I am lookiing for one that is PCI Express and has at least one DVI output (I would prefer one that has two, but it isn't that big of a deal.) I don't really care about a good one for games, but I do care about its qualities as a capture card....any suggestions?

Well, any PCI Express card you get is going to be a good one for games. I don't know of any crappy PCI Express cards

You know, this one isn't really that hard to look for. Newegg has all the search tools you need for finding this card at their store. For example, here are all PCI Express cards they sell that have two DVI ports. Lots of choices there. However, it looks like the only one they have with capture abilities is this one.

i was mostly wondering what ones are better than others...I have no idea when it comes to quality which ones are the best and which ones have problems.

Well, I suppose you can take a look at the customer feedback for a particular card on that site. Aside from that, I don't think many people here will be able to help you unless they've just built a new system within the last few months, which is how long PCI Express has been around. You have a mobo with PCI Express slots, right?

Anyway, since it sounds like video capture is important to you, it doesn't look like there are a lot of options out there anyway. Look for which ones do video capture and that'll narrow your search, if that's what you're looking for. Most of these cards have S-Video ports, but those are for video out, not in.

if your main concern is to capture video, then I would suggest an ATI All in Wonder Card. I'm not sure if they have one available for pci-e though. i have an older radeon 8500 aiw and it does just fine capturing tv and from video cams.

The second link I posted was for an ATI AIW card. I would agree with your assessment if it weren't for the fact that ATI's Windows drivers for the AIW cards are crap. I basically can't use mine at this point for TV tuning. That's probably just my machine being screwed up, but I think it's mostly on their end. I sure wish I had Bruno working on the PC side

Lousy Linux support, too, historically speaking.

The X300SE is basically a PCI Express version of the 9600SE which as you've found isn't particularly speedy.

Which one is better? This one or this one? They seem to be the same, but made my different companies.....

also, does it make much of a difference between 256mb or 128mb cards when you don't play games on them?

You could also check out reviews on trusty sites such as Anandtech and slightly more sensationalist sites like Tom's Hardware. Ooh, and THW has info about PCMCIA 30gig HDDs and a cigarette lighter FM transmitter USB key accepting MP3 player thing.

There are other good review sites for video hardware, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. Sharky Extreme, perhaps?

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I'm not sure if a 3D rendering program like Max or Maya would even make use of that video RAM.

It most certainly would. A real 3D workstation card like a Quadro FX with 512Mb would be better yet. Not for rendering, of course. It would help for scene manipulation / modeling.