Alright, so next question... scratch space/ scratch disk...

From googling a bit, it doesn't look like I can set up a dedicated scratch partition for Maya only, like PS can, can I? Would I have to re-direct the entire TEMP dir to the scratch space? How much space would be beneficial for Maya (on top of 6 GB RAM)? And I'm assuming the faster the read/write speed the better, so on a SSD the space would be quite limited/expensive.

Oh yeah, and I was looking at the GeForce GTX 285 which comes in 1GB GDDR3 and 2GB variations... I understand extra video card memory is useful for storing Z-buffer info? (thanks wikipedia...) Is there any performance benefit here for Maya? I'm a bit wary of the "buy a bigger number because a bigger number is bigger than a smaller number"... you know.