Falott > 'correct me if I´m wrong...'

I my opinion, the order of importance for hardware in a Maya system should be: CPU, RAM and graphics card. You need a fast card for Maya becuase even if you are using wireframe and just modelling, the lines are rendered by graphics card using the 3D funtions. In most projects with thousands of polygons, the lines are going to make the whole computer less responsive to the point where it becomes unsable.

As for the old ATI cards having driver issues, are you refering to the Rage series? Those are indeed horrible but anything later than the first Radeons is going to be fine.

As for Maya 7 and 8 running slow even on high end machines, I don't think it will run slow on 4 and 8 way SMP systems.


Zohar0 > 'On the box it says it's meant for 3d as well.'

I think the marketing department put that there just to make it look more powerful. Cards meant for 3D are the Nvidia Quadro and the ATI FireGL.


Snyl > 'Maye someone better informed than me can debate this: The 9550 is capable of running games like Unreal Tournament (the original) and thus should have the ability to render an un-textured model unless your polycount is in the 10s of thousands? (Questions, not facts) Modelling 1 character vs rendering 10+ textured/lighted characters in-action. Doesnt make sense to me, but ... I'm the noob'

Game companies diliberately make games that looks good for a game, but runs fast on most hardware so it can be played by more people and thus equal more $$$ for them.