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jakobhuff
07-11-2007, 07:40 PM
Hello,

I am looking at upgrading my Dell E1505 laptop and I have decided to make the switch to Apple. I plan on starting school soon for 3D amination and modeling. This computer will mostly be used for modeling since that is what I eventually want to do, rather than animation.

I want a huge screen since I am also a photographer so I am looking at the iMac 24" Core 2 Duo desktop from apple. My main question comes as to the graphics card in the 24". It comes standard with the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT but for $125 you can upgrade to the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT. Is the 7600 worth it?

Also how well are the mac systems for 3D? My main reason for the switch is just usability and function of the OS. I will probably be running Maya, Lightwave or XSI and Zbrush on this computer.

Thanks
dan1el
07-12-2007, 06:49 AM
I have a Mac Pro with a 7300 GT card and with the only really good 3D software on OS X (Maya) it works darn well.

I would not upgrade unless it's for a Quadro card.
As I usually work on a machine with a Quadro card I the only real difference going from Windows with quadro to my Mac Pro with a cheap Geforce I only feel a slight lacking when live painting or moving alot of vectors at once on my Mac.

plsu just the fact that yore switchingg will show you a hughe change in speeds, the Mac acts so nice and is extremely responsive.
no need for the slightly bigger card, I would say. Get more RAM instead (3 GB is very nice, 1 GB too little for smooth operations)
jcbray
07-12-2007, 07:00 AM
for 3d/animation, the 7600 over the 7300 will show a nice jump in fps i'm sure, but if the RAM is < 2GB, that'd be nice aswell, but personally, I feel the 7600 would give you a bigger benefit over the 7300, which as far as discrete gpu's go, is right near the bottom.
davegraham
07-12-2007, 02:23 PM
the 7300 used "TurboCache" which will use the system RAM as a secondary video RAM pool (with obvious performance penalties). neither of those two cards are "stunning" performers but, they definitely get the job done.

dave
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