graphics cards for 3d applications

[nonlinear]

After some months hangin' in there with the onboard graphics card of my mobo(geforce mx420 64mb shared memory) i will finally get a 128mb DDR card. i use it only for 3D Studio max,autocad and 2d applications like photoshop and corel, so i don't care much about high quality features.., antialiasing doesn't have to be perfect, i don't need bump or reflections or any advanced features that may be necessary for gaming. I just need fast redraws that allow me to navigate 500,000+ polygon scenes smoothly, that loads textures fast and with dual monitor support. I just need to make my workflow faster.

My budget is around 150, so after browsing the forum i considered the ati 9600, here are some questions

1- is there a noticeable difference in performance between the 9600pro and the 9600non-pro considering the use i'm gonna give to it?.
2- what are the graphics card features that have most impact on 3d applications performance.., memory clock, ram,etc. ,what should i pay more attention to?
3- what other cards do you recommend in this price range?

thanks for the help

*Albatron KM18G Pro Socket A FSB333 DCh400/Video+TV+AGP8x/5.1/lan
*AMD Athlon XP 2500PR 512K Barton Box
*DDR 400 Mhz PC-3200 OCZ Premier 512 Mb
*Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 40 Gb ATA133
*Medium Tower Vitsuba 400W

 

[silverpig]

You want something that can draw a lot of triangles/second and you can ignore fillrate numbers. I'd actually suggest you read some of the older professional graphics reviews (3d labs oxygen GVX1/wildcat etc) to see what they can offer you. The pro cards are usually optimized to handle high polygon counts better than gaming cards.

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