 - 2 DP, 1 DVI

2GB GDDR5 ATI FirePro V7800 - 2 DP

1GB Nvidia Quadro FX3800 - 2 DP,1 DP-DVI

1.5GB Nvidia Quadro FX4800 - 2 DP, 1 DVI

Two 512MB Ati FirePro V5700 - 2DP, 1DVI

Two 768MB Nvidia Quadro FX1800 - 2DP,1DVI

Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI FirePro V5800 - 2DP, 1DVI

Two 1GB Ati FireGL V8700 - 2 DP, 1 DVI

Dual 2 GB GDDR5 ATI FirePro V7800 - 2 DP, 1 DVI

I am grateful for any insight...thanks

Poser 10 doesn't exist.  All those are pretty massive overkill.   A pretty good Nvidia gaming card would be the best choice really.  12GB is a lot of memory also.  Spend whatever money you can on processor because what will bottleneck your productivity the most is RENDER TIME, not having a flashy graphics card with a cool sportscar name ;)

Consider getting multiple whole computers to render on multiple machines at the same time, looking at the amount of money you're ready to throw down on just a graphics card I think you could afford at least a second render machine.

I meant Poser Pro 2010....not me throwing the money fortunately or in fact unfortunately
Thanks for the input but machine will be used for other things besides
my use for 3D playing. Boss will be using it for Cad and various other things.

The company I work for use Nvidia Quadro FX1700, which is a the lowest card we can use for holding full engine assemblies.  If your boss isn't going to do anything that complex he won't need to spend that sort of money.

Which CAD apps does he use? knowing that will help understand what sort of power you need.

John

Hi ....sorry I can say no more than its used for 3D industrial design
and complex multitasking. I'm just lucky I get to play...lol

No problem :) the FX1700 handles every component of an Engine (including nuts and bolts), allowing for smooth rotation and modelling.

If  your boss doesn't do anything that complex then a lower spec Quadro would do just fine.  A gaming card would probably not be suitable for CAD work, I have tried using one before and it was not a great success.

John

For Poser and 3D graphics you only need a cheap graphic card.  Save yourself hundreds of dollars and buy a mid range card from last years stock, or even one from 2 years ago.

The only time you need a high end graphic card is if you are serious gamer playing those MMORPG.

MMOs usually lag because of bandwidth or server issues (not always but it is often the case).  However gaming in general tends to need the most from the GPU.

As Acadia pointed out, poser doesn't need a GPU so much, it works via the CPU of your system.  So unless you have a rendering tool that specifically uses GPU instead of CPU, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I have an ATI HD4850, which cannot be said to be top-of-the-line, and it plays along beautifully with Poser. As Winterclaw says, unless you have some very specific requirements, get a mid-range card, and spend the rest of the money on ram.

Yes, Poser / Pro / 2010 works fine with most current gaming graphic cards. But you mentioned other 3D software will run on that Dell also.
Check Tomshardware:
www.tomshardware.com/charts/workstation-graphics-charts/benchmarks,3.html
More or less all relevant workstation cards are there for you to be compared.

One thing that Tomshardware mentioned in a test (www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-firepro-v8700,2154-10.html) was that even though the workstation cards like the ATI FirePro are technical nearly identical to their gaming sisters the drivers are another story.

Tomshardware wrote:
"As you can clearly see, the ATI driver programmers have done an amazing job. The two models' hardware is 99% identical, and yet the FirePro adapter completely outclasses the cheaper Radeon gaming card. The most extreme case in point is Maya, where the FirePro V8700 is six times faster than the Radeon HD 4870"