Go with an nvidia card you will get superb OpenGL support and it will run Pro/E and Solidworks just fine. I was running Pro/E 2001 on a GeForce2 32MB GTS AGP card back in the day on my home machine and it worked great even with 200 part assemblies. Even now, my $100 GEforce 6600 AGP 256MB card...
Just a quick welcome and background as this is my first post after having lurked for a couple of weeks while finding some useful information. I have only been on Solidworks for 3 weeks now but want/need to take it as far as I can. I am working on a fairly ambitious first project of building a...