Before people keep recomending the 400 series Nvidia cards for Max please realize that currently the cards are pretty much broken when running the application. On average, they are a fraction of the speed of the older 8800 series of cards, and Nvidia has confirmed they are not going to address the issue in the consumer level cards, instead focusing on any 3dsmax performance improvements for their Quadro line. I have used Nvidia cards all my life for 3ds Max and prior to the 400 series it was true that they were great cards, and that the Quadro line were unnecessary to get great performance and stability, but this is no longer the case.
Just wanted to pipe in as the original poster who followed the advice given here has, like others, bought a 400 series Nvidia card only to find out it runs slower than his old gaming card (GTS 250 aka rebadged 8800) which is several generations old. Please read his post documenting his experience with his new 460 card in the GTX 480 thread.
I have likewise posted benchmarks and my new GTX 470 is approximately 1/4 the speed of my 8800 GTX when working in wireframe scenes, and is overall much slower than my previous Nvidia card.
