Computer requirements advice for Maya

[Huntaer]

(Note: I'm new around here, and to 3D modeling in general, so if this thread is in the wrong forum, I apologize. If a mod wants to move this to the appropriate forum, please do so.)

Anyways, I just finished my Zeus class cruiser (it's up in the gallery section) when I started experiencing problems. While the model itself is technically "low quality," Maya already started to hick-up after I finished the model. It would suddenly freeze for a few seconds, then it would complete the command i issued, or the image would start to jump around as I moved it, rather than going at its normal flowing pace.

Dad suggested that the computer just isn't fast enough to do what I need (given his vast experience with compy's over mine), and said that we'll at some point increase my RAM up to 4 gigs to help speed up the process. Eventually, once I properly learn all the necessary tools in Maya and elsewhere, I'll be buying a new Mac with even better specs than the bare minimum requirements, but I'd like to know what other people are operating at (processor speed, #of RAM, graphics card, ect) so I could have a general idea of what to get for it to work at optimum speed.

[Melak]

If you could post your current specs, and the polycount of your model that's causing the slow down it would probably be easier to identify the source, though it sounds like graphics card right now.
Also be sure to check if an x minute intervall auto-save is enabled, these can cause freezes as the filesize grows.

The RAM gets to hold all the mesh and texture data, and I think 4GB is all you could need for a while. You can always start with 2GB, and upgrade along the way as needed (though I hear that can be expensive with "certified" apple memory?)

Any Processor from the last 5 years should technically do the job, but you will obviously benefit quite heavily from multiple cores and higher clockrates in rendering.

For a graphics card, a 9600GT or some of the older, and now cheap 8800 models should be more than enough to get lag-free viewport experience.

[Huntaer]

Originally Posted by Melak

If you could post your current specs, and the polycount of your model that's causing the slow down it would probably be easier to identify the source, though it sounds like graphics card right now.
Also be sure to check if an x minute intervall auto-save is enabled, these can cause freezes as the filesize grows.

I dunno how to find the poly count in Maya, but I can give the compy specs...

Intel iMac, Mac OS X version 10.4.10 (I have yet to get leopard)

Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory: 2 GB 677 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics Card: ATY,RadeonX1600
Hard Drive: 250 GB

The RAM gets to hold all the mesh and texture data, and I think 4GB is all you could need for a while. You can always start with 2GB, and upgrade along the way as needed (though I hear that can be expensive with "certified" apple memory?)

Indeed, but I'm willing to pay for it.

Any Processor from the last 5 years should technically do the job, but you will obviously benefit quite heavily from multiple cores and higher clockrates in rendering.

For a graphics card, a 9600GT or some of the older, and now cheap 8800 models should be more than enough to get lag-free viewport experience.

I listed the Graphics card above, so idk if it'd be appropriate for what you suggested. It's suppose to be "high end," but I don't know much about graphics cards.

Hell, I may end up buying a whole new computer at the end of the summer...

[Melak]

If you can find a button labeled "PC" try that, next best thing to look at is the filesize of your model.
I had a look at the model and unless you used many iterations of subdivision, I don't see why it would lag at all.

If you had a geforce 4 or something I would understand, but the x1600 is a passable card :S

[IRML]

to give you an idea, I completed an 800k/900k sized model in lightwave 7 with a geforce 2 mx440 and 512mb of ram, it was hard to work with towards the end but I did it, when I moved up to a new machine with a geforce 6600gt and 1gb of ram it was much easier to work with

I'm on a much much nicer machine now, 8gb of ram, 9800gtx, intel qx9650 - but I'd still say my previous machine was fine to work with

[nirvaaa]

Your within the system requirements of maya 2008. I have maya on my computer and it runs fine.

I have a
2.26 ghz P4
2 gigs of ram
512mb video card (Radeon X1650)

The mac OS could be eating too many video resources. I keep mine on a stripped down windows XP system. By stripped down I mean it doesn't run/load anything I don't need for maya. And generally speaking autodisk produces don't mix well with mac PCs.

The Area | Maya 2008 and Mac Leopard OSX

[Huntaer]

Originally Posted by IRML

to give you an idea, I completed an 800k/900k sized model in lightwave 7 with a geforce 2 mx440 and 512mb of ram, it was hard to work with towards the end but I did it, when I moved up to a new machine with a geforce 6600gt and 1gb of ram it was much easier to work with

I'm on a much much nicer machine now, 8gb of ram, 9800gtx, intel qx9650 - but I'd still say my previous machine was fine to work with

Originally Posted by nirvaaa

Your within the system requirements of maya 2008. I have maya on my computer and it runs fine.

I have a
2.26 ghz P4
2 gigs of ram
512mb video card (Radeon X1650)

The mac OS could be eating too many video resources. I keep mine on a stripped down windows XP system. By stripped down I mean it doesn't run/load anything I don't need for maya. And generally speaking autodisk produces don't mix well with mac PCs.

The Area | Maya 2008 and Mac Leopard OSX

I think you guys just convinced me to get the tower and not another iMac. I think that with Maya, Final Cut pro, and iDvD (I still have yet to fully comprehend DvD Studio Pro), most of my disk space is taken up already. The message I seem to be getting is the more ram and the higher the graphics card, the better. With the Towers, I can add up to 32 gigs of Ram (but who needs that much?) and I can have several graphics cards.

I'm thinking that for now, I'll go with this configuration:

Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (unless y'all think I should go higher and get Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon)
4 Gigs of RAM (I might go with 8, but that's a bit expensive for macs)
500 gigs of memory (only one bay)
4 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB (or 1 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB)

I'll get it eventually, just not right away so I got time to think about it.