3D card

[noktUp]

All that "jive" you bought is great. but for best results, try finding an Nvidia quadro, for like $200 or so. That "older"card is worth the extra trouble of finding it. You get sweet performance at a reasonable price. Plus you can still play any OpenGL game like it was on a Gforce 2 ultra. You'll love the fact that you can do 8 realtime lights, which'll help at render time. With other "consumer" based game cards, you get simmilar poly count performance, but also, loose certain features common only to pro cards, such as overlay planes(one use is in fur drawing(maya))
*Most cards dont directly support overlay, but will do it just fine anyway.* These pro features will help a great deal during render time.
I personally have a quaro2 and a gforce4MX(shitty!!) They both have similar poly draw capabilities, and play games roughly the same, cept the quaro is smoother during transparence and particle heavy scenes. But in maya (real time) the performance difference is negligable(bar i use more then one light, in which case the quadro keeps on kicking out nice frame rates).

Hope it helps:

(noktUp(teenSlut))

[luminis]

Yeah, noktUp's response is quite good... go with an nVidia Quadro 2 Pro, if you don't want to spend a lot of money (my guess is they are around US$400 now??? not quite sure). Stay away from all the GeForce ones! they will give you trouble when using them for Maya. However, if you have a bit more to spend, try looking at the Quadro 4's they're truly worth it! (the 750 model might suit your needs if you can afford it)

ATI's are good, but nVidia is better :).

[TOE]

WOOHOO First post.... Anyways, on to the subject at hand. I was just wondering if anyone is using a Vid card that supports DirectX 9 with maya 4.5. Ive heard that so far the only cards that support it are the ATI 9700 pro and the new Nvidia card thats coming out in a few months. I was told that with that setup Maya 4.5 can run in real time with full textures/lighting/radiosity. Basically working in your scene like it was IPR rendered. I just ordered a 9700 pro off of good ol PRICE WATCH.com for ($270.00 U.S.) Im pretty sure thats a good price but im still a noob to the CG world so if anyone can let me know if im on the right track for hardware itd be much appreciated.


TOE

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