Hi,
I know you are all probably very tired of answering the same questions, which is best, what is good, etc... But I would apreciate it alot if you could take a few seconds to answer to this post. I am a college student learning to use Maya, and I am about to buy a new computer. I want to buy a workstation from Dell because I expect to get really into Maya in the next few months. Now, I have different options for the configuration, and was wondering what the experts think about this.
1.- What is better a single P4 at 3 Ghz or a single Xeon at 2 Ghz?
2.- What is better a single P4 at 3 Ghz or a dual Xeon at 2 Ghz?
3.- ECC RAM or non ECC RAM?
4.- a dual Xeon at 2 Ghz with any -now old- 64 Mbs video card, or a single Xeon at 2 Ghz with a Quadro 4 900 XGL?
When answering this questions consider the following:
- I don't want any lag when "manipulating" Maya, this is very important for me, it stands before rendering time.
- Though working on Maya is more important than rendering time, as soon as a video card reaches the level in which it won't give me any lag then I would rather cut the rendering time instead of having a video card that is "too fast" (if there is such a thing 
).
Thanks for your time.
For what your doing the sing p4 3ghz is going to benifit you more than a single xeon at 2ghz.
Hrmm in this case its a tougher call. The 3ghz p4 will give you faster interactions in maya; but the 2ghz system will give you faster renderthroughput.
I don't have ECC in my system and its pretty solid; However if you build a dual CPU system I wholeheartedly recommend ECC. ECC is handy to catch those nasty single bit errors when they happen and can save you from a crash at an inopportune time.
hrmm any 64mb video card could be just that... anything; including an SiS Xabre...
on this one I'd prefer the quadro 900XGL with whatever setup you choose.
When answering this questions consider the following:
- I don't want any lag when "manipulating" Maya, this is very important for me, it stands before rendering time.
- Though working on Maya is more important than rendering time, as soon as a video card reaches the level in which it won't give me any lag then I would rather cut the rendering time instead of having a video card that is "too fast" (if there is such a thing
Hey, thanks 
(that was pretty quick).
On the 2nd question you say P4 would make using Maya better but Xeon would make rendering faster, I'm guessing that would be because 2 heads think better than one and the "head" (processor) is who does the rendering, right? And the video card makes the difference during modeling and stuff, so having a good video card would mean that P4's advantage is not a big deal, right?
Would Maya actually run faster with a combination of good video card and P4? And, is the Quadro 4 900 XGL good enough to handle maya that I can forget about a P4 and just keep the dual xeon to improve rendering time? or would that card give me some lag if I work with a complex scene?
I think I understand your budget questions with respect to performance. Get a Dell 530 dual p4 2ghz w/ a quadro 750 XGL w/a min of 512ram and you should (WILL) be fine. I say this because you mentioned you were learning Maya. And from my past "stupid experience" I purchased around 9k in comp equipment thinking I needed all of it (thanks SGI sales man, lol) and I knew very little about maya 2.0 (at the time). Long story short.. by the time I was good enough to make really complex maya scenes my equipment was nearly "out dated". The Dell 530 w/ dual 2ghz and 750xgl 512ram is a really nice system maybe even more than you need right now.
yeah as WLXI-TV says; what he's talking about is plenty dern fast.
I myself was doing quite well back in the day with my dual 750 and then my athlonXP 1500+;
both I thought were quite fast.
to answer your question; the CPU's do the rendering for the most part; and your video card will speed up the viewports..
most of maya though doesn't use the 2nd CPU.
The Precision 530 is a P4 though, it can't have dual processors. The 450 does have dual xeon at 2Ghz, would it be better to get a 530 wtih a single P4 at 2Ghz or a 450 with dual xeon at 2Ghz? I mean, obviously the 450 is better, but how much faster would it render? (if it saves me alot of time then it might be worth it, but if it only saves me a few minutes then.....)
a dual xeon 2.0ghz is going to be faster than a single p4 at 2ghz..
I'd prefer the xeon myself; or a hgiher clocked p4.
Im not sure what you mean...
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The Precision 530 is a P4 though, it can't have dual processors
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The Dell 530 can come in single or dual. The 450 has AGP8x which again not sure you really need, a 4x is fine.
My dual xeon 2ghz renders ok for a workstation however I only render quick previews w/ it because I ended up buying a server with a Pure Rendering Card for all my renderings because I have ADD.
Just render before you go to bed and again you should be fine.
i mentioned this in an earlier post but RE CPU i'd ALWAYS go dual if you can afford it (rules out the P4). there are so many useful things u can do (render on a single CPU and continue working in Maya, or do some video editing).
you can always upgrade to a better graphics card or more ram. you cannot easily upgrade your arcitecture. personally i'd pick a platform AMD or Intel, and then go dual, with a 533MHz FSB and PCI-X in case you decide to buy 15K-rpm drives later 
something worth mentioning, currently the Opteron is only available in 2-way server configuration (not useful for 3D at all, no AGP slot), but i'm guessing maybe within a couple months the AMD-8151 chipset will be out with 8X-AGP for the Opteron.
www.boxxtechnologies.com is selling a duel opteron WORKSTATION now on the cheap. you might want to check it out. =)
http://www.boxxtech.com/asp/cf\_step2.asp?ModelInstanceID=180
You can config it anyway you like. I would probably config it as cheap as possible myself and then upgrade the ram, hard drives and video card stuff from somewhere else.
hmmm.. that page doesn't make it clear if its the server or workstation chipset. i'm not sure if the Boxx workstation (8151) is actually available yet, their server (8131) would be) as per that config sheet. unless u know of someone who has the workstation version.... it says the "8151 transport tunnel" but AFAIK there is no motherboard in existence [yet] that features that. the 8131 would suck.
um, you don't see the drop down menu that allows you to choose which AGP graphics card to put in it???
turns out u r right, there is one manufacturer (Amira or something like that...?) that makes a mobo supporting 8151. box is using a rebranded version of this for their workstation.... however with that mobo there is no PCI-X support.... which means if someone wants highend SCSI for some reason it won't perform very well.... that's enough to make me go back to Xeon.... and the Tyan i7505 for the best mix of high speed CPUs and PCI-X. at least for now.
i have an Ultra160 SCSI card in my reg pci slot and my 15k RPM IBM drive rips along quite nicely. But if you do have your heart set on pci-x then you will need to wait a bit longer it looks like.