Video cards&hardware vs software rendering specs

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so my last question regarding getting a video card for the following no-name computer system that i ALREADY know has a cheap chipset, but my bro-in-law is a techie, and he'll be tweaking the hell out of it, so there:

in my no name PC:
1. it first and foremost was loaded with Lindows, a form of linux that looks incredibly close to windows. but that has to be changed [unfortunately] because i need other stuff that doesn't run on linux, yet..so i'm going to be using win2K because i heard there are still a bunch of stupid problems running maya5.0 on windows XP.

  1. the motherboard - L7VMM3

  2. the chipset - Via is the company

3 areas:KM266 northbridge
VT8235 southbridge
ECS and i think attached to the motherboard
is L7VMM3 V1.01

THE QUESTION:
i'm not familiar with hardware rendering on maya5.0 yet, so i am unware of any problems that might be significantly and/or stupid so that maybe i should just avoid them altogether.
the reason i ask is because the card i'll probably get is the nVidia quadro4 750XGL which is not only both software and hardware compatible according to the maya qualification charts, but because the computer i'm getting was only $200 [on sale, please] and i see no reason in spending too much for a card - this one is on sale at newegg.com for the lovely price of $350, including shipping. nice.

so anyone out there got an opinion as to something better, i'd be interested to know. all of the specs seem to match up for my needs here, and considering i need this mostly for rendering at first, it looks reasonable to me.
thanks for any useful help, and y'all have a good day.

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You may have problems getting Maya to run on Lindows.. it shoudl be possible but I have never hear dof anyoen using it with it.

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  1. Next week Maya 6 will be out. You can get more info at the Alias site on Maya Complete vs Unlimited.

  2. Maya is supported on RedHat Linux, Windows and OSX. If you are going to use Maya for Linux then either go with RedHat or another rpm based distro (ie: SuSE Linux). Linspire (formally Lindows) is Debian based which is not compatible with Maya and the majority of film software used by professionals. See http://www.distrowatch.com/ for info on the various Linux distrobutions.

  3. Graphics hardware is very important with highend 3D software. Maya is best suited with pro graphics cards such as Quadro FX, Fire GL and WildCat. The more recent the release of the card the better Maya will perform.

  4. See the Alias site for info on Hardware Rendering vs Software Rendering.

  5. I've noticed Maya loves to use memory for some features. Things really drag with 512 mb of RAM and so I would recommend 1 GB or more.

  6. Running Windows apps on Linux is easy with the use of Wine (Wine Is Not Emulation). See http://www.winehq.com You can also find thousands of Linux alternatives at http://www.freshmeat.net/