3D on 9400M Card - REALITY ONLY PLEASE

[TTTT]

PLEASE! Just give me REAL experiences not opinion.

Has anybody actually run Maya 2008 or 2009 on an iMac or iBook with the 9400M integrated graphics system?

I'm trying to justify the purchase of better equipped machines and need evidence.

If you have what problems did you have?
Given your experiences would you still buy a machine with that card?

 

[NRose8989]

PLEASE! Just give me REAL experiences not opinion.

Has anybody actually run Maya 2008 or 2009 on an iMac or iBook with the 9400M integrated graphics system?

I'm trying to justify the purchase of better equipped machines and need evidence.

If you have what problems did you have?
Given your experiences would you still buy a machine with that card?

I don't personally use Maya, But chances are I wouldn't risk using a machine with a 9400 in it.

A high end iMac w/ a GT130 or 4850 could just fine or even a MacBook Pro too.

 

[TTTT]

YES I know but...

Yes, I know. I wouldn't buy it either, but try getting an IT 'committee' to
spend the extra bucks, because you know what you need better than them...nVidia and Autodesk both say Quadro only, but then Autodesk has approved some Geforce cards.

If I can get some real feedback from users it will help.

I am totally disappointed in this round of iMac models. There's very little that's
really better about them.

 

[elcid]

I am going to be someone you don't want to post here. Here it goes anyway!


The computer you want for your job isnt available to you at the price you can afford, so you signed onto a rumor site to ask a question you already know the answer to so that you can go back to your IT Committee and tell them "AHA! The internet said that I was right, so now give me more money".

Google "Maya Benchmarks". They just came out, give them some time. Besides a benchmark is a lot better than saying "schnoze452" said it wouldnt run on a 9400M processor!

My .02

 

[stormtroopar]

I recently posted in the below threads about this topic.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/444663/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/560455/

You can read them for a more detail response, but basically, in short, I have the new macbook air 1.86 notebook with 9400M gfx chipset. Overall, it does run Maya and runs it fine. So far, to my surprise it actually works pretty well. I was setting up a 40k poly character in Maya fine and painting weights with Artisan no problem. My previous notebook which also run fine for maya used a 6200M mobile gfx card and that is slower than the 9400M gfx card, so I knew if the drivers were decent, the new chipset will be fine.

But, if I was actually doing work, I wouldn't use 9400M based gfx cards. They are okay and workable and stable enough, but small things like viewport interactions, panning, orbiting the camera, sometimes will not be as smooth as a real desktop video card. There are tiny bit of lag or choke here and there that makes the experience not as smooth or fast but it is by no means cannot handle it. Like I said, I can scrub through animation, setup, animate a 40k poly character in maya 2009 with no problems. So that is pretty good imo.

With your situation for work, I would not recommend it. You need at least a real desktop gfx card for work imo.

And yes, I too am pretty disappointed with the new imac as well. Basically they have been refreshing this imac with minor upgrades for a long while now and this upgrade doesn't even have much performance gain... I was really hoping for the core2quads to come out with this latest refresh....

Hope it helps.