<p>Would it be a good idea if to get a computer with an ATI FireGL or Nvidia Quadro FX if I'm going to major in mechanical engineering?</p>
<p>I think getting a top of the line video card (the newest versions of those cards exceed $1500 in price) would be an incredible waste of money. You will most likely be doing very little CAD work as an ME student. Aside from a CAD class or two, and your design course, making your own CAD workstation would be foolish. Any consumer grade video card should be more than enough to allow you to work with solid modeling programs (I'm assuming that is your intention) like Pro/E, CATIA, Solid Edge, Solid Works, etc. Most of the work you will be doing within the modeling programs will only be rendered as wireframes and uniformly shaded parts. If you chose to do a fully rendered/lighted model, it might take longer to do on a consumer card than a professional graphics card, but you will be doing this so infrequently that it will not be worth the expense.</p>
<p>You'd be just fine getting a video card that is 2 or 3 generations behind even. Spend a $150 on a nVidia 6600GT and all of those programs will work beautifully.</p>