I need recomendations for a graphics card, here's my situation...

My PC is about 4 plus years old. I have:

2GB ram
Intel Pentium D 2.8 GHz Processor
My motherboard has both PCI and PCI Express slots

We currently upgraded to 3DS Max 2010 from it's previous version. The new version does not run well. I don't need to render elaborate scenes but I need it to be able to create high-poly models.

I have a budget of about $150 to $200. Are there any cards out there that will meet my needs or do I need to increase my budget.

 

you will need something around the Nvidia gtx 260 range but your pci-express x16 bus frequency will be 1.0 (x8 mode 2gb/s speed) Don't worry it will still work just not at its potential. I take it your company has a software rendering farm full of rack servers that does the rendering for you? each rack server has a program called backburner on it and they just receive jobs from each client.

 

Yeah. At most I'll only need to render single frames.