wow, thanks everyone!

well it's been a while since i looked into cards like i said and it's all flooding back to me. for those that really don't know what to get, you have to check your motherboard to see what type of card it supports. agp and pci-e is preferable. pci graphics cards are old school ;)

ok so then you've got to check what your motherboard is capable of dealing with. mine's an asus p4p800 deluxe. quite old now, but after a quick google i can see it's capable of agp 3. therefore i can get an 8x agp card (.8V is the voltage requirement of 8x AGP cards utilizing AGP specification 3.0).

now, for me in the studio, fan noise is a really important consideration. thanks for the tips so far on silents with a heatsink, but they were pci so, after a quick google i've found

gigabyte geforce 7600 GS AGP

then i found:

Gainward BLISS 7800 GS+ 512MB AGP Silent

ok there's dan's 6 series one, but i personally think these might be too old. plus i don't like reading bad review from tocsin ;) i didn't even consider 8 series cause i'm sure they're way too good for what i need the card for - oh and darn expensive!!!

what do you guys think - am i on the right track with these two???