Can I buy a PC if everybody uses Mac?

[Al Levine]

Are you getting a PC because you want Windows — or for what reason?
For 8000 Pounds you can get a top of the line MacPro fully loaded that will run both Mac and Windows and perform like a CHAMP for years to come.

[Brad Bussé]

In hindsight, I got sucked into computer art as a career from the moment I invested in my first computer, a Woz edition Apple IIGS. It took me a decade to really realize that, and by then I was into Strata Studio Pro on a PowerPC 6100 (which had the 486 card in it for running games on Windows 3.1). Mac dropped the ball hard on 3D back then so I invested heavily into a hardcore NT workstation for Max, Softimage and later Maya. I don’t regret that, it was pricey but a steal compared to an SGI, and the NT OS back then was very stable (the backbone for the current Windows OS), and it had security through obscurity. Then I got into video on an Avid on OS X, then FCP and later Shake for several years, so OS X was the only consideration. Shake died, FCP more or less died, and I’m on Premiere Pro which now works very well and has adopted lots of features from FCP and Avid, and it plays well with Ae which I use extensively as well as C4D which I’m trying to get the time to get into further.

I really like OS X, I’m very comfortable with administering and handling hardware upgrades on Mac Pros, and I like the stability provided by both security by obscurity and the coordinated driver automation between limited hardware and well tested driver matches. Now that I’ve converted to Premiere Pro, I’d definitely consider a workstation built around Windows. If I were to become a full time freelancer or LLC/Inc., I’d probably build out a custom box that I’d upgrade continually on a component basis. However, the company that I’m at now is all Mac in the Creative dept. that I’m a part of, so I just invested in an upgrade to a new Mac Pro. I went with the 8-core since I did research on the 12-core and it felt like a large premium that had some limitations. I maxed out Apple’s offering of 64 GB RAM (another reason I kept with the octacore since I’d need more RAM to get more power out of a dodecacore with Ae), and the large investment was the dual d700s which are really a long-term future proofing for GPGPU (OpenCL) support. For Premiere, I wouldn’t worry too much about compatibility–you can read HFS+ drives with MacDrive and Premiere project files shouldn’t have much of an issue with opening legacy saves using newer versions either Mac or PC. If you’re going to go PC and aren’t technically oriented, look only at the HP Z– series.

That being said, I’m pretty happy with the Mac Pro so far. My RAID and video card are Thunderbolt2 based and with some growing pains, are working very well. Mainly what’s a major thorn right now is that the OS 10.9.3 update seemed to have some major issues on the OpenCL implementation on Apple’s behalf that has created instability that I haven’t seen on a Mac in many years for professional apps. I have upgraded drivers from BMD that appear to have fixed some audio issues in Premiere and Audition, but I’m having to completely bypass my GPU acceleration in Premiere and AME. Before I upgraded to 10.9.3, I had tested out the GPU power with Lumetri. On my 5,1 Mac w/ Radeon 5770 I had a hard time getting realtime preview with a single Lumetri applied. With the dual d700s on 10.9.2 I was able to apply roughly a dozen Lumetri’s while retaining realtime preview. And soon the wrinkles will be ironed out, and Adobe is focusing heavily on optimizing Ae for speed over features this year. GPGPU support is absolutely the next major breakthrough in optimizing realtime iteration, and as Nick of greyscalegorilla will attest, iteration is king not just in increasing speed, but in increasing creativity.

If you do go with a Mac Pro and want to also run Windows via Bootcamp for gaming like you mentioned, realize that Windows can’t boot from an external drive install like Mac OS X. So, make sure you get the 1 TB PCIe flash drive. I invested in that and found quickly that I absolutely needed that amount of space on the boot just to support my OS install and Ae cache. Ideally you’d have an external SSD via Thunderbolt for your Ae cache, but I’m sure when I add that to my system I’ll find a need for the additional space on the 1TB PCIe boot. For now I’m dealing, and when the Ae cache thrashes my boot too hard I’ll superduper clone a bootable clone of the OS, wipe the drive, and clone back. I’ve run Windows via VMWare before, but now I just find it’s not worth wasting the resources. At home I have an SSD internal boot for Mac and an internal SSD boot for Windows via Bootcamp. At work I keep my Windows needs on a separate Windows box.

Well, I hope that some of that can be helpful. 🙂

-Brad

[Max Herve]

Thanks for the input.

Al, I’m thinking in a windows machine because the possibility of build a more powerful computer than the Mac Pro for the same amount of money, if you tell me I can’t do that and best deal is the new Mac Pro, I’ll go for it, right now my IT guy says the actual Mac Pro could be overtake for a cheaper PC, so I’m doing my research to see if that is true.

I’m listening from clients with the new Mac Pro that it crashes a quite often… maybe it’s caused to the OSX update as Brad said.

I also like the possibility of upgrading certain parts in the future (SLI with 2 TitanZ perhaps?) and having my hard drives safe inside the PC tower, working with external hard drives can be good and really messy at the same time.

So Brad says I should not worry about compatibility between system, good, I’m gonna do my numbers and see what can I get, maybe I end up buying a Mac xD

Any input from people who bought the new Mac Pro or a Pc Editing system would be apreciated 🙂

Cheers

[Brad Bussé]

Yeah, the 10.9.2 worked like a charm for a few weeks. 10.9.3 is really where all of the instability was introduced. This is really the worst OS X update that I’ve personally dealt with, at least in regards to the nmp … it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem on the 5,1 Mac Pros.

In regards to upgrade-ability, unlike the trend with the Macbooks and iMacs, the nmp still retains the ability to upgrade parts. The CPU is apparently just swapping the chip, and I think the GPUs reside on a daughterboard which can theoretically be swapped out for an upgrade down the road. I’m not positive on the PCIe flash drive, but I think that is also an easy swap.

[Joseph W. bourke]

You might want to consider a true enterprise grade PC such as the HP Z800 or Z820. Take a look at my post here, which gives you a good rundown on what I ended up with:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/322/981

It’s completely upgradeable from the motherboard up, and you can strip it down to the motherboard without so much as a screwdriver! Some friends of mine who are on the Mac platform say that it looks quite similar to the old Mac Pro, but it’s not as much a closed system. You can add USB 3.0 via a 12 dollar PCIe card, and my experience thus far has been wonderful. A little bit noisy on startup, but with dual Xeons 3.33GHZ quad core processors and an Nvidia card with fans on board, there’s quite a bit of cooling that needs to go on. That said, you can get a liquid cooled option for it if you don’t have a machine room rack to put it in.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com