assembling the best workstation

# 1 06-12-2006 , 11:10 AM

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Join Date: May 2006

Location: colombo, sri lanka

Posts: 2

hi im going to assemble a good pc suitabal for running maya8
im having trouble selecting the best parts
some one answer me with your experience..
which processors are good intel pentium ? or AMD?
which brand and model of graphics adapter is best
hard disk ATAPI ? or SATA?
is there any capture card for maya?

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# 2 06-12-2006 , 01:34 PM

Senior Software Developer
Join Date: Jan 2005

Location: Livingston, Scotland

Posts: 1,701

Welcome,

To run Maya 8, just check with the autodesk site for the specs that the software requires. People on this site run Maya on various specs of PC.

I would recommend that you use a dual core processor (I am an Intel fan, but if you are on a budget get AMD), and get a decent speed 2.8GHz or above. For RAM I would recommend 2Gb+ or DDR3. SATA drives are supposed to run at the equivelent speeds of SCSI (so they say), so it depends on where you keep your projects. I have mine on server, so, it doesnt really matter if it is SCSI, ATA or SATA (my OS boots from a SCSI Drive, the rest of my system is ATA). The only issue you would have is to choose the right graphics card. Autodesk have a list of supported cards, both NVidia and ATI. But your choice will depend on what you want to do. A new/high spec GForce style gaming card is jaut as good as a Quatro style hardware card and it so much cheaper.

Others on the site will have different views as we all like our own system set up.

Mine is:

Dual Intel Xeon 2.8GHz Processors
2Gb DDR3 Ram
40 Gb SCSI Drive
40 Gb ATA Drive
80 Gb ATA Drive
GForce 6600GT 128Mb DDR3 Graphics Card

This works fine for me, and is fast enough.

As for a capture card, anyone will capture what's on screen, but you are better off just using software capture tools, like Snap-It or Camtasia...

If money is no object get yourself to Boxxs' website and build your ultimate device (mine cost $18,000)

Enjoy ur time at SM.

Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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Last edited by R@nSiD; 06-12-2006 at 01:37 PM.

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# 3 06-12-2006 , 01:43 PM

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Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

At the moment, I think, the fastest processors that you can get are the new Intel Core 2 Xenons (think there have the prefix "woodcrest" or something like that.)

You can get a dual socket motherboard that runs these.

If your on maya 8 will you be running 64bit or 32? Just that you can add more RAM to the 64 bit system (think that the tops for the 32 bit is 4GB but might be wrong) Then again what you need to workstation for will determine how much you want to spend.

As for a graphics card I would go with Nvidia as ATI sometimens seem to have some problems even though they are qualified (just by looking at other forums and the posts there) and go for a Quadro card if possible as these run smooth as butter, where sometimes the Gforces can be a bit funny depending on the drivers that are installed on them.

I cant really comment on a desktop spec as i've jsut bought a laptop to do my work on but heres the specs that I've got.

Intel Core 2 duo 2.26 GHz
2 GB DDR 2 Ram
120 GB HDD
Nvidia Gforce 7900 GTX 512 DDR3

Pretty damm fast for a laptop!

Good luck

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 4 06-12-2006 , 02:20 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2006

Location: /dev/null

Posts: 891

gster123 said, 'At the moment, I think, the fastest processors that you can get are the new Intel Core 2 Xenons (think there have the prefix "woodcrest" or something like that.)'

The latest models out there are the new Xeon 5300 series 'Clovertown'. Its a quad core processor with 8 MB of L2 cache (2 per a core) and they come in two different versions with the high end one with a faster bus. The downside is that they cost a lot more than other CPUs.

Anways, as for the disks, it depends what you will be doing in Maya and other apps. If you are going to do alot of disk intensive work, a 10K or 15K rpm hard drive on SCSI will be a lot faster than a standard 7.5K rpm SATA drive.

As for the stuff regarding Maya 8 and 32 bit, is Maya 32 bit or 64. If its 32, adding extra memory wouldn't do much as Maya can only see a small portion of it. Plus, most motherboards, even enthusiast ones out there rarely support more than 4 GB unless you buy a dual processor one.

If you really want the best (or are at least interested), the boxx apex8 is one of the most powerful workstations out there with 8 AMD Opteron processors and 32 GB of ram. Too bad it costs 100 grand.

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