Graphics Card Recommendations? (Maya)

This weekend, I got Maya in the mail. My initial squees of joy were soon to be replaced by the arghs of discontent when faced by tumbling video (rapid oscillations between views). Unsurprisingly, Maya tech support tells me that I need a new video card, one with better Open GL ability. My old GeForce 7300 needs to go the that great Craigslist in the sky.

So....I'm looking down the list of supported cards. I think I'd like to stick with NVIDIA, which leaves me with the Quadro FX series. In a word, these are NOT inexpensive cards, so I want to find out if anyone has had any problems with them. The Quadro FX 1700 seems to be the least damaging to the pocketbook, but can it run Maya's rendering and texturing tools? (I saw one review that said it's not that great at that).

I'm serious about learning Maya (I'm in graphic design, and have hopes of someday getting to do professional 3D work), so I very much need to work at home on projects. At the same time, I honestly don't have more than $1000 (US) to spend on this, and frankly, $500 would be more in my price range.

The Quadro cards are fantastic for Maya. They're not as fast as GeForce cards, but they're rock solid. You shouldn't have any troubles at all with Maya or any other workstation type software on a Quadro.

You may have some problems with games and with SL on a Quadro, though. I've got one machine here with a Quadro FX 3000 in it. Sometimes SL works well on it; sometimes it doesn't. It varies from viewer version to viewer version. Quadros are unsupported by SL, so it's luck of the draw. (Granted, the 3000 is an older card, so my experience might not reflect how the newer ones behave. Newer models could be better or worse with SL.)

Ideally, if price were no object, you'd want two separate machines. You'd want a with a workstation with a Quadro (or multiple Quadros), Xeon processor(s), enterprise hard drives, etc., for running Maya, CS4, and all your other production software, and then you'd want a gaming rig with a good GeForce card and a consumer grade Core2 processor for SL and games.

Most of us can't afford a decked out workstation, though. So high end gaming hardware is the best way to go, if you only have one machine. The logic is this. You can do workstation stuff on a gaming rig, even if not quite as well as you could on an actual workstation, but you can't very well do gaming at all on a workstation. The gaming rig is the more versatile of the two. So if you have to do both kinds of tasks (which is the very definition of being an SL content creator), then gaming hardware is the more sensible option.

I've had very good luck with Maya on GeForce 8800's and 8700's. I do get the occasional graphical hiccup every now and then, but never any showstoppers. On the whole, Maya performance with high level GeForce cards is very good. It's just not quite as stable as on a Quadro. I'd say I experience graphics problems with Maya maybe 2-3% of the time of the time on my GeForces, as opposed to never at all on my Quadro. I'm comfortable with 2-3%.

If you've only got one computer, my advice would be to take the $400-500 it would cost to get that Quadro FX1700, and instead spend it on something like a nice 1GB GeForce 285. Get it from a good retailer with a solid return policy, like Newegg, so you can run it through the mill for a few weeks, and see how it does for you. If it doesn't work well with Maya (I'm sure it will), send it back, and get something else.

Note, if you do go with a 1GB video card, use a 64bit OS. Otherwise, that 1GB of video memory will put a serious dent in the maximum system RAM you can use. 64bit Vista Ultimate + 64bit Maya + 8GB system RAM = 1 very happy computer.


By the way, if you really want to, it is possible to put a Quadro and a GeForce in the same machine, each driving a separate monitor or two. I've never tried it, so I can't offer any insight, except to say it can be done. From what I've read on the subject, if you set it up right, there should be no problems. But if you screw it up, it can be nightmare to try to fix. If you've got an extra PCIE slot, and you don't mind tinkering with drivers, you might want to give it a whirl. Just read up first, so you know what you're doing.

Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for. Autodesk has a long "read this first" caveat about the GeForce series, which basically boils down to "we didn't have time to test all of them, so don't blame us". But I can certainly live with 2-3% stability. And I do want to keep playing SL

Update: I went with the GeForce 285, and with a bit of help from a computer repairman friend, we got it installed.

The good news--I can use Maya now, whereas before the video would just spin violently. And I was able to enable Open GL for Photoshop CS4. Zbrush works wonderfully now. Oh, and SL is fantastic

The bad: Truthfully, I'd call stability with Maya about 70% at best. I can usually go about 20-30 minutes before my video starts glitching. Basically, I become unable to change the view--tumble or pan and it "snaps back" to the original view. Selection and transformation stop working as well. I can sometimes fix it by switching between orthographic and perspective viewports, and if worst comes to worst, opening and closing Maya. Sometimes it gets so bad I restart my computer. The glitchiness seems more likely to occur when I have more than one object selected (such as when I'm lofting) in shaded view. It seems less likely to occur when I tumble/pan/zoom slowly.

I'm using XP professional with an AMD Athlon 54x2 Dual Core Processor 3600, 2 Ghz, 3GB RAM (from what I understand, that's all XP can use--I actually installed 4GB)

Have any ideas? I know more RAM would be ideal, but I haven't heard about any problems with XP and Maya.

As long as you update your drivers you should be fine in everything.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

I installed it three days ago, but it does seem to have a new one that's all of a week and a half old. Worth a try, I imagine.

Wow, sorry to hear that, Virginia. Aside from updating drivers, I don't have any suggestions.

I've been searching various permutations of "Maya Geforce 295", "Maya GTX 295", etc., to see if I could find any common issues. I didn't find much. About the only negative report I found was from a guy who said his 295 would lock up for about 3 seconds every so often when he was in component mode in Maya. He said a right-click would fix it every time, but still, that's gotta be a big annoyance. It's obviously nowhere near as bad as the showstoppers you're reporting, though.

It's possible the 295 is just too new. It only came out, what, a month ago?


Now you've got me hoping against hope that my 8800's weren't fried when my PSU took a dump Friday night. I was thinking of replacing them with 285's or 295's if they were. If those unit's aren't Maya friendly, that option is out.

This is the GeForce 285, not 295. But it already had an updated driver which came out 22 January. I went ahead and installed that.

Anyway, I spent an hour working with a fairly basic NURBS project (mostly spheres and lofted/revolved surfaces). It might be my imagination, or I'm getting used to what I can and can't do, but with the newest driver it does seem less glitchy. The video issues I talked about still happen, but when I see the characteristic "twitch", I cycle between viewports and it fixes itself.

Is it annoying? Yes, but on the other hand I can't afford two computers, and anyway, even the bottom end Quadros are deathly expensive. And don't get me wrong, this doesn't stop me from using Maya, it's just something to work around.

I think I'm going to start saving for a more purpose built computer (64 bit OS, such as Vista or its successor). But in the meantime, this was probably the best choice for my budget/needs. Thanks again for all the help!

P.S. For SL, this driver is best off with the RC, or some clothing textures/meshes are a bit wonky (black edges to the mesh, blank textures, etc).

Yay! A week or so ago, NVIDIA came out with a new driver for the GeForce 285, and it works terrifically in Maya using Windows XP. I change viewports and tumble away without fear. And it's wonderfully smooth, even in a scene with about 50,000 polygons, displaying textures. Not so much as a stutter.

Given this, I can wholehearted recommend the GeForce 285 as a *relatively* inexpensive card for use with Maya (for those of you who choked when I called it inexpensive, go look at the prices on the Quadros or workstation ATIs FireGLs)

Thanks for the update, Virginia. I'm so glad to hear that it's working now.