Autodesk Maya is an industry leader for the creation of 3D computer animation, modelling, simulation, and rendering within creative industries. Powerful and feature-rich Autodesk Maya has the flexibility to cater to the needs of a wide variety of industries such as Hollywood, Games Development and Architectural.
These features not only require powerful computer hardware to function correctly but a well balanced, tailored solution focussed specifically on your workflow and your application. Having the right tool for the job can save significant amounts of time in your Maya projects.
We have years of experience helping and advising customers on how to configure the perfect Workstation for Autodesk Maya, and below we share these findings.
If you would like to speak to one of our consultancy team members directly about your specific needs and requirements, contact us today at sales@wksmail.com or (+44) 0800 180 4801.
What CPU is best for Autodesk Maya?
Modelling within Autodesk Maya is always a significant part of anyone’s workflow, and this is predominantly a single-threaded task, meaning it will only ever run on a single core. As a result, choosing a processor with a fast clock speed is essential for optimal Maya performance. For maximum modelling performance, we recommend a workstation-based upon an AMD Ryzen processor or a system built upon Intel’s Core processors. Both these processor types have exceptional single-core performance and are outstanding value for money.
If your workflow expands beyond just modelling and into rendering or simulation, then more cores become essential. A well balanced processor offering many cores/threads with a high clock speed for modelling will now be required. AMD Ryzen Threadripper provides lots of cores and threads while maintaining excellent core speed, making it our most recommended Workstation solution for Autodesk Maya.
What GPU is best for Autodesk Maya?
Autodesk fully certifies both the professional NVIDIA Quadro range of graphics cards and AMD’s Radeon Pro series of graphics cards. This certification guarantees your graphics card will perform as expected in all aspects of Autodesk Maya and as a result, they are highly recommended for your next Maya Workstation.
The consumer class, NVIDIA GeForce range, are tested by Autodesk but are not certified to the same level as the professional alternatives. We would recommend avoiding using NVIDIA GeForce in a Maya Workstation unless you plan on GPU rendering where the high performance for the low costs makes them very appealing.
How much memory for Autodesk Maya?
We recommend to our customers that 16-32GB is often plenty for Autodesk Maya. If you plan on running other application concurrently or if your projects are particularly demanding, then 64GB will be a good option for you.
Too much memory will not improve your system’s overall performance and upgrading your processor or graphics card is a far better allocation of funds. Too little memory, on the other hand, has a dramatic effect on the performance of your system. We recommend monitoring your Windows Task Manager while working on your existing Workstation to gauge your current memory requirements in your projects.
Best storage configuration?
A high-speed NVMe Solid State Drive (SSD) will offer the best performance for your Maya Workstation. NVMe SSD’s are by far the fastest storage options available on the market today and are perfect for installing your Operating System/applications and storing your active project files. If these drives are out of your budget, then SATA based SSD’s will also offer adequate performance.
We also recommend our customers to use a secondary traditional Hard Disk Drive (HDD) for long term bulk storage. HDD’s are much slower than SSD’s, but they offer far larger storage capacities at a much lower price.
Network CPU/GPU rendering
For network rendering on the inbuilt Arnold Renderer engine or a 3rd party options such as V-Ray Next, Maxwell Render or Redshift then we recommend very similar characteristics to your Workstation. For a CPU render farm, then many cores and threads are essential. Intel Xeon and AMD Eypc are ideally suited to 24/7 operation rackmount server environments.
For networked GPU rendering, we recommend servers capable of running many NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards on a single platform. Here at Workstation Specialists we offer many solutions perfectly suited for this purpose. Contact our pre-sales consultancy team for more details at sales@wksmail.com or (+44) 0800 180 4801.
