PC or MAC? help

[Tom Daigon]

Daniel: I have been lusting after a Mac Pro for use with AE and FCP. I have done alot of research at sites including
Creative Cow forums, Final Cut Pro – L, Ken Stone, LAFCPUG, Apple, MacFixit, Bare Feats, Ars Technica, Xlr8yourmac.
My findings lead me to believe that I should wait before making my purchase. There are alot of issues I want to be
cleared up before spending lots of bucks. As they say in Latin, “Let The Buyer Beware”.
Good luck with your purchase whatever it may be.
Tom

[Darby Edelen]

[Daniel Unkenholz] “i heard that macs can use unlimited ram where as PC can only do 2g, is this true?”

Not exactly. Every 32-bit application (including After Effects) is limited to addressing 3GB of RAM at once, but in the case of Windows XP your entire operating system cannot address more than 3GB of RAM. Under 64-bit OSes like OS X your operating system can address much much much more RAM, so there is a larger potential pool of RAM for applications (or instances of applications as in AE’s multi-frame renderer) to draw from.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Patrick Hearn]

Ahh, that’s intersesting. So when it runs on multiple cores it’s allowed 3GB per process. So if you’ve got a quad core you could be using 12GB RAM for after effects if you had it? Hmm, now I’M tempted by a Mac.

[Patrick Hearn]

The problem with any technological purchase is that whatever you’re looking at will always be cheaper in a couple of months or the new version will be released or that bug will be fixed. It’s never going to be perfect. I haven’t looked into this subject in particular and perhaps you might be better off waiting, but in general just buy it when you need it and can afford it and ignore the future.

[Chris Heuer]

I just bought an 8 core Mac Pro at the beginning of the year and put all 16 gigs of RAM in it (put it in yourself, I saved $3,000). I’m running After Effects CS3 and let me say… IT IS WORTH THE MONEY!
I also bought Gridiron Nucleo Pro which only speeds up the really fast performance. I can finally work on complex projects without wasting hours and hours of time waiting on previews and renders! It’s nuts!
I can’t seem to keep a PC running for long before it slows down or gets some bug so I’m a Mac guy all the way. Been running on a Dual core Intel iMac for 2 years (until I got the Pro!) and have had no problems. Even when you do overtax the system (which hasn’t happened very often) and a program locks up, Mac’s Unix platform makes for a quick quiet restart of that application without effecting anything else that’s running. This has yet to happen to me on the Mac Pro.

Sorry for the Mac commercial, I’m just really happy with mine!

Chris

Chris Heuer
Freefall FX, LLC

[Michael Hancock]

Anymore, Macs and PCs are on par with one another, so it’s a personal choice.

If you don’t mind Windows and you know a lot of about systems and can build your own, go with a PC. You can build a very powerful PC for less than anything store bought, and the ability to upgrade it is much greater than with a Mac or most brand name PCs. Plus, if your programs will run under a 64-bit OS, you can get XP Pro 64-bit or Vista 64-bit (I personally wouldn’t go with Vista, but that’s me).

If you like the Mac OS and don’t know how to/want to build your own system, go with the Mac. I personally don’t like OS X, but I love the Mac machines otherwise. Plus, with a Mac you can install Windows via Bootcamp if you need to, so you can run two of the most popular operating systems (we’ll leave Linux out of this) on one machine–something you can’t (legally) do on a PC.

If After Effects starts taking more advantage of the GPU, you might want to consider a PC. Macs are notorious for having a small selection of graphics cards to choose from (I think there are only 3 right now), so unless things change you’ll have more options in that department on the PC. But that’s speculation, and you need the system right now.

Regardless of which system you go with, keep it off the internet. Buy an eMachine if you have to surf the internet while you’re working, but if you’re making money with this machine keep it offline and treat it as a workstation, not a computer. That way you won’t run the risk of viruses, updates running that break something, etc… It’s the smart thing to do.

Good luck! Enjoy whichever new machine you get!

Michael.

[Tom Daigon]

I choose not to blindly plunge into a $8,000 purchase. Minimal research at the Apple Discussions Mac Pro site will reveal a crowd of folks dealing with major display issues and machine lockups involving the newest Mac Pros. I would call that performance far from perfect and a great reason not to
“just buy it when you need it” unless your looking for lots a grief.

[Paolo Ciccone]

I started using PCs with DOS 2.0. I used to build my own machines and compile custom-tuned Linux kernels. I say this just to make it clear that I don’t advocate the Macintosh because I don’t want to be involved with the technical side.
Years ago I had to make a decision for a new machine and I decided that it was time to stop tweaking the machine and spend more time doing what I love: filmmaking. So I bought a Mac and I never looked back.
The reasons are many. The Mac has all the power that you need but it keeps from unnecessary meddling with the innards of the system. It’s not perfect but it’s the closest to perfect that a computer can get today.
While the ease of use of the Mac makes it a very enjoyable machine to use, if you need to get “dirty” you can open the Terminal and use one of the best Unix terminal emulators in the market today. There is really no compromise between power and ease of use. You get both.
Of course, the total lack of viruses helps with the peace of mind too.

To me, if your priority is to spend more time working on what you love instead of babysitting the computer, the Mac is the way to go.

[Darby Edelen]

[Patrick Hearn] “So if you’ve got a quad core you could be using 12GB RAM for after effects if you had it? Hmm, now I’M tempted by a Mac.”

This should be the case with 64-bit XP as well (although from what I hear you run into more compatibility issues that way).

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Shawn Miller]

Personally, I prefer PCs. My vendor of choice “for now” is Bold Data Systems (https://www.boldata.com/catalog.cfm/page/wks_Intel). Their machines are well built and well priced. Support from these guys is awesome (1 Year Premium On-Site Warranty with 24/7 Technical Support).

“i heard that macs can use unlimited ram where as PC can only do 2g, is this true?”

Nope, you have to run a 64 bit OS like XP 64, but you can use more than 2 GB of ram. I’ve been using 8+ gigs of ram on Windows OS’s for years and have had no issues related having too much of it. 🙂

In the end it boils down to personal preference. I use Adobe’s CS3 Production Bundle with Cinema 4D and I have very few issues related to Windows. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks,

Shawn