Mac Buying Questions

#1

Hey Wavers,

So here’s where I’m at. After long last, I’m considering purchasing an apple computer. This computer will replace the dell laptop I have now, that I run LW on. I plan to use this new computer to run lightwave, as well as most of my other day to day programs (word processing, photo manipulation, email, web, the occasional dvd).

Now, I’m not a professional LW user by any stretch of the imagination, so I’m wondering to save more and go macbook pro, or go mid-upper end macbook. Most people (in the apple store) are telling me to go pro, but here’s the thing: I have a 2 dual core windows machines (one a desktop and the other a laptop), both with 2 gb ram, both with better than average video cards. I plan on using these in a network for my really heavy rendering projects (ie: hundreds/thousands of frames).

Is it really necessary for me to get a macbook pro if my networked computers are going to do most of the heavy lifting?

Thanks in advance, guys and gals!

#2

Don’t do it man!

#3

Hahha, don’t get a macbook pro, or don’t get a mac at all?

#4

Well, thing is, the new intel apple computer can boot in both windows aswell as in Mac OSX whereas pc’s cannot. I recentely bought a mac pro desktop and I intend to use it for LIghtwave in Windows and Shake on Mac, best of both worlds, right :slight_smile:

#5

ok so here are my findings…

i bought a macbook pro really hi spec and found basically that LW runs appalling on it !
i am running 9.3 UB and basically i have tried every version i can and it really sucks…

9.5 beta Does run a lot better but as we have no official release date then i would wait.

Of course you can run windows now on a mac but i dont really see the point of buying a mac to run windows on !

my advice… is to either wait or buy a pc…

cheers
n

#6

I kinda agree. Dunno if the Book is the same I used ‘the latest’ Mac Pro at work and Lightwave just ran so bad. The support guy said it was the ‘software’ not the Mac that was the problem and Newtek support suggestions did not sort it. So whether its Macs or Lightwave if you wanna run Lightwave on the best platform possible, get a PC is my advice.

#7

Get a Mac pro as the Mac Books dont have a good enough graphics card.

Cheers, Florian

#8

The reason they are advising you to get the Pro, apart from screen size. Is because it has an Nvidia 8600m GT video card, I believe the current models now have 512MB video memory too.

The Macbook, only had an onboard Intel X3100 video card, which is very weak (VERY) and has no video memory of its own, but instead shares 144MB of your system memory.

3D video performance from this card is very weak. And no, you can not upgrade the video card in either machine.

Other than the video card and the screen size, the machines are virtually identical in terms of processor and bus speeds etc.

Focus on the video card.

#9

well i am advising do not get a mac laptop at all !!

yes the mac desktops are far better and run like a dream at the high end but stay well clear of mac laptops for now !

cheers
n

#10

Bearfoot,
for what reason do you not like mac laptops?

#11

well i did post above as to why but…

i bought a macbook pro a few months ago to work with lightwave when i travel
but the installation and performance of lightwave on a Laptop that cost me a lot of cash
is terrible…almost unusable ! this is version 9.3…

i heard 9.5 runs better but until its out its difficult to judge…

#12

Ah, that’s right. I actually brought up that comment to the guys in the newtek forums, and they were saying that it’s hit or miss. Has anyone else had LW Mac stability problems?

#13

Biggest problem right now with Mac is OSX Leopard. LightWave 9.3.1 was having some major glitches and performance issues on some brand new hardware at work - We complained, we moaned, and in the end someone spotted not only a few updates for OSX, but a Graphic patch nonetheless which fixed a tonne of crashy, glitchy issues.

Still - It was getting pretty nasty. Doubled-up handles on meshes in Layout, popping polys in OpenGL, bones ‘floating’ in wrong places on screen, pop-up menus that would stop popping up, faulty ‘VBO’ performance, complete crashes for no reason. Most these seem to be gone since we applied all these patches, but I still wouldn’t recommend OSX for CG work.

Anybody tells you it must be the Software and not the Mac, slap them hard and tell them Apple needs to test its OSX better next time it decides to release a new version. Kinda screwed up things at work for a few months… Grrr… :argh:

#14

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