Maya + Nvidia = potential for crash

r13 · Nov 2006

Ahh the wonders of new technology and making it all work together. I'm currently working with Unreal 3 here at work and the newest stuff from Epic really wants to be driven on the newest, 7000 series, Nvidia hardware. We installed new vid cards, 7800 and 7900's, throughout the team and we're all doing just great... except for the artists that use Maya. After a little digging, we came across this URL: Maya 8 and its supported features. If you scroll down through it, you'll find a section that says this:

[ QUOTE ]
Nvidia GeForce GPUs

There are many cards based on GeForce GPU chipsets. Nvidia and Autodesk do not recommend these cards for use with Maya as you may experience various refresh, display and stability problems and inadequate performance. We suggest you choose from Nvidia's workstation cards instead, such as the Quadro families which are much better suited to high-end 3D packages such as Maya.

[/ QUOTE ]

So thats just great.... and we've definately been seeing first hand that this is a problem. We're currently holding out for hope from Nvidia in the form of new drivers, but we may have to change our video cards out again for some folks.

Thought i'd share this with you all.... hope it helps those in the same spot or potentially avoid it. i'm back to my crunch... I've been keeping my face to the grindstone for the last new weeks, and i got a few more weeks of it to go.

arshlevon · Nov 2006

i cant use maya at all with my nvidia card. when the viewport is still all is good and well, but if i rotate the view or move anything the screen gets all messed up and i cant even tell whats going on until i stop doing anything.

Daz · Nov 2006

That's not new at all. Alias have *never* supported anything other than workstation class cards for Maya. We only ever used workstation cards at EA for this reason. The fact that Geforce 'gamer' cards used to work with maya before was a total bonus.

Lo and behold now Autodesk own them geforce cards are suddenly extremely problematic with maya 8.0.

Someone here bought us 7900's without consulting me and Im having all sorts of problems on maya 8.0 that werent there on 7.0. Slowdowns with the UV window open and other funky shit. So Im annoyed.

But this is a good heads up thanks.

Tulkamir · Nov 2006

shit, we've upgraded to 8.0 at school where we have quadro's, but I hadn't yet on my home where I have a 7800, guess I won't be.

Thanks for the heads up. :S

CheapAlert · Nov 2006

are there workstation cards for laptops?

bugo · Nov 2006

Wow, and i was thinking on buying a geforce 7800gs, its a shame that Nvidia dont take a good look at these things, there are lot of game companies needing geforces to work with Maya. Im with my x850 pro, thk God you guys posted it here, as im not going to change my vga anymore.

Anyway, we can do something sending emails for nvidia to maybe change something on their drivers.

Phobos · Nov 2006

We're actually having the same problem at your office right now. I thought it might have been an isolated incident.

crazy... I have a 7800 gtx and maya seems pretty stable to me. Has been for the last 8 months give or take a few problems which were solvable with a restart.

adam · Nov 2006

After some thorough digging I found a solution.

Phobos · Nov 2006

joi says (5:38 PM):
nice polycount post
i found a solution
Nick says (5:39 PM):
whats that?

hahah too true

Keg · Nov 2006

[ QUOTE ]
After some thorough digging I found a solution.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's a better solution

Rwolf · Nov 2006

XSI ftw!

Whargoul · Nov 2006

Strange - I've used Nvidia card for years (gamer class ones, not the Quadro's), and I currently have one of the 7800's in my home machine (no problems) and a 7900 in my work machine (no problems either).

Really, just install the latest Detonators (fuck the certified driver shit, I always use the latest) and see if it's better. The only problems the Nvidia's used to have was some labels not showign up on nodes in the hypergraph/hypershade. If you want problems with Maya, try an ATI card - that will fuck you over.

_Shimmer · Nov 2006

isnt there a software solution for the old geforce to quaddro hack that still works?

It was possible to 2x-4x your speed in the viewport...

Heh, never tried it though so dunno if it really works...

edit: Did some research... has something to do with openGL and the last update was 2001. Guess that isnt fresh anymore.

But my memory isnt that bad at least !

FightingChance · Nov 2006

For many years, there were various ways to make a consumer GeForce card either into a Quadro card or appear as a Quadro card to the OS. I believe it is difficult if not impossible to do with the 6x00 series of cards, and currently not possible with the 7x00 series. More details can be found at www.guru3d.com, in the Rivatuner section of their forums.

Steve Schulze · Nov 2006

One of the guys at Tantalus bought himeself a Quadro to use at home and found that it suffered from the same alpha sorting issues and the like that the standard cards that we use at work have. Art cards aren't the be all and end all of your problems with Maya.

malcolm · Nov 2006

The alpha sorting bug has nothing to do with the card you choose, it's just a limitation of the hardware rendering, at work we use a hardware shader in the viewport instead of the Maya gl junk so we can avoid this gayness. 8bit alpha blending is not really a solved problem, you lose fps if you start sorting all the triangles in the world so I would imagine you'd take a large performance hit in your respective 3d app as well? How does max handle this problem?

Phopojijo · Nov 2006

[ QUOTE ]
Ahh the wonders of new technology and making it all work together. I'm currently working with Unreal 3 here at work and the newest stuff from Epic really wants to be driven on the newest, 7000 series, Nvidia hardware. We installed new vid cards, 7800 and 7900's, throughout the team and we're all doing just great... except for the artists that use Maya. After a little digging, we came across this URL: Maya 8 and its supported features. If you scroll down through it, you'll find a section that says this:

[ QUOTE ]
Nvidia GeForce GPUs

There are many cards based on GeForce GPU chipsets. Nvidia and Autodesk do not recommend these cards for use with Maya as you may experience various refresh, display and stability problems and inadequate performance. We suggest you choose from Nvidia's workstation cards instead, such as the Quadro families which are much better suited to high-end 3D packages such as Maya.

[/ QUOTE ]

So thats just great.... and we've definately been seeing first hand that this is a problem. We're currently holding out for hope from Nvidia in the form of new drivers, but we may have to change our video cards out again for some folks.

Thought i'd share this with you all.... hope it helps those in the same spot or potentially avoid it. i'm back to my crunch... I've been keeping my face to the grindstone for the last new weeks, and i got a few more weeks of it to go.

[/ QUOTE ]Just to note: If you look around -- nVidia GeForce GPUs were actually *never* supported for Maya. Even back in Maya 5, Alias claimed you should not use GeForce cards.

You really won't find too much issues with it, however, unless you use HardwareRenderBuffer... which at one time was required for non-software particles.

I've been using Maya on a GeForce, and bought Maya 8 within a month of its launch; you won't find too many glitches on it. At least not related to GeForces

Exporting plug-ins will ALWAYS glitch though

SkullboX · Nov 2006

Odd, I've been using maya 8 now for a while with my GeForce6800GT and it's very stable. I'm pretty sure the few crashes I've had, only when I first started sing it, were due to fuckups that had nothing to do with display.

At school they have outdated computers with outdated graphics cards, and although a bit slow, they work pretty well with maya as well. Aaah those new workstations better get fixed soon, perhaps they have a problem getting maya to work properly...

thomasp · Nov 2006

re: softmodding geforces. as far as i know, the majority of display glitches in maya on geforce are the result of a lack of a hardware feature in the gamer cards: overlay planes.

this is rather uncommon in the pc world but standard on sgi graphics and has been used extensively for most of the apps that were originally developed for these systems - including maya. a mere softmod - if even possible with the chipset in question - won't give you that feature, however it might unlock some software restrictions that might speed up unrelated things.

Phopojijo · Nov 2006

Nah, actually they're quite astute with their prediction.

You don't actually "softmod" per-say, rather your Quadro features are locked down. This of course changed in GeForce 7, and I presume 8, when they started manufacturing the Quadro GPUs differently. But back in GeForce 2->6, the only thing separating a Quadro GPU and a GeForce GPU was a simple pin-solder... so basically a jumper.

ElysiumGX · Nov 2006

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
After some thorough digging I found a solution.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's a better solution

[/ QUOTE ]

The only solution!

Using Max to prevent crashing...lol.

Maya + Nvidia = potential for crash

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