Best Card for using MAYA and 3D Studio Max?

[razor2025]

Okay, I have a friend who's really interested in becoming proffesional graphic designer, 3d model artist. He's going to overhaul his current PC. He uses MAYA and 3D Studio Max, and likes Maya the most.

So, now he's asking me what card he should get. We've looked at the following;
ATI's FireGL X1 128mb
nVidia's FX1000 or FX2000 (ahh the leafblower HSF!)
or Wildcat PV990

We're leaning between ATI and nVidia since Wildcat's did not receive a good review and got spanked by nVidia's Quadro4.

Also, he was thinking of using a dual capable Asus board that used i875/Canterwood + 2x 2.66ghz Dual Xeons. I was thinking maybe Abit IC7-MAX3 + P4 3ghz with HT and 800FSB would provide similar performance and $300 more money in his pocket. What do you think?

If he was asking me for a general/gaming card, I would be able to tell him a 100% confident answer, but the area of graphic rendering is not my forte at the moment.

 

[Rottie]

I would like to know about those too

 

[BenSkywalker]

The Quadro FX boards have a potentialy sizeable advantage that I have yet to see exploited. Their shader support is of a high enough precission level to get quite accurate preview pane renders significantly quicker then relying on the processor. The FP32 shaders on the QFX boards is certainly lacking in terms of gaming performance, but it is significantly faster then rendering it on the processor.

Also, he was thinking of using a dual capable Asus board that used i875/Canterwood + 2x 2.66ghz Dual Xeons. I was thinking maybe Abit IC7-MAX3 + P4 3ghz with HT and 800FSB would provide similar performance and $300 more money in his pocket. What do you think?

Will he be doing final renders himself? If yes, then the dual processors would come in very handy on that end. If he is going to be using a render farm or comparable method then I would go with a single processor setup.

 

[rbV5]

Here's a review from 3DChips if you haven't already seen it. I linked the conclusion page, its easily navigated and translated well. It seems extensive and compares 14 workstation and 2 gamer cards with both Xeon and AthlonMP platforms.

 

[lifeguard1999]

X-bit Labs have done several comparisons. Every review I have seen show that even though ATI has the faster hardware, NVidia's drivers power it on to victory. We use a Quadro4 900 XGL in our labs and run both Maya and 3D Studio Max on the cards. They work great. ATI really needs to work on its drivers for the workstation market. But then again, that is not where the majority of the profit is. (I own an ATI card at home, so there is no bias here.)

If I was buying today for my lab, I would get the Quadro FX 2000. Fortunately I can wait until next year when the NV40 class comes out.

Here is a link to an X-bit labs article for you.

 

[Czar]

just buy a mid range ati or nvidia card
learning on a 3dsoftware takes a long time and by the time he will be pushing a normal card to the limit the pro card will be outdated

 

[Lonyo]

nVidia are generally better at OpenGL stuff.

 

[chsh1ca]

If he's got that much money to spend (dual Xeons) then why not get him to consider a dual Athlon-64 system? It should be much cheaper than the Xeon system, and will offer him expanded memory capabilities once apps like Max and Maya start supporting 64-bit natively. I know several animators who do incredibly extensive rendering work and they have all been salivating at the thought of being able to properly use 6GB or ram or more.

 

[razor2025]

thanks for the input. He'll be doing all the work in single machine as he doesn't have connection or resource to use a render farm, so I guess the dual setup would be the choice. I think Quadro FX fits well, as ATI's hardware looks better, but as lifeguard said, nVidia's tradition in strong driver support wins them. Thanks for the input guys.

 

[lifeguard1999]

I know several animators who do incredibly extensive rendering work and they have all been salivating at the thought of being able to properly use 6GB or ram or more.

So are we. We routinely push our machines to the 2 GB limit. However, the O.S. needs to support it (not that PAE or whatever it is) as well as the application. I think that both 3D Studio Max and Maya run on the Itanium, which is a 64-bit systems. I know Maya runs on SGI in 64-bit mode. I guess we are just waiting for the O.S. to catch up.

 

[razor2025]

actually... he doesn't have a completely bottomoless budget... He wants to keep it below $3000. At the currenty setup, he think he can pull off a Dual 2.6ghz Xeons and a Quadro FX 1000 for $2500+.

 

[Czar]

can we perhaps see some of his work so we can judge what level he is at skill wise?