What's the Best card for Graphics and rendering?

[manualman]

I may be building a dual processor PIII and I am a graphic designer. I would like to also do 3d programs such as bryce. I am looking at the Matrox g400max but when I see its performance on quake 3D I can not help but think that will somehow effect the 3d programs. Help me? Gaming is not near as important as speed in programs.

 

[AndyHui]

It's probably a trade off between speed and visual quality. A G400MAX will do very well, an nVidia GeForce or Quadro will do even better, but it's visual quality is not up to the same standard as the G400.

I think you will be better off getting the Matrox card. The G400MAX isn't that slow.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Actually, the GeForce based boards are much better at 3D image quality then the G400. In terms of 3D visualization, you are looking at either nVidia or one of the more serious(although often not as good) pro boards such as one from 3DLabs, E&S or Dimaond(the "Fire GL" series, not their consumer crap).

Big difference between 2D desktops and games and the 3D visualization market, out of the consumer boards it is nVidia and then a very large gap between the rest, the rest being nearly unacceptable for the tasks(ATi is OK, along with Matrox when it will run(very buggy OpenGL drivers, 3dfx is useless).

Edit-

If all you will be using is Bryce, then I wouldn't worry too much about it. The GeForce boards should be significantly faster, but Bryce was designed to work with consumer cards and does work well on Matrox(though still flaky with the last driver revision I used it with, about six months ago) and ATi boards, though better on nVidia and I still wouldn't reccomend any 3dfx part.