Thanks Nyll,
yeah price is definitely a consideration which is why I'm looking at the mid range cards . I have had a look at a few of the online reviews on these cards, but so far have found no sl specific information/advice. Several people have mentioned the NVIDIA 9800 or 8800, but systems with these cards are few and far between and there is no way i am going to build one myself .
I will check out the GTX cards too.
Obviously the Radeon cards have Direct 11x support, but I am assuming that this will not really have any effect on SL.
Would love to hear from someone running these Radeon cards - maybe the fact that there is no mention of them means they are running fine, but I just want to be sure before I buy a system for SL that doesn't run SL.