Optek, sorry mate but you're WAY off the mark when you say Maya doesn't support T&L. No idea where you got that one from. Games that were pre-DirectX 7 wouldn't use it, and even now it still needs to be enabled before a game uses it. But anything running under OpenGL will automatically use it if it finds it. That includes Maya and anything using the Quake 3 engine, for example. Why would people pay thousands of bucks for a top-end graphics system with multiple geometry processors if apps like Maya didn't use it? Wouldn't make sense, that.
You're right about the GeForce MX cards though, he's probably better getting a GeForce 1 with DDR memory, or a GeForce2 GTS with 64MB of DDR if he can afford it.
BTW the Kryo cards are coming up with some great benchmarks, due to their tile-based rendering approach, although again this is suited to games in particular. I've not actually tried one with Maya, but somehow I can't see them keeping up with any cards using geometry acceleration beyond the simplest of scenes.
Just my tuppenyworth.
