I haven't been a graphics nut that long...I used to be into comps mostly for sound and utilities(real computers, like post 486 on up...) anyhow... started on a Commedore 64...used to drive mom nuts with "call sound" command...making it play the theme from ET and StarWars kept that until we bout a TRS-80 (lovely POS system) when THAT died (took WAY too long) we bout a 386DX by Tandy I dissappeared from Techie sociey for four years (aka, Army enlistment) Got out, and bout a lovely P90 powered storebuilt Threw that away with the advent of the PII233, and boosted to 256 meg RAM (started liking graphics about here...and discovered the bane of ALL persons with limited time...online gaming) rode that POS until two years ago, where I bought a pre-built compaq5200US...and have steadily built on that, while buying my wife her own system, and pushing it, too. Current-a pair of Tim (The Tool Man) Taylor originals: A 200MHz FSB MB pushed by a duron800 oc'd to 1.2 gig, with G3ti500, 1024 SDRAM, and 160 gigs HD space is one...the other's an Athelon T-bird on an Asus board, with a gig of DDRAM, G3ti200, with 60 gigs HD, both with 19" monitors... I'm MUCH better, now! (but I still bitch about rendering time anytime I go to save any animations longer than 10 seconds running time at 30 fps, if I don't keep its render size 320X320 or below) Future goal (if I can stop buying 3D animating and designing programs and add-ons long enough): Multi-proc towers rigged in a small network, each running a gig of RAM per proc, rigged for resource sharing (3 towers total..one for kids/server/hardware firewall usages), I'm satisfied with my graphics cards...but I'd like to add some better monitors, too, upgrade my sound cards in the new machines, switch over to 266MHz FSB procs and MB's across the line. Unfortunately for me, I'm a die-hard PC fan...I say unfortunately, because they don't seem to be budging from the 32 bit cycling, and I played on a MAC that had Poser on it the other day....that 128 bit processing makes a HUGE difference in render speeds!