On  5 Jul 98 at 4:27, Miguel Morillo wrote:

> My sister is building a Pentium-II based PC. She is a heavy CAD (Computer
> Aided Design) user and wants a system optimized for CAD with 3D rendering.
>
> Can anyone suggest an AGP 3D graphics card that works well with CAD?

  Most "3D" cards don't do 2D.  If there's an AGP card installed, the
CPU will expect it to handle 2D.
  Consequence:  There are few 3D cards for AGP.

Exceptions:
  1. There is at least one 3D card maker who has described a 3D card
that would install in an AGP slot, but configure it as a
"double-speed PCI" instead of true AGP.  Users would still need a 2D
PCI card.

  2.  A few companies are making 2D/3D AGP cards.  The Matrox "G200"
models should be available any day now.

> I heard that there is a difference between 3D cards optimized for games and
> 3D cards for productive/business/scientific purposes... but I'm not sure.

  It's more likely to be a case of which cards the *software* is
optimized for.  High-end commercial software is most likely to use
the "OpenGL" interface, which "GLINT-based" cards do in hardware.  I
don't know of any of those in AGP.

David G