I know Vue has had problems in the past with certain cards, or maybe those cards have had a problem with Vue...whatever. I also know that the video card has nothing to do with actual rendering. BUT...I also know the following: 1. Screen display response has always been my number one beef with Vue. When OpenGL is enabled in Vue on my present system, display updating begins to bog down with even a small number of objects or a low number of polygons. The problem rapidly becomes so bad in either shaded or wireframe mode that I have to switch the display settings to bounding box only, at which point there's no problem update no matter how big the scene gets. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to arrange a scene when all the items in it are boxes. 2. When I disable OpenGL and let the CPU handle everything, I don't have a problem until I start getting to medium to large scenes at which time display response become progressively worse. Unfortunately Vue doesn't offer any choice but wireframe when OpenGL is off. 3. Vue's wireframe performance is much better when OpenGL is off than when it's on. This leads me to believe that the video card is somehow involved in the OpenGL wireframe display. IF this is true, then a faster card means faster screen response in OpenGL mode, which is my primary concern. Unfortunately, if I go, with Alienware, as I plan to, there's more than $2000 difference between the top end single CPU system and the top end dual CPU system. Also, the top dual system doesn't support the new PC-1066 RDRAM, and I've head a lot lately about RAM speed being a major bottleneck.

I'd rather stay in my lane than lay in my stain!