Jim, The graphics accelerator won't impact render speed at all so if that is your priority go for the 1.8Ghz. For video cards I would recommend buying whichever is the best Nvidia card you can afford with your budget. You can pick up a Geforce2 based one for less than a $100. If you go for the MX ones you are down in the $60 range. These days there are really only two choices in video cards Nvidia and ATI. ATI has some intriging products, but has been plagued by bad drivers and tends to abandon driver support for older products as soon as they introduce a new generation of cards. On the other hand Nvidia is pretty good about driver updates and their latest driver update still works with any card TNT or better. Good Luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins