New core/hybrid system: Which NVidia card to get?

[jmcrtp]

I am running fine in masked mode with an ATI Radeon card, but would like to use the alpha blended mode.  This will be my core/hybrid system, I may add a few thin clients later.  Is the GeForce 8500 sufficient or the 8600?  Trying to keep the cost of the card down but I don't want to suffer in functionality or performance.  I searched but found a lot of issues with any card I tried of course.

Also what is the recommended bandwidth between thin client and core to transmit video/dvd reliably?  I assume you don't want to do this over wireless-G or is this in fact possible?

Thanks!

[khonshu]

I am using an 8600GT with 512mb ram and an 8500 with 256mb ram, and can see no difference in the performance.  I am ordering a MB right away for a new MD that has a 8200 on it, and would be interested to hear of others opinions on the merits of these model differences.  On that note, many use 6000 & 7000 series cards in HD 1080p modes with success, so I doubt the difference would be noticeable.

On the issue of network performance.  I would have to strongly recommend a wired connection, due to simplicity of PXE boot from bios of MD clients, bandwidth, and wireless flakiness sometimes.  I recommend gigabit (although not necessary, I have 10/100 and it works fine) due to it's now cheaper prices and availability of most MB/systems with gigabit onboard.  Wireless for an orbiter is fine.  And I've heard that up to 7 streams of media can be accommodated on a dedicated 100mb pipe.  So 54mb's (or more like 45mb's realistically) of 802.11g would likely be fine, if it were pretty reliable.  But the complexity of configuring PXE boot of a wifi card could be prohibitive.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/GRUB_PXE_network_boot