maya 6.0 and photoshop hardware requirements

i'm in need of some advice for a purchase that will probably occur within the next 6 months. although, i personally do not need anything other than the bare basic processor and gpu with a decent amount of ram, my gf, however, is majoring in 2d and 3d animation. she will primarily be using the two above mentioned programs, and will most likely be borrowing my laptop frequently for her school needs.
with my limited knowledge, i have assumed up until now that maya (and other 3d rendering programs) are more heavily cpu intensive and not nearly as gpu intensive as a modern fps game. photoshop, from my knowledge, is comparatively more gpu intensive, but is by no means restrictive even if a simpe igp such as the ati200m was used.
so here's my question:
if any of you have any experience as 3d animators/2d animators, using your laptop as your primary workstation, what configurations are you currently using? and what do you recommend as a minimum for the gpu/cpu/ram? for these particular applications and those related to it within the industry.

as an example, if i were to purchase a laptop right now, it would be <$2000CDN and would be something along the lines of this, in specifications:
core duo 1.66
1 gig ram
100gig 5400rpm hd
ati x1300/1400 or mabye even ati 200m igp
15.4" wxga

would this be sufficient to run maya for a college level 3d/2d animator?
would the wxga resolution be prohibitive for an animator? or would it be sufficient? is matte or glossy the standard for the industry (if there is such a standard)?
ps. i am not looking for a laptop recommendation, i am looking for hardware requirements for these applications.

ps.ps. i purchased a desktop with EXTREMELY basic setup that can run maya 6.0 with very light usage, if that helps as an indicator for minimum requirements.

the desktop specs:
sempron 3100+ 1.8ghz
1 gig ddr400 ram
100 gig 7200 2mb cache hdd
geforce 5500fx overclocked 256mb

thank you for your help.

 

Hey there, I have just finished a degree in 3d animation, and also have just bought a laptop that works very well with Maya 7.0 and of course Maya 6.

Well, forget about Photoshop anything will run that. Maya... this does need a special graphics card, this is the key thing, without it, Maya will not even load. The cpu is not as important s the gfx card, of course the faster it is will help in rendering times, but anything will work.

Once again, it's the gfx card that will cause problems. For example my g/f has Acer 3003, and I have Acer 3020, they are exactly the same laptop with different gfx cards, mine runs Maya great her's can't open it.

I have the Ati x700 gfx card and it works great!. she has an integrated sis gfx card which does not have the min requirements.

The card needs to support OpenGL for starters, and have pixel and vertex shaders 2.0 or something like that, I do not remember exactly.

ati x1300/1400 are similar to my x700 so should work fine, 512mb will be okay as a Min, but 1gig would be better.

 

My friend does Graphic Design at Uni and has run maya fine with his PC (which I built myself) which has a GeForce 4 MX card (which is worse than a Radeon 200m as it does not have vertex shader units or Pixel Shaders) Just make sure the laptop you get does not have Intel/SiS/Via integrated graphics and you will do fine. Maya is more CPU dependent than GPU, unless you get yourself a professional CAD graphics card (ie. Quaddro or FireGL).

 

Maya does not run very well on a GeForce4, I used one for a month or so over xmas, and as soon as you have a few complex models on it, just rotating and things slow right down, like 0.4 fps!. (Extremely frustrating and slow production)
I would disagree with you on the CPU being more dependent than the GPU, in general modeling, changing views, zooming, rotating etc, the CPU usage stays relatively low, and the gfx does most of the work. The CPU mostly comes into the game when rendering.

My main PC had a radon 9000 pro 128mb, when maya loaded it complained about some pixel shaders being insufficient. It worked, but some options were missing, such as hardware real time shadows, real time hardware texturing, etc. Plus the hardware render did not work at all, so only software rendering was available. Hardware is needed for particle, smoke, and other simulations.

 

well from what you guys have posted so far, the gpu only needs to be up to date, and not necessarily powerful. if the 200m express is capable, yet an ati radeon 9000 is not, i can only assume that anything above the 200m is sufficient to run maya. i have heard only good things about nvidia's new igp alternative and ati's next gen chipset/igp. most likely i will be buying one of those or at the very least the 200m. judging from your input i believe i would be fine with these minimum requirements:

gpu=200m or higher
ram=1gig or more preferably 2gig
cpu=preferably powerful for rendering

unless anyone recommends against this, i'll keep this in mind for my upcoming purchase (which i am looking forward to! my first non-sub1000$ laptop! hahah)

 

try the HP dv5000z computers.
they are cheap with powerful turion processors (upcomming Turion X2 Dual Core) and have ATI x200m .