Dont get any gforce family card,,,drivers have incompatability issues, and sure u can downgrade it and it will work but u will downgrade some important features aswell,,,,,,,,using WIN XP professional ver is flawless same as nt and 2k ver,,,,XP home will work as well, just have the right drivers............Visit Alias for ur card compatability issues....Nvidia came out with new driver for gforce, u might want to check that out and it surely works with maya.......for the vedio card, I would suggest getting one of those quadro cards or wildcards, they work flawless.......Theres an older version of Quadro at frys for workstations and it works good,,,,,its less than 200,,,,,u might want to check that out...