I used to only ever run Nvidia cards the but fairly recently got myself an ATI Radeon X1900 (crossfire edition, 512Meg... blah... blah... blah) to replace my Quadro FX540.

I paid around £140.00 for the card and it seems to work a treat with Maya. I don't use my computer for gaming but looking at the spec for gaming cards in relation to workstation cards these days and then comparing the price the choice for me (an impoverished student) was a simple one!