View Full Version : Mac for 3d
uway44 10-06-2005, 01:28 AM Besides software issues, what are the reasons that many 3d artist perfer pcs to macs.
And as an artist that is planning on starting college within the next year what kind of work station would you recommend. ive been looking at the medium grade apple power mac g5 (im really attracted to the mac) or a dual amd from boxx. i dont feel comfortable in trying to build myself and im trying to keep my costs between 2k and 2,000. not including any monitors. im a silo user and im getting pretty involved in maya. i started in blender a couple of years ago and would also like any software suggestions you may have. i wanna get off on the right foot. thanx in advance.
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enygma
10-06-2005, 01:59 AM
Probably one of your best bets for a nice CG workstation on a fair budget is going with an Athlon64 X2 series processor. Great processors for budgets in the range you are looking for. I don't generally suggest a Mac for 3D as a main priority. Maybe if you are planning to work with a combination of Final Cut Studio and/or Shake, then the Mac is a very good option. Other wise, stick with a PC for your 3D applications (Windows or Linux).
One thing I would also suggest is giving Ed a call at Boxx to get a good word on what best to fit in that budget.
A big reason to go for PC vs MAC (at least in the case of lightwave) is OpenGL 2.0 support and 64bit computing.
Niether of these features are available on the MAC. Sure, MAC is 64bit, but what they dont tell you is that it does not fully support such applications in the GUI. Only on the command line will you get it. OpenGL 2.0 development also lacks on the Mac (read: does not exist).. So, if you're a lightwave user, most of the new features and speed boosts associated with these technologies simply will not be available until Apple releases updates to OSX.
To me that is one major downside to the Apple platform.
The other side to it is cost. Macs are just too expencive when compared to an equivelent PC based system. At least for my tastes. Also once Apple moves to Intel hardware, I dont think we'll be seeing much difference in the machine's capabilities. At that point, it will all be software differences.
enygma
10-06-2005, 04:37 AM
I think another issue with 64bit on the Mac, at least this is what I've heard, involved questions regarding Final Cut Pro and 64bit support. A question that was brought up was why Final Cut Pro wasn't 64bit yet. I believe the answer was somewhere along the lines of speed. While users would have access to more memory, the application would actually run slower. It was a toss up, but the devs felt overall speed was more important than large memory access.
This may not hold true with all applications, but it is something I remember being mentioned at the conference.
Well no one can have a 64bit GUI app in OSX. OSX does not support 64bit passed the command line.
Kind of silly if you ask me...
uway44
10-07-2005, 01:16 AM
thanks alot guys that helps. it dosent make much sense that apple would do that, not have 64bit compatible os x . oh and i posted wrong im willing to spend between 2,500 and 3,000 on the system.
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