From Ars Technica we get a solution to a performance problem that had plagued the new Mac Pro with respect to the professional 3D design software, Autodesk Maya, and it is that without going any further, the performance fell a lot lower in OS X than in its Windows namesake, so we could almost blame a problem in Autodesk's own software than something directly related to the Mac hardware Pro.
In a first contact when we start Maya 2014 on the Mac Pro, everything goes smoothly and as supposedly it should be executed, however, as we increase the number of polygons in the scene or character, the performance plummets and we are talking about a AMD Firepro D700 dual configuration with, attention… 12 Gb of VRAM in total !. In any case, as I have already mentioned before, the problem seems to reside in a type of default configuration of Maya that with a simple adjustment we will be able to improve productivity in this program a lot.
Specifically, it is a specific problem with Maya in which instead of increasing the amount of video memory to accommodate such a magnitude of polygons, performs a 'preventive' cut of it by default, so as this amount increases, the memory does not increase the same, which translates into a brutal drop in performance.
To solve this serious bug we just have to go to the user library by holding down the Alt key and choosing the library in the Go menu of the Finder. Next we will move to the program menu in Preferences> Autodesk> Maya> 2014 x64 folder and open the file named Maya.env In a text editor such as TextEdit, the editor that OS X integrates by default, all that remains is to add a line to the text displayed in that file:
MAYA_OGS_GPU_MEMORY_LIMIT = 6,000
With this simple step, we will achieve fit properly the video memory to our requirements so that it does not fall 'short' when using it.
More information - Use the "Show Magnifier" tool in Preview