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# 5 05-08-2010 , 09:42 AM
Jay's Avatar
Lead Modeler - Framestore
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 6,287
Ahh the old graphic card debate on a new bit of kit.

Just to put things into perspective, I had one of the original NVidia 1000 FX cards for around 4-5 years and it was fine, I think it cost around a grand or just over. Anyway it finally died on me in 2008 and as I couldnt afford to spend that much on a new card, again I settled for an NVidia card, in fact a games one, the GeForce 7300 GT with 512mb on it, Ive done various bits of freelance video recording for Simply maya, a ton of freelance work in Maya for tv programmes, Im doing a 3d comic strip for which Im throwing everything at it to make the comic look good, Zbrush runs great with it though its not really graphic card run at the end of the day, thats more ram hungry if anything same with PS. Its doing the job it needs too and displays textures very very well, and yes its a games card. I have no gripes whatsoever with it.

And it only cost me 90quid from PC world LOL nuff said!

there were tests done by 3d world magazine a while back and they did actually prove that games cards worked more efficiently on the big softwares and handled everything really well than the so called work station cards.

Just some food for thought before you splash out on a big card.

Also worth noting is that 'back in the day' of maya 2.5 and 3, there was alot of emphasis on the cards ( elsa gloria cards, a real dog of a card) because of Mayas architecture handling the 3d format and textures plus all the other crap you tend to throw at it while making stuff. But at version 4 onwards it was re-written so it wasnt reliant on the card to do small stuff, but written so that it accessed more the system resources of the PC.

Im not super savvy on what exactly but as I said its not super reliant on the card anymore.

cheers
Jay