Only way to know is to try; it depends on what you want to do with it, and what your system is like.
Personally, I always stayed away from it because I thought it was too complex and would be tough on my less-than-optimum system... but then I gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised.
If you're not doing anything terribly sophisticated, it's quite easy to get some nice looking results. And the rendering time barely increased at all; I think in the end it's just a poly mesh, after all, and so Maya just chews it up and spits it out. The only place you get the slowdown hit is with animation itself; you will have to let Maya make a cloth cache, which can take a while if it's highly tesselated.
But give it a go and see for yourself!
-Steve
