High End Video Card

What sort of video card should i get....
i'm interested in gaming and serious 3drendering...
I've got the cash for it(xmas bonus), just wasnt sure what to get...

then by all means get a geforce 3 ti500! u'll never go wrong with nvidia!

Go with the best GF3 you can afford. Check Pricewatch out, to get an idea of prices, and go from there.

NO! Not if you are looking to render. I would personally choose an Oxygen GVX420, Oxygen GVX1 PRO, or Oxygen GVX1. The GVX420 is about $1900, the GVX1 PRO is about $900, and the GVX1 is about $200.

Are you looking mainly to render, or play games?

If you are looking for a good mixture, any of the 3dfx Voodoo cards would work great, the Voodoo5 especially. Unfortunately, they are not being manufactured anymore, so you will have 0 support. I don't recommend the Geforce line of cards for rendering of any sort, as the picture quality of ANY is substandard as far as rendering goes.

If you would like, wait for an NV17 or NV25-based card to come from Nvidia, which contains portions of 3dfx's technologies. They should vastly improve picture quality.

what about the radeon 8500? it supposedly beats the geforce 3 ti500 in most benchmarks. . .isnt the only concern weither ati will be able to continue to release new drivers? i'm not always mr.current affairs so this may not be true anymore?

Yes! I forgot about the Radeon 8500, I think that would be an excellent choice for what you are doing. The OpenGL rendering quality I'm sure is much better than Nvidia's as per ATI's reputation.

gvx420

i've looked at the 3dlabs gvx420 thats one mad phatt card...i heard it sux for gaming though...thanks for all the input guys(gals?)