Just sold my playstation2 and gameboy to raise funds for a graphics card and thought I'd consult you pros first. ATI Radeon 9000 Pro; Geforce Ti4600 or an ATI FireXGL ? I know theres a big price diff between them so is their performance difference just as pronounced.
By the way I'm not exactly an old hat in the 3d world as you've probably guessed!

http://www.sidefx.com/support/system/index.html [sidefx.com]

I suggest that you pick a workstation card like the ATI FireGL X1 or nVidia Quadro4 980 XGL.

Mats

A cheaper solution, which works very well are the Geforce Ti4600 and Ti4700.