correct me if I´m wrong.

my perception after working with a lot of different setups is this one ->


concerning hardware issues:

graphic card is pretty the last thing to consider. It really doesn´t make any difference which card you use unless you need it for hardware rendering. Processor comes into use when rendering. So if you dont have those extra 1mio poly with fur + FG + GI renderings - your processor might be fine.

most important ->
go for as lot of RAM you can think of, cause this is what is being used while working in your 3dPanel. (also while rendering of course)

keep in mind - old ati cards often cause driver troubles with maya. so you might try other drivers for your card.

maya versions -> maya 6 and 6.5 is somehow "light" compared to version 7 and more version 8 which has real performance problems even on highend machines. I dont know what maya8 was any good for... (exept it´s called autodesk now)


so I´d go with Zohar0´s advice to buy RAM.


+ The pagefile
dynamic pagefiles defragment pretty fast. so change it from dynamic to static. but defragment the drive you map it to before setting it up.