Beepster
@Anderton... That's encouraging. I bought my vid card as an afterthought and had to go cheap because I was out of money. I ended up with a Gigabyte but it's nvidia based. It was only $30 and seems to be doing the job without conflicts. I think the tides have changed in regards to Mac's out performing PCs in the audio world. For years I wanted a Mac but I am extremely happy with the PC I built and to get the equivalent power from a Mac I'd probably have had to pay at least an extra $1000 or more and that would have held up my studio another year (because I'm poor). I also find Macs confusing after so many years in front of PCs so that's yet one less learning curve wasting time I'd rather use making music. Off topic but if you're still around I've got a thread going in the Coffee house asking about budget vocal condenser mics... any thoughts on that topic? I'm sure you've tested quite a few. Cheers.
I'm running a Galaxy GeForce 9500GT. It's old but it works and it's very stable. I threw out my ATI cards. Total junk and caused nothing but headaches. Actually I took them to an electronics recycling place along with a bunch of other stuff including my old DAW, an EMU 0404 PCI card, and some dead effects units.
Not sure which Nvidia chipset you got, but they released a new driver a couple weeks ago. Their drivers usually cover a vast range of chipsets.
You have the option to just install the driver without all the bloatware. Plus ... not sure if you are aware, but you can customize how each program runs. I go in and turn off all the extra 3D enhancement stuff, CUDA, and other things. Makes a noticeable difference, especially on low end cards.
If you've never seen it or used it, just right click on your desktop, click Nvidia Control Panel, and go to Manage 3D settings. I also adjust my Image Settings for 'Performance'.