I’m in the same boat here and have been looking into this a little:
Regarding the Parhelia, it only supports OpenGL 1.3 and it won’t support GPU accelerated effects. It’s a cool card, but expensive and outdated.
Adobe has a list of compatible graphics cards on their PPro2 site. They list, among the Nvidias, the 6800, 7800 and Quadro. Make sure it is OpenGL 2.0 compatible. Many of the Quadros are only OpenGL 1.5. Some 6800s are listed as 1.5. The 7800s are OpenGL 2. I plan to get a 7800.
Good luck,
Kevin Petajan
Kevin Petajan
Meridian Media, Ltd.
Milwaukee, WI