Which video card?

[osa3D]

Also Alias advises not to use any kind of Gforce for Maya.

Well, I realy dont know why you are not advised to use Gforce. This Geforce Go 6800 is so much powerfull than the Mobility X300.

[PixelTales]

The advise not to use ANY Gforce cards came directly from the hardware requirements on alias' website. Here's what it says

"Nvidia GeForce256, GeForce2, GeForce3, GeForce4 series There are many cards based on GeForce256, GeForce2, GeForce3 and GeForce4 chipsets. Nvidia and Alias do not recommend these cards for use with Maya as you may experience various refresh, display and stability problems and inadequate performance.
We suggest you choose from Nvidia's workstation cards instead, such as the Quadro families which are much better suited to high-end 3D packages such as Maya."

Here is the link (http://www.alias.com/eng/support/maya/qualified_hardware/QUAL/maya_60_win.html#NvidiaGeForce) for the page. I don't know if this is really a big concern or not, but it does say that BOTH Nvidia and Alias reccommend it.

[Vertizor]

Yes, but that DOES NOT mean "go use ATI instead." In fact if you do a search on CGTalk more often than not ATI users have problems with Maya.

I'm sorry to be crude, but that quoted statement is complete crap. They just want users to buy the more expensive workstation video cards. I'm NOT trying to water down the technical merits of a workstation video card. What I am saying is that they're spoon feeding you marketing BS and like a good little consumer you're eating it up.

I've always used "gamer" video cards and never had any problems in: Cinema 4D, Lightwave, XSI, Maya 6.0 PLE (same as commercial version just handicapped).

[Vertizor]

Is this really important, or does it really only matter if you are trying to do some hard core rendering. I am focusing purely on animation and rendering is not as important to me. Though I will want to do some simple renderings of my final projects with a simple light setup eventually to put on a reel.
Other way around actually. If you're focused on animating than a stronger video card is most definitely important, because the video card ONLY draws in the viewports. The video card doesn't do anything at all in the final rendering. But real-time playback of your animation (ex: as you're making it) very much dependant on the video card.

[PixelTales]

Thanks for the info guys. It's good to hear that there shouldn't be any problems with the Gforce :)

[jbo]

yeah, i've used geforce cards with maya on my last 2 machines, and had NO problems. also, you can softmod it to a quadro, i've never done it, but i know people have had good results. like vertizor said, rendering does not use your video card at all, so don't worry about it.

EDIT: I meant to say "had no problems" guess that makes a pretty big difference. sorry.

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