actually… video card really isnt a huge must (unless you’re getting into very high detail models)… atleast, you don’t need anything more than a 150-200 card. The rendering process, AFAIK, uses the CPU for all of it’s computing… effects and such are also handeled by the CPU.
I was running max using an old 9700 pro and it worked great… albeit, once I started creating huge scenes, it did slow down quite a bit (the 7800 helped it though)