graphic card to go with maya???

[LowEndFrequency]

Now before I start speakin, you should know that I have no idea what I am talking about, and this is just my personal findings. That being said, here we go:

In my personal experiences maya for the most part doesnt give a shit how big your video card is, I just upgraded to a gefore4Ti128 and maya doesnt even initiate any of its drivers to render anything. It seems render time is more related to processor and memory power than the video card.

If I'm wrong on this someone please let me know, since I would love to have my damn video card do some work for once.

[stunndman]

Originally posted by LowEndFrequency
[B]In my personal experiences maya for the most part doesnt give a shit how big your video card is, I just upgraded to a gefore4Ti128 and maya doesnt even initiate any of its drivers to render anything. It seems render time is more related to processor and memory power than the video card.


software rendering doesn't need or use the graphic card in your computer at all (except if you use opengl accelerated shadow maps)

there is a dedicated hardware forum on highend3d - maybe you can gather some information there

[callon]

LowEndFrequency is right on the money when he says rendering is determined by factors other than how powerful your graphics card is. I've heard it's much more dependent on processor speed and system memory. Generally speaking, with both games and 3d development, I think having a good amount of system memory can only help.

You also might want to consider looking up a few professional render farms and asking them what they have "under the hood."
Who knows, they might give you some helpful info. :beer:

I too am no expert, but I'm picking up things from reading and visiting this forum often. ;)

Mike

[AmateurOne]

Maya noob here. I'd check the rather detailed hardware compatibility list on the alias/wavefront web site and take their advice.

As everyone has said the video card makes no difference on rendering. Unless you choose hardware rendering for aesthetic reasons. And I also seem to recall that hardware rendering is required for some types of particle effects; yes, no?

[playmesumch00ns]

Graphics cards have absolutely no. no. no. effect on rendering. This is unless you want to use OpenGL or DirectX for rendering your finished scene. Which is perfectly possible. But then you wouldn't be using Maya would you?

There are exceptions to this. Hardware-accelerated shadow maps are one. Mentalray also seems to be able to use OpenGL to speed up some parts of rendering. Maya renders most particle types in hardware only - points, streak, multi-streak, multi-point, sprites etc, which is incredibly annoying!

imho, any of the Geforce family are great for Maya, but Quadro is even better and if you got money for a wildcat even better. Particuarly things for doing anti-aliased animation previews with the hardware render buffer and paint effects.

If it's just rendering you're worried about, the most important thing is processor speed. The next most important thing is memory. If you can't fit your whole scene in memory at one time it will go slooooowwww. This isn't helped by Maya's memory-management under windows. An extra gig of ram is your best bet since you've got the dual xeons already. A stonking card is like the icing on the cake really.

[AmateurOne]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by playmesumch00ns
[B]Graphics cards have absolutely no. no. no. effect on rendering. This is unless you want to use OpenGL or DirectX for rendering your finished scene. Which is perfectly possible. But then you wouldn't be using Maya would you?

According to A/W you might. A quote from their docs:

"Some individuals intentionally use hardware rendering for its less precise shading and textures, though this usage is uncommon."

As I said, aesthetics--jes ain't no cout'n fer taste.:)


Edit:

Unless, of course, you were referring to the fact that the OGL routine library is not intrinsically part of Maya. But gracious, that would be sooo pedantic!

[M_Orlich]

for what its worth i have the quadro 750 and haven't had a single complaint.

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