Hey guys, ive gota a pretty good computer but my graphics card is a bit shitty its a Nvidea Geforce 6800. They dont even sel those anymore, lol.

As im gonna be working in 3d max and maya on my computer shortly ive found that my Graphics card takes a million years to render mentlray and cool stuff like that, so i need a cool graphics card that will render quite nicely but that doenst cost that much... anyone got any ideas...

Typically, a 3D gaming card will do the majority of things required for amateur CAD. The small benefit of a professional rendering card is difficult to justify given the premium.

For example, the professional version of your graphics card is the NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400; powered by the same NV40 core with approximately the same raw power as the GeForce 6800 GT, but with better quality components and improved OpenGL driver support (which can actually be achieved with a hack). This will cost roughly the same price of a brand new GeForce 8800 GTX.

The top of the range Quadro FX 5600, powered by a G80 core at roughly the same raw power as the GeForce 8800 Ultra costs about 5 times more than that.