sebvanaaken

Hi all,
Im building a new computer for a friend to use for Houdini. He's starting a university course in animation and wants something pretty serious (but doesn't want to spend more money than necessary)

Firstly it says on the website that houdini requires a workstation class graphics card. Is this strictly true? and what exactly is the difference between say a GeForce FX mainstream card and a GeForce FX workstation card?

Ive been looking at the 3Dlabs wildcat realizm 500 as i read a review which shaid this was the best value card for openGL. Is this correct? or would it be better to go with an equivalent Nvidia model (or ATI?).

Also how much harddisk speed is needed to run this program. Is it more harddisk intensive than photoshop. Are we talking video capture speeds? I was thinking along the lines of WD Raptors in RAID0. is this is good move or is SCSI the best way to go?

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me

Seb