Does the graphics/video card really have any effect on speed in regards to non-linear editing?

depends what you are looking for.
in DV , there is no gain to get an expensive card for simple editing.
But if you use apps that are boosting upon the GPU (graphic processing unit), it could make a real difference.
For example Maic Bullet plugin for premiere (mainly used for color correction) improve rendering speed if you got a good Nvidia card.
from 20 minutes of rendering for 1 minute of video with no GPU boost, you can go faster than realtime with a NVIDIA 7800 card.
If you use HDV or H264, most recent card can boost decoding or provide HD output (digital or component) allowing to use an LCD tv as preview monitor.

In short, by these time, a middle class video card can help for sure, but if you need to go to an high end, expensive card, you have better to check if you apps are supporting it, since some give preference to Nvidia, other to Matrox and other to ATI.

Thanks Giroud,

I have an x1300 pro ati. 256mb

This is the one thing that drags my computer down in my opinion.

Everything else is high-end. I guess is it worth a peak for a card that will speed things up even a little more.

Jay

In the past it did not matter at all, but applications are increasingly taking advantage of video cards' OpenGL performance for rendering effects. If you do not use them much it should not matter; e.g., in basic editing. You also need to use certain applications, such as After Effects.