My video card died recently and I was offered a trade,a brand new GeForce6800GT for a few renfest gowns. This card doesn't show bump maps but it is supposed to be a really good card. I have alot of skins that have bump maps and would like to see the details on these pretty clothes.

I also have just about every object mesh that somebody puts up. Will using this card allow me to have more objects on the lot without slowing it down?
Is there a cheaper card that allows for both bump maps and fast game play?

I just got a rosewell g-force fa5500 with 256mg ram from newegg for just $72.00 + $4.00 for ship, and 1 stick of 512 mg of ram for about $40.00 and not only is the sims2 running fast fast fast with 10 people and a heck of a lot of downloads and mods on a 5x5 lot but the graphics are kick ass
by the way I now have
AMD XP2000 cpu
the above video card
1 gig ddr 2700 @ 333mhz
by the way there are a lot of good chards even cheaper at newegg

Most of the ATI cards will as far as I know. I have a Radeon 9700 and I know it shows them. Not sure about Nvidia cards. It's odd that one wouldn't though since it's a fairly recent and fast card.

I like the bump mapped stuff myself, it looks really nice, but I find a majority of people don't use it and I don't have that much custom content that does. Maybe I am just not looking in the right places, but I do scour the net for downloads sites and check Bines Sim Revue daily.

Thanks for the replies, I read in the bump map testing thread that dumbblonde has this nvidia card and the bump mapped skins don't work with it. I could exchange it and get a cheaper card. I don't understand why the game (according to the bump map test thread) doesn't work with high end cards for the bump maps.