Need opinion for upgrades for Maya work

[Atnevon]

Hey TPU,

So I believe I am going to venture into the realm of Maya, and begin my new 3D study. My rig was built about a year ago, and currently have 4gb of GSkills on the way now. I'm wondering a few things about first the OS, and the current hardware config of the rest of my machine to do efficent Maya rendering.

First, I hear from my instructor tht Maya crashes, and crashes often, but I could not seem to get a good reason from her besides "It just does". Can anyone shed light onto this?

Second, if I were to put 150 bucks into my rig, say, around Christmas time, where should I put it? I feel I have a pretty rounded system, so I'm not sure where to put the money.

Also, if I were to built a rig, would it be better to put it on a sever architecture, like a duel CPU system, or will a simple P35/45, or gaming rig be fine?

Being new to this, I'm not sure where to look to. Thanks TPU for any advice you can offer.

-Andrew

 

[Disparia]

I find at a lot of graphics houses that they follow developer recommendations to the letter. This includes not installing certain updates, programs, etc. Some go as far as having only one machine online so they don't have security software on the production boxes. Basically, anything that could interfere with their work is prohibited.

OTOH, I'm not that strict. I do a little freelance work here and there on my box with everything installed - Adobe products, Lightwave, games, apps, internet, and so on.

Something to keep in mind is that when I went through school for 3D/Digital Media we were all running Pentium 3's/dual Pentium 3's, 512-1GB RAM, etc. Today you can throw together a $1K quad-core that would destroy those older machines. If you're just starting out, don't worry about not having a Quadro FX 5600 or a couple quad-core procs (yet).

 

[Sasqui]

Ironically, the NVidia cards are said to have stability issues in general with Maya (OpenGL), though I saw a thread somewheer that said the 6800 series was ok.

Finding the "Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card" list for Maya is difficult. Just about all the "workstation" cards (you know, the *way* overpriced versions of the retail cards with different drivers) are probably OK, but you'll drop $400-$600 for a decent one.

Your system looks like it'll crunch it handily.

 

[Atnevon]

Your system looks like it'll crunch it handily.

Glad to hear that one. Its nice to have a little pat on the back.

And as stupid as this sounds, I never realized I never took the jumper limiting my SATA drive to 1.5, instead of 2.

Boy I feel dumb now. But thanks for the help.