I do alot of 3d work as well as rendering. My sytem here at home is a 400 processor,160 meg of Ram, with a great video card that handles it all well. I have a ATI Pro Rage Fury that came with 64 meg of on board video ram. It will do most of everything I need. At work I have a 1000 processor with over a gig of ram and it only has what ever comes stock with the gateway that they purchased. It doesnt seem to be as able to keep up when doing rendering and big 3d files. One thing that helped (Acually was the cure and only help) we to change how often it did a regen and when it did a regen. My new system that is in the process of being rebuilt here at home is going to use its current video card for its second monitor but the primary monitor will get the O2 card. O2 cards are real expensive but worth it if you plan on doing alot of 3d or walk thrus. Let me know your budget and I will do some review in the price range for you and see what I can find that would be the best for what you want to do and also what would be best for the money.