I'm looking to replace a video that delievered poor performance in Maya and eventually broke and had to be sent in for warranty work. (On a side note, I'll never buy an Asus product again. Their customer service is garbage and they sent back my video card "repaired", only it wasn't)
I was never looking for a work station card. I know they are better suited for Maya but this is a home PC. Gaming use is a major requirement. However I also use this computer to work on my demo reel. Animation of a weighted polygon charcter and simple rendering. Nothing very demanding on the hardware.
My old card (GeForce FX 5600 video suite) never really ran Maya well.
- Playblasts would cut out after about 20 frames depending on what other programs were open (like winamp).
- Switching to other view windows wouldn't refresh when you pressed the space bar (you'd have to scrub the timeline to get the image to appear).
Recently my good friend bought a computer with an ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 pro. I tested my same scene in Maya 5. All the issues I had with my video card were not present on his AND the timeline scrubed much quicker than even my office workstation computer (which has a ATI FireGL X1 AGP Pro).
So I'm wondering if anyone has any input as to which "gaming card" will run maya the best. Another important feature is the card would have to support dual monitors. My old card did and the regular ATI Radeon 9800 Pro does aswell. The Radeon retails for about $300 canadian. Ideally I'd rather pay that or less than that for my new video card, and if anyone has any other possible suggestions for a replacement please do share you opinions.
Thanks
Rich