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Building a Maya Workstation

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mossin 2002-07-31 12:40:52 UTC #1

Hey guys,

I've been using Maya for roughly 2 years now and have just recently bought a copy for myself. I thought that since I went this far that I may as well push the envelope and build a computer to run Maya 4.0 Complete. I have some experience building computers but was wondering what you guys would suggest for hardware. Grant it, I don't have $1000 laying around to blow on purchasing one piece of hardware like the new Nvidia Quadro 4 900 XGL. So if you could keep the suggestions cost efficient I would appreciate it. So any suggestions on motherboards, processors, RAM quantity, video card, etc... would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance guys!

gmask 2002-07-31 15:25:21 UTC #2

You could check out www.micropro.com and build your own system or buy a preconfigured one.

You should buy a dual motherboard and if cost is an issue get a second proc later but get the fastest single proc you can afford.

You need to have at least 512mb of ram.

Then get a large IDE hardrive

CDR drive Sound card if the motherboard doesn't have one.

There are lots of inexpensive video cards.. you really don't need to spend more than $350 on a video card to get decent results.

I have several Tyan boards and they have not let me down.. other people seem to prefer ASUS or MSI motherboards.

hella356 2002-08-01 20:31:03 UTC #3

Best bet would be a dual Athlon machine. The Tyan Tiger S2460 ($160) is the cheapest and a good board. The newer boards have the MPX chipset and several companies make them, they seem largely the same in performance/stability, the main thing to look for are features. On a real tight budget I'd get a single XP1800 CPU ($80), if you have a few bucks I'd say 2 MP1800 chips ($150/each). Quite a few people have successfully used XP rather than MP chips but XPs aren't guaranteed to work dual. A quality 400+ watt power supply is a must.

Start with 1 512MB stick of registerd ECC PC2100 DDR RAM. You can always add more sticks if you need more later.

You can convert a GeForce 2 or 3 to Quadro2 or DCC with a simple and safe driver mod by using SoftQuadro, that would give you about a $500 pro OpenGL card for under $100. There are some issues with GF3s and dual Athlon boards so I'd go with a GeForce2 TI 64MB ($60).

http://forums.2cpu.com is a good place to inquire further.

mossin 2002-08-02 12:06:23 UTC #4

Thanks, I really appreciate the pointers!

hella356 2002-08-02 18:54:30 UTC #5

You're welcome.

SoftQuadro is part of RivaTuner:

http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/

Good luck.

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