Glenn said it but there's a little that could be added. Vegas itself doesn't need a special card, nor would it need a lot of memory on a card. You could run a pair of 1920x1200 displays in less than 128MB (probably less than 64MB).

Other applications use more memory on the card for 3d work. Even the Aero interface of Vista uses that memory and likes a powerful graphics card, so there are good reasons to have a fast and powerful card, but Vegas isn't one of them. Vegas uses just as much graphics power as Word does.

I bring up the memory for a reason. Memory on a graphics card must be addressed, and since 32-bit windows has a limited address space, graphics cards with tons of memory will reduce the amount of system RAM that is addressable. So if, for example, you decided to install a pair of fat graphics cards in SLI mode you could find yourself with well under 3 GB available for the system.

Is there a point? Well, you should decide what you need in a graphics card. If you don't (or won't) really need the 3d performance you could pick a cheaper card with less memory on it.

Who knows? Maybe a future version of Vegas will use a graphics card for acceleration and maybe you'll want to buy a powerful card then when you know what card to buy. Buying a less expensive card now might make that less painful later.

Rob Mack