Computer specs for Maya?

Nato_VanDookie

My parents are letting me upgrade my computer for a graduation present. What do I need to get to best run Maya? I currently have an ATI Radeon 9600xt and 1 gig of Ram...I know both need upgrades...but to what? All suggestions will be appreciated. I also want to get Mudbox in the near future, what do I need for that? Thanks.

Joseph Silverman

I'd say ram and processor speed > videocard, in my (limited) experience. I don't imagine you really need much of anything more for maya (I'm running max 8 fine on >1ghz processor and 386 mb of ram, honestly,) but for Mudbox or ZB you want as much ram as possible, always.

Nato_VanDookie

Thanks...I was thinkin 2 gigs or more...

CheeseOnToast

DO NOT get an ATI card for use with Maya. They do not play nice together, and you will get all sorts of problems. Mainly nasty black artifacts showing all over your models in high quality mode, which makes it tough to preview any pixel effects (such as normal mapping).

Jesse Moody

I second the do not get an ATI card... Nvidia the whole way baby.

Vailias

yeah they have issues with the High Quality setting. If you just love your ATI card though the CGFX shader I just wrote for maya will work for pixel effects. :shameless plug:

So yes get as good a video card as you can and loads of ram, but SupRore's right on the processor being more important. The video card will help a bit with realtime effects, but the real performance boost for modeling programs will come with the CPU.

Nato_VanDookie

Thanks for your help guys...I do appreciate it.