http://www.zdnet.com.au/developer/graphics/story/0,2000010365,20263008,00.htm
I know that a lot of you use the GeForce 3. I would wait until the new GeForce 4 comes out. Looks much better, and will be able to support 8x AGP.
bwhahaha
you would be lucky if yer mobo supports agp 8x. also, as a proud owner of a gf3, i must say that it is a great card, and it wont cost nearly as much as a gf4 when it comes out. my opinion? radeon 8500. dual head out of the box. i might sell off my gf3 for a 8500
ATI’s 85000 and the GForce 3 are basically the same. There are some advantages to both cards. I would say that GForce 3 would be slightly better because it the one more likely to be used, because NVida has come a long way in 2001 and there cards are in the majority of pro computers.
All macs, expect for the ibook have the Nvidia GForce 2mx. And PC’s above $1500 are more likely to have them.
I have a Rage Orion 16 mg card that is more than plenty for me.
*Originally posted by Kyle Fenton *
I would say that GForce 3 would be slightly better because it the one more likely to be used,…
more likely to be used doesn’t necessarily mean better, esp. in major brand machines…all it means is that NVidia gave the companies using it a better OEM pricing than ATI…
i trust nvidia’a opengl support more than Ati… but the 8500 supports tha same stuff as the gf3 (pixel, vertex shaders), so i guess they are on a leval playing field.
Ati is Canadian, therefore superior
Case closed 
Well, as it stands now, the preformance of the 8500 is slighlty better then the GeForce3, and on par with the GeForce3 Ti500. As far as other reports go, the GeForce4 will have no real major technological adnvaces over the past GeForce, it will be like the Ti500, just faster clock and ram speed. They have talked about adding another pixel shader, and the 8x agp support, but that is about it. nVidia has not done any real innovation in their cards for the last 3 years, that is why ATi kees creeping up on them in terms of sales. ATi all-ready has the mobile market share pretty much to itself and it gaining more and more in the desktop relm. I really hope the GeForce4 has some secerets (like a totally new core) 
Forgive my ignorance here… but for what reason does one need more and more powerful video cards? Is there a way to use the card to render things to disk, instead of the screen? If not… then I just don’t see the point of having a card that does 1000fps at 1600x1200, when your monitor only refreshes at 100fps, and your eyes refresh arguably much much lower. Not putting this down, just curious as to why.
Aside: I’m very very happy with my GeForce 2 GTS (Asus v7700).
“640K ought to be enough for anybody”
Faster screen refresh usually means faster redraw time, meaning less wait time meaning less time to produce. But that can also be achieved with XREFs, optimizing in viewports, proper object degredation, and a few other tricks, you can speed up a slow PC’s work time quite substantially.
And dont forget that you can always wait with rendering, and work on something else at the same time. Well, if you have access to multiple computers and multiple copies of MAX. Oh, and if the animation isnt due 3 days before rendering 
. Hope that helps answer a few questions for you, Jon.
-Robby O
FIRSTanimators Moderator
[email protected]
Jon,
I am not sure how a faster card benefits anyone in terms of preformance with animation as I am new to this. Over the summer, I was working with MAX for work and all I had was a GeForce256 and it ran it and rendered just fine.
However, gaming is a whole different story. I just upgraded to a Radeon 8500, and now I can run all the latest games in 1600x1200 with all the effects turned up. I don’t care if I get 300 fps in a game, as long as it will run semi-smooth (30-60fps average) With a faster card, you can achieve that average at a higher res with more eye candy enabled. Thats about all it gives you… well, that and some bragging rights