Re: Workstation video card
 

Just a little personal workstation experience. I run a Dell 530 Low End workstation for PRO/E with the following:

Dual 1.5 GHz Intel Xeon Processors (Not necessary PRO/E is designed for single processor machines)
1.5 GB RAM (Worth it, see below)
NVidea Quadro2 Pro Video card (3rd card is the charm, I already burned up 2)

This is a three year old machine on which I manipulate 3-d models of power plants with few issues. When I got it I had 756 MB of RAM and had trouble. Since I got the upgrade I've had no trouble. The additional processor speed on newer machines doesn't make a big difference in their performance like the RAM. The NVidea is impressive but when I fail that about once a year it makes me leary of them. As it is the IT department always wonders what I will call them with next :eek: .

As it is I can run the student version of the software at home on my PC (1.8 GHz P4, 500 MB RAM) and the limiting factor for model size is RAM.

BTW I also do the occasional photorealistic render from CAD on my workstation as well.

Re: Workstation video card
 

We are not still entirely sure if this is what we are going to do, but here is what we are thinking right now:

Pentium 4 3.0E LGA 775
Gigabyte Mobo, 865P chipset
1GB (2x512) Corsair Value select RAM
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT
120GB SATA HDD
CDRW drive
17" LCD monitor
Case with 400W PSU

Total: Approx. $1000 from newegg.com

Re: Workstation video card
 

I'd personally go with a Socket 478 CPU, namely the Pentium 4 2.4C or the 2.8C. A good Socket 478 board will be cheaper than an LGA 775 board and thus would allow you to move up to the i875 chipset series. Also the Pentium 4 C series (Northwood core, 512KB L2 Cache) have a lower operating temperature range, which will allow for less exotic cooling systems. Other than that, a great system for pretty much anything. It will perform workstation-class tasks with easy.

The last workstation-class system I used was a Pentium 4 2.0GHz (Socket 423), 256MB of dual-channel PC1066 RDRAM, and a Quadro4 750XGL. That i850-based system was the most stable computer I ever used, but it is not tremendously powerful by today's standards.

Unless you are doing very serious rendering/CAD/CAM/CAE, a terribly (excessively) powerful computer will be useless and will just consume lots of power. I used Inventor for three years on a Pentium 166MHz, 64MB RAM, and a 2MB ATI mach64 (i could get 15fps in wireframe mode!). I never could use 3ds max on it however...

Re: Workstation video card
 

If you get a P4 board with PCI-E, I'd go with the 6600GT.