which to Buy...Mac Maya or PC Maya?

[mark_wilkins]

ATI's recent consumer cards work pretty well for Maya on the Mac. Certainly they don't have the kinds of problems that ATI's cards on the PC side have had, probably because of different drivers.

Reportedly, OS 10.3 will contain support for professional workstation graphics cards but only with the G5 systems. If you're thinking you might upgrade to a G5 in the near future then the workstation graphics card issue may not be one by the time you do.

I find, though, that Maya 5 runs really cleanly on the Mac at this point.

-- Mark

[Crazzy Legs]

thank you my friend for the information. Since my purchase will not be for about a month to six weeks, there might be enough time for companies to anounce any pro cards they're manufacturing for the G5.

[mark_wilkins]

it's going to be more than six weeks before that information is available, because it's not going to happen until OS X 10.3 later this year, at the earliest.

However, if fast realtime textures are your primary consideration, you should be fine with an ATI 9600 Pro or 9800 Pro in the meantime. The main advantages of using a workstation graphics card are things like overlay planes and more accurate hardware renders.

Plus, on the Mac these cards *ARE* Alias-supported cards, unlike on the PC.

-- Mark

[manosteele12]

do any of you know if alias is going to upgrade maya to support the 64bit chip in the g5

[onlooker]

Originally posted by manosteele12
do any of you know if alias is going to upgrade maya to support the 64bit chip in the g5

I have no idea if Alias is going to go 64-bit with Maya for the G5, but I think there could be a good chance of that happening because many of us believe Alias has been readying Maya Unlimited for OS X, but should have been done with it a while ago. If they are holding out for something I imagine Panther (Apples 64-bit ready OS) is it. If anything we'll see Pixar RenderMan 64-bit, and Maya Unlimited 64-bit announced with Panther sometime in the near future.


All sweet dreams aside.

If you want to purchase Maya Unlimited you'll have to get a PC for now, because Maya Complete is the only version available for the Mac at the moment, and there is no guarantee that Alias is even readying a version of Maya Unlimited for the Mac. They have said nothing about it. But, the Mac community has been over 25% of all Maya sales over the past two years, (I read that in an article) and all of the Mac Maya owners (such as myself) keep begging for it, so I imagine they will give it to us sometime.

[aydinu]

Keep in mind (I don't if this is true but I read it in a magazine) that Alias still doesn't support the Unlimited version for the Mac yet.

Aydin

[JHarford]

not biased as i own mac and pcs. but pllllleasse PC PC PC . maya mac is horrible.
at work so cant type much more.

[mark_wilkins]

Maya for the Mac was pretty bad in the 3.5 timeframe but I'm having a great time with it using 4.5 and 5.0.

One of Apple's OS X updates fixed some drawing problems, so you should make sure you're running 10.2.6 with it, though.

-- Mark

[ntmonkey]

Having just Maya Complete isn't really that bad. You can look around and find other tool sets (some free) that'll append those missing tools. For example, Joe Alter's Shave and a Haircut would be more than a worthy replacement for Maya's Fur. BTW, are you new to Maya?

peace,

Lu

[Crazzy Legs]

I can't say I've been using maya from version 1.0. I've been using Maya since 4.0. Then I used 4.5. I haven't used 5.0 yet. I know the hardware rendering is supposed to be much better in 5.0, but do you know if Maya has realtime bumpMapping yet, inside the viewports. If so, what type of hardware will I need to utalize it? Thanks.

mark_wilkins- Where did you find out that the Raidion Pro is Alias supported on the Mac? I'd love to read more about this. It supprises me that a consumer level card is Alias supported. But I guess Apple probobly really needs a card that is supported since the other companies haven't made anything Apple yet.

[mark_wilkins]

Qualified hardware list on the Alias support page.

www.alias.com

-- Mark

[godeus25]

I'm very new to maya (took my first class last night) and 3d cg in general, but the way I understand it are many more apps available for pc than mac. is it worth it in a general sense for me to switch over to pc from mac based on this fact? or is maya for mac enough of an app for me to not worry about all the renderers and such pc users get? please forgive my nooby-ness ;)

[pearson]

When I switched jobs I went from a Quadra 750 to an ATI 9700....boy do I miss the Quadra! I haven't used the mac version of Maya, but the drivers for the 9700 on the PC are worse than the drivers for the GeForce 1...just maximizing the perspective window is a gamble, sometimes it works (rarely), sometimes massive slowdown, sometimes just neon green static! Thanks ATI! :)

[godeus25]

i heard recently that alias was developed using nvidia drivers, thats why it runs so much better with geforce cards. here's a more direct link to that alias hardware qualification doc:

http://www.alias.com/eng/support/qualified_hardware.jhtml

strage stuff. the geforce cards are mostly qualified for mac machines, but not at all for win machines. also no g3s at all? snif snif, guess i've held out long enough.

[godeus25]

how well do maya files transfer between macs and pcs?

sounds like the pc version of maya is better than the mac verson. more mature maybe?

[mark_wilkins]

The drivers on the Mac are completely different from those on the PC. On the Mac, ATI's drivers seem to be much better.

I would have said that the Mac version of Maya was immature at v. 3.5, which was the first one they came out with a couple of years ago. At this point it's just as solid as the PC version, in my experience working with both.

Also, the files transfer back and forth just as easily as on the same platform. I've used PC, Linux, and Mac interchangeably for developing my book and never had a problem with anything.

The one possible exception are OS-dependent things like using the MEL system command in tricky ways.

-- Mark

[Gazzamataz]

So, if I was thinking of buying one of them new G5s in the next few weeks, would the wise people here say hang on until the release of OSX 10.3?

This release should be 64-bit capable which might lead onto the release of Maya 5.5 Unlimited on the Mac/PC/Linux which will also be 64-bit compatible.

To top it off, since Apple are now getting back into the workstation realm, would it also see developers creating OSX drivers for the big selection of GPUs out there that are currently PC only?

If this is the case then a) I can wait and b) at last!

[1000101]

Though Alias may release unlimited for panther when it comes out; I'm doubting very much that it will be a truly 64 bit application. After all Maya for IRIX has been 32 bit since its inception.
Though we might see a few other g5 optimisations.
If your going with complete I don't see any reason not to go with the g5 if you have a preference for the mac platform. As has been stated several times; the graphics drivers on OS X are much more capable at running maya than the equivellent drivers on win32. This applies to both GeForce and Radeon series boards.
My theory on that is that they've gone ahead and rolled fireGL and Quadro openGL code into their respective driver sets. It would make sense; given that despite everything nvidia and ATI would tell you; the cards are at the core identical. At the very least from a stability standpoint.

[mark_wilkins]

Panther is not a full 64-bit OS. Each application will get a 32-bit address space mapped into up to 64-bits worth of physical RAM, which allows each application to see up to 2 GB but the system as a whole to use 8.

Anyway, I'm eager to see how Maya runs on the dual G5 as well. I have one on order that's expected to arrive sometime this week or early next, and it looks like they may meet that date, so when that happens I'll try some benchmarking and post numbers.

-- Mark

[NueFoX]

I would buy PC Maya with a Quadro FX and dual cpu...

But i don't like Macintosh in the first place :rolleyes:

[1000101]

Our G5 showed up just yesterday. And to think the day before I was telling you it was confirmed hehe. (its not a 1.6 its a 1.8. I accidentally lied it seems)

As for the panther not being fully 64 bit; it looks like it may be; its just handling 32 bit apps much like other unices. i.e. give em 2gb of address space and leave the rest for other apps.
I'm fairly certain maya on IRIX behaves this way as well.


I tell ya what though; I'll certainly see how well PLE runs on this G5 hehe.
If it doesn't bother me that much who knows. maybe I'll have one in my future too.

[mark_wilkins]

Originally posted by 1000101
As for the panther not being fully 64 bit; it looks like it may be; its just handling 32 bit apps much like other unices. i.e. give em 2gb of address space and leave the rest for other apps.

That's not a full 64-bit OS.

-- Mark

[1000101]

hrmm.
do any exist then?

As I recall building a 32 bit MySQL binary and running it on a 64 bit system (Tru64, Solaris, IRIX) ; it'd only grab 2gb blocks of memory at a time. Its been ages since I've dealt with any of it.

[Gazzamataz]

1000101 said:
As has been stated several times; the graphics drivers on OS X are much more capable at running maya than the equivellent drivers on win32. This applies to both GeForce and Radeon series boards.
Does this mean that the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra is comparable to the Quadro FX 500?

Or the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro is comparable to the FireGL T2-128 cards in terms of performance?

It would help if they put more RAM on those cards, they are currently limited to 64mb... the only one's that have 128mb are the GeForce Ti400 and the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.

From I have recently learned both ATI and Nvidia use the top boards for their workstation class cards and then disable features for consumer level. Then the bright sparks out there just invent SoftQuadro to renable the features again...

Anyway I am off to Cancom on Saturady to try Maya PLE on a 1.8 G5 with the FX500 card so I will get hands on real-time feedback :)

Pearson said:
When I switched jobs I went from a Quadra 750 to an ATI 9700....boy do I miss the Quadra!
Just outta curiosity I have recently installed a Quadro 750 GXL into my Dell 1.8p4 and yet my collegue gets better results(x1.5-2) on his Dell 2.4p4 with ATI 9700... In fact I hardly notice the difference between my Quadro and the GF3Ti200 that I used to have - what gives?

[1000101]

Does this mean that the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra is comparable to the Quadro FX 500?

Should be close. I'm sure theres a clock speed difference between the quadro and consumer level board. It is also possible that the BIOS or some other thing must be fixed/replaced in order to unlock all the speed features. But I do find driver stability when using softQuadro on windows is much better. Text labels disapeering and so forth.

Or the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro is comparable to the FireGL T2-128 cards in terms of performance?

From the benchmarks I'd seen; a 9700 pro was identical in performance to a fireGL X1 when they used the softFireGL on the 9700 pro.
So I'd venture to say its possible; and even possible that apples drivers allready do a form of "softFireGL." Or just have a more robust and correct OpenGL implimentation. After all theres no reason to work on a DirectX driver for the mac.

It would help if they put more RAM on those cards, they are currently limited to 64mb... the only one's that have 128mb are the GeForce Ti400 and the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.

128mb cards that are available now:
Gf4 Ti series; ATI Radeon 9700; 9700 pro; 9800; 9800 pro; Fx 5200 ultra (theres a 256mb ver of this card too); and of course the 5900.


From I have recently learned both ATI and Nvidia use the top boards for their workstation class cards and then disable features for consumer level. Then the bright sparks out there just invent SoftQuadro to renable the features again...

This is pretty much true. All of the 5900 ultra cards that went out to reviewers initlially had NV35GL chips on them. Thats the same exact chip thats on the quadroFX 3000. Of course the consumer level boards all have NV35's on them. But thats not to say that the chip doesn't just have a pin disconnected or something and a new label.


Good luck playin with maya

[pearson]

Gazzamataz - I should clarify that I don't do renders. My job consists of modeling and texturing only, so the things I care about are probably not taxing the cards speed wise. The biggest problem for me with the 9700 is that I can't go all day without having to close Maya 2-3 times because the drivers just crap out. After a while you can't shift back to single perspective view...it flashes neon green garbage all over the screen, then draws the correct image, but suuuuuper slow. This will also happen with the other OGL windows, UV Texture Editor and Hypershade. Very annoying when in the zone to have to close and restart.

Also if maya is running, even if minimized, the popup text under the cursor is all corrupted for all items in the taskbar. Minor annoyance, but still.

[greynite1]

For Maya I would unequivocably choose Maya on a PC with a Quadro FX 2000 or 3000. The drivers are very mature and stable. Also Maya unlimited is only available on PC and Linux. I would pick PC simply for the amount of compatibility you will get not just for maya but other Software and hardware. Getting stuff for PCs is inevitably easier and cheaper.

The only reason to go for a Mac version in my humble opinion is if you like Macs and enjoy their workflow. Nvidia Geforce Cards also work quite well with Maya under the current version of OSX 10 so you shouldn't have much problem there.

I will give a good shout out to red hat Linux as well. The drivers there also being pretty good and stable. Again if you are just starting out do what your comfortable with. I think getting a PC version is better for you in the long term. :)

[mark_wilkins]

The only reason to go for a Mac version in my humble opinion is if you like Macs and enjoy their workflow.

A closely related reason is if you're using Final Cut Pro to edit your output and want to work on one machine.

I'm in the process of benchmarking a dual G5 using Maya 5. (The tests are kind of cheezy but at least it's something.) The results for single-threaded stuff are pretty good, all things considered, but if you're spending most of your time waiting for single-threaded dynamics simulations you'd be better off with a fast single-proc P4 or Athlon.

Still, the dual G5 is a great machine for Maya overall, and hopefully when Alias recompiles with optimizations it will improve significantly.

The most interesting result of the testing done so far is that the Athlon 1800+ at 1533 MHz comes close to the performance of the P4 3.2 GHz.

-- Mark

[mark_wilkins]

By the way, I posted in the Technical and Hardware Forum some preliminary impressions on Maya on the dual 2 GHz G5:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90691

-- Mark

[Gazzamataz]

First, I would like to say that this thread has been great! There has been none of the usual PC vs Mac slagging but a proper review of how well Maya works on the Mac platform - thanks chaps!

I know that it is probably better in the long run to use a PC but I only do this for a hobby and I just prefer Macs - I have both a Mac and a PC anyway and I want to upgrade me old Mac.

Mark said:
The results for single-threaded stuff are pretty good, all things considered, but if you're spending most of your time waiting for single-threaded dynamics simulations you'd be better off with a fast single-proc P4 or Athlon.
Errr... not quite sure what you mean here, do you mean just single processor raw power? I thought that the 1.6G5 was equivalent to a 3ghz pentium?

And going from Maya to Final Cut Pro sounds wonderful to me, I wanna have a bash at merging CG with real footage so this looks like a nice workflow. :)

[Gazzamataz]

Hmmm... anxious to know what these new fandango G5s are like I trotted on over to Cancom on Saturday afternoon with a copy of Maya 4.5 PLE and the sample files that come with it. I was mainly interested in the frame rates and interactiveness of Maya on these machines. Unfortunately the machine on show was a 1.6ghz with the FX5200 card and 256mb RAM, so the RAM configuration was a bit limiting.

It seemed to perform quite nicely but when I got home and tested the same files on my PC 1.2 Athlon with GeForce4 Ti200 and 512mb RAM it actually seemed faster...

I also ran a CINEBENCH test on the machine and was dissapointed with the G5s performance. My 1.8ghz P4 with a GeForce3 Ti200 was faster on the CPU test, the OGL SL test, the OGL HL test, the SL test and the HL test... I thought that the G5 1.6 was supposed to be the equivalent of a 3ghz P4 and the FX5200 card better than the GeForce3?

I was dissapointed and went back to me PC :hmm:

[boboroshi]

The main thing i've noticed about running on a mac is basically the video card related. with 2Gb of ram on a single 1.4, the difference between an ati with 16MB of vRAM and an nVidia GeForce4MX with 32 MB of RAM is amazing. I'd be interested to try one of the higher end 3d cards or seeing when something reaches the equivalent of the PC cards. That, imho, is the main technological hold back on the mac platform.

The benefit, imho, is the unix base to the system. and at teh end of the day, you gotta be able to work on the platform of your choice. You can't get the job done, it's pointless to use it.

And benchmarks - both the ones used by apple and microsoft - are biased. To me the best bench mark is making a scene or executing a mel script trying out various things. THat's how the shake kids do it... running a single scene from both GUI and command line renders to see result times. Is there an equivalent for the maya community?

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