AUTOCAD WITH GP GRAPHICS CARDS

It will work fine with any of those cards .

CAD programs do not benefit from gaming gfx cards designed to redraw a 3d image many times a second .

The quaddros are near identical hardware , usually detuned a bit , and with purpose written drivers .

I don't know much about it but all of the cards you mentioned in your original post should be much better in 2d drawing than the 8600gt.

The 9600gt is a massively better card than the 8600gt in 3d terms, and I'd assume that applies towards 2d as well. I truly couldn't tell you for sure at 2d, but those cards you mentioned are all on a similar level in 3d performance, and well ahead of the 8600gt in the same regard. At least twice as good, going to 3x and more.

I doubt they will perform as well in 2d but there surely should be at least a noticable improvement, at least I'd hope so.

Any card you listed will do. It all comes down to how much performance you want. You can mod those "gaming" cards in to "workstation" cards using softmods.

For nVidia cards:
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539

There is mod for ATI cards also, but I lost my link to it.

=========
OP please don't double post.

Thanks for the help. Sorry about the double post; I wasn't logged in when I went to post the message, and evidently when I logged in during posting the message it caused a double post (first click without being logged in, second click after logging in.)

I use the 8800GT also and very impressed, the last monitor was the Samsung 226BW (excelent) but just got the HP LP2465 wow .

I work with all types of CADD applications for 3d + 2d draughting and find this a very good card, more than capable. I got the card for gaming purposes - I use workstation type cards at the office and not impressed one bit compared to the caming cards. Ive been on cadd for well over 20 years so Im no novice.