I would like to thank everyone for their participation in this discussion. I believe I have come to a conclusion based on the comments and recommendations of the collective participants. When I get the card I will run a test of it and let everyone know how it turned out.
I vote for the Gigabyte because Its pretty much the same as the Sunbeam Transformer which I own the only differences are the price and the Aurora is a little bigger.
BTW not complaining or anything but the blue part in front of the Aurora looks horrible imo.
You know every time i see someone post about workstation cards it confuses me as to how we run AutoCAD 2007 at my school. I checked and we use x700 SE's. Im looking into CAD work as a profession, how complex do these programs actually get? I mean i guess if your rendering a skyscraper as apposed to something small it makes sense.
We have a Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 at work, you might want to look into that if you haven't. While my boss says he thinks ATi is stronger in the professional market, I feel this is a very strong card. I wouldn't know who honestly holds the market because I haven't worked with any of the ATi family but from impressions I think it should easily match that FireGL you're mentioning.