Builders/modders, I'm putting together a system with a 1900 x 1080 display, and all the reviews of graphics cards examine performance with games. I don't use games; rather I want the crispest DVD playback I can get within a moderate expense, and I spend a few months of each year using 3ds modeling and Photoshop all day and night. I never find reviews that say "to get fine DVD playback you'll do well with card xoxoxo", or "for rotations of large wireframes onscreen with no lag you'll do well with card xoxoxo"; the only testing material is games. Meanwhile the range of choices seems to narrow down to either a Radeon HD in the 48xx series or an nVidia in the GTX or GTS 2xx series. The best performance I can find reviews of and can spend on comes from the HD 4890 and the GTX 275, as they've been evaluated on games. Am I correct in concluding that there are no other cards out there to hunt down and consider?
Reviews you'll read on the net will focus on gaming performance because that's what the majority of the site's reader base will be interested in. However, those results can usually be extrapolated to other applications like 3D modelling, and relative performance of each card will generally remain the same. Even the cheapest graphics card you can buy will be able to play DVDs or any standard definition content without any problems, and in any case these tasks are usually handled by the CPU. Another reason why regular consumer cards aren't tested in 3D modelling applications is that they aren't really designed for this use, as they're engineered towards gaming first and foremost. Workstation cards will always provide better performance in these applications and are more stable, but they're also more expensive. In your case the best nVidia card you can buy may be the best option as they support the CUDA API (only on 8 series cards and above, however), which many applications use to improve performance and render times by using the GPU to perform calculations in addition to the CPU. I believe ATI does have a similar API for its cards, but I don't think it has as widespread support as CUDA does.
if you aren't going to be gaming i would recommend getting a low-end workstation class graphics since you say you also do 3D modeling and photoshop. A card like a Nvidia Quadro FX570 or an ATi FireGL3600 should do the trick for you.
smc -- Wow, complete eye-opener ... indeed, getting out of the noisy jungle of reviews of cards-for-gamers saves huge amounts of time, and just hitting 'qualified hardware requirements' on the 3ds site pulls up the list of cards that do the trick where they're all lined up in an instant, both makers, down to supported features. That's a nice boost that at the high end part of the GPU is engaged to shorten render time -- once money's a little more in hand that's an upgrade to look into. c-sniper -- Yes, that chart shows that, as you pointed out, a serious card isn't required for wireframe modeling. However I'm guessing I'll need a card with 512MB of memory, more in the middle of the range, or else it won't be able to feed data to the display (not huge but 1900) while keeping up with HD video content. Well, thanks a million for spot-on advice, you two ... got me on track.
