This is a honing down of my previous post. Still bearing in mind my preference for Maya and my desire to play games on the same machine.

Thanks for the previous input. I have decided to go for ATi as my preference at the 'budget' price range.

So for US $699.99 (approximately £343.32) we have these contenders:

HIS - ATi Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB GDDR4 OpenGL 2, xfire compatible.
(1GB wow!)

OR

ATi FireGL V5600 512MB OpenGL 2.1



So the pro board has half the RAM but a dedicated driver structure.