I´m having trouble to deside, I have allways used nvidia and felt it´s OK but I dont think it´s salvation. Now I have read some about the ATI 4870 x2 cards and they sound really good and not to expensive. On the other side Nvidia geforce GTX 295 seems verry good or the best gaming card but cost more..
Any input on how they behave in max or xsi is welcome.
best
Daniel
I could be wrong but only nvidia has CUDA which will be very handy if you do any photoshop or after effects work.
I don’t think Photoshop or AfterEffects depend on CUDA specifically; they use standard APIs like DirectX and OpenGL. As such, GPU acceleration for those programs is not limited to nVidia cards.
Best regards,
Vlado
Ah thanks Vlado, I had a feeling I was talking balderdash…
I believe CS4 has some CUDA enhancements though. That’s what their new Quadro card “specifically designed for CS4” would have me believe.
Although, I’m not sure why you couldn’t use one of the other Quadro cards that have CUDA to get the same enhncements, or even better with the additional memory.
I’ve always been an ATI fan.
Yes, I to belive cs4 have some cuda enhancement. Cuda also seems to be more spread than ATI-steam. And Nvidia now own Mental Images, They must have some idea what to do… I also know that some sculpting softwares use cuda to drive their voxels (3D Coat). But, by the time all this is realy usefull, this card what ever it will be, is placed in our fileserver at the best. If not Vray wil be cuda or steam enhanced in a near future 
/Daniel
I think I´m going for the gtx 285 card, as the 4870x2 and the gtx 295 is dual gpu setup like sli or crossfire, and I dont think our 3d programs is capable of using dual cards like that.
So for now I am a Nvidia man..
Daniel