Shoutbox

At that price range, nv GTX260 or ati HD5770. The ati has DirectX 11, but is slightly less expensive. Although if you're paying for your own electricity, the HD5770 might be better for you in the long run as it uses less.

The GTX260 is getting a bit old and dated now, however, it's still a mighty fine card.

For CAD purposes, however, I'm unsure. Generally for these sort of things you would go with nv's Quadro or ati's FireGL series, but they're all pretty expensive...