Wow, that was weird.. all of a sudden.. there's posts to read! I thought our computer discussion had suddenly made all Action Team members spontaneously combust.
Dr. Cockburn,
If money is less of an issue and you want a card that can 'do it all', then I'd strongly recommend staying in the Nvidia/ATI families and get their professional-grade card. That will get you all of the gaming performance of their top of the line cards (and then some), PLUS the professional power you need for other applications. You can go totally apeshit crazy and buy professional cards that are insanely hot.. but I doubt it'd be mission critical for you to do so.
My recommendation (assuming money isn't much of an issue).. have them spring for the Nvidia Quadro 1GB card. It ain't cheap, but it's the best. I tend to prefer Nvidia to ATI and recommend them for users who aren't tinkerers (like myself). ATI cards give you more power for the dollar and can be tweaked out.. but I've never been a guy who likes fooling around with shit. I want to put it in and have it work, period.
Grab the high end Intel Duo chip and 4GB of low latency RAM.. throw in a sweet Creative Labs audio card.. a gigantic 10,000 RPM hard drive.. and you'll have yourself the OMFG BEST COMPUTER EVAR!
Of course, that's if budget is totally not an issue. Hehe..
Also, if you haven't made up your mind about a monitor.. you may want to consider a bulky and ugly CRT monitor despite the lack of sexy appearance. The flat panels are neato but they lack the ability to change resolution without dramatically screwing up performance/appearance. About the best you can do is 1600x1200 (which ain't bad, don't get me wrong) .. and you're going to pay out the ass (which I understand may not be an issue). If you want to go flatscreen, my recommendation is to stick with the highly-reputed manufacturers. Monitors are one place where you don't screw around.. you get what you pay for. ViewSonic is always my first choice. Samsung makes a nice monitor, too. You can get 1600x1200 flat panels for $600-700 or so at a 21" diagonal.
Anywa.. kind of rambling. But the bottom line is CRTs offer better picture quality, no ghosting, no dead pixels and superior color/resolution. The flat panels are sexy, small, and light.. but more fragile, have the possibility of ghosting, losing pixels, color wash.. yadda yadda. That being said, you probably won't notice THAT much of a difference unless you're doing very detail-oriented work and need the absolute precision.
That being said, if you do go flat panel, just make sure the response time is under 10ms. That's a big one.
edit: how many times can you say "recommend" and/or "that being said.." in one post?
Sigh.
Fuckers.