I recently installed SP3 (from SP2) on my 2000 Pro machine (2.4GHz P4, 512MB DDR, GF4 Ti4200) and have noticed that my system runs a bit slower. Opening files, starting programs, etc. I did a full...

XP will speed up if you turn off all the multimedia crap. It's got some cool features, but it really is the Fisher Price OS. I use and prefer W2K, too. :)

-Bad Mange

Regarding your original question about a low-cost graphics card for 3d work, I'd recommend the GeForce 4 Ti4200 128MB (4X) card. It performs great in Maya, don't know about games (I use my...