Performance issues – video card related?

[Michael Garber]

I’d recommend an i7 and getting a separate GPU. I have an Nvidia 680GTX. My Hackintosh is pretty much equal to my top-end iMac and the benchmarks are the same. FCPX feels more fluid and I can do separate renders and exports with no issues.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP

[Bret Williams]

Yeah, what he has there is the same build basically as a low end MacBook Pro, which my wife has. i5, integrated graphics. Not a dog by any means, but the graphics card is the problem. The i5 would likely just slow down render time and give less rt playback when effects are involved.

I’d turn off all filmstrips and waveforms until you need them if they’re bogging it down.

[Steve Connor]

Yes, It’s mostly a graphics card problem. Why go to the trouble of building a Hackintosh and not adding a decent GPU?

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Eddie Adams]

I haven’t bought one yet because of financial reasons, didn’t have the extra $250 to drop on a good GPU so was waiting. Would a good budget option be something like the EVGA GTX 650 1GB, which can be purchased at newegg for $80 right now?

[Eddie Adams]

Would you attribute this more to the GPU or the fact you’re running i7 over i5? In other words, if you could only put your money in one place, I’m assuming you’d advise a new GPU over a processor upgrade?

[Bret Williams]

I dunno. Is it an Apple listed card that supports FCP X? How much have you spent on the hackintosh? They just don’t look like that much of a savings in my meager research.

[Michael Garber]

Agreed on the savings issues. It was fun to build and I’m glad that it works. But, the real place you lose is in resale value and time invested. Spend less up front, make less on the back end. If I had to do it again? Well, I’m a nyerd, so I’d probably build the Hackintosh ;-P.

It boils down to this: what I really got out of it is a super-stable and fast PC that also happens to boot OS X. Whereas, if I’d spent more on an Apple product, it would have been the reverse.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP

[Eddie Adams]

Sure you’re not getting much resale value, but you’re also spending 1/3 to more or less build the same machine. No resale value can compensate for that.

[Michael Garber]

My build, based on Tonymac’s Customac Pro cost me about $1800. My iMac, which has approximately the same specs, cost $3000 with additional RAM and AppleCare.

I’d say the extra cost of the iMac factors in because of the built-in display. On the Hackintosh, I used an old 23″ Cinema Display. So, if you figure in the original cost of the Cinema Display, that brings the Hackintosh up to $2600.

If any component of the Hackintosh goes down, there’s no one who will fix it under warranty. You’ll have to individually RMA parts. In fact, I had to RMA both my motherboard and processor to try to get to the bottom of an issue. That took a month to get fixed and 2 trips to City of Industry (an hour+ drive each way).

In 2 years, if I want to sell my iMac, I could probably get between 1000 to 1500. That means, I could get into the newest iMac for approximately $1500-$2000. I recently sold all my 3+ year old Mac Pro towers. I made far more on those than I did on my 3 year old PC. Far more.

I have had my Hackintosh for about 6 months and I posted it on Craigslist to see if I *could* sell it. After 1 month, I got no hits when I posted it for $1500. After 1 month posting it at $800, I got a couple hits. That’s more than 50% depreciation in 6 months.

So, ok, can’t sell the Hackintosh. Can I upgrade the mother board, processor, and RAM? Sure, I can. However, now I have to deal with the time spent doing that. Probably 2 days of my time (and that is not including the research to figure out what motherboard and processor are the right ones to get – will they be compatible with my old PCI cards, etc…). Then there is the time involved making absolutely sure that it is stable. What if a client brings in some drives and what if, by sheer bad luck, the system doesn’t like them and deletes them (it happened to me on my own drives when I first built the system).

If I upgrade the parts, I most likely won’t be able to sell the old motherboard, CPU and RAM. It’s possible, but I won’t make much on selling those parts.

I am also at risk in the long run of not being able to upgrade at all if Apple chooses to move away from Intel. The Hackintosh’s stability is in the hands of, albeit, a very active and smart community, but nevertheless by no individual who is motivated by the success of my own system.

My point to all this is that you have a much higher risk involved when choosing to build and operate a Hackintosh. If that risk is worth it to you, then go for it. It was worth it to me because it was a challenge and I wanted to see if I could do it. I think it’s important to know what goes into building a computer, what parts go where, etc… I’m happy I did. But I am very aware that, both financially and time-wise, it will be more of a loss than if I’d just purchased another iMac.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP

[Richard Jacana]

I’m using an i7 Macbook air for some light video editing in FCPx and don’t appear to have any issues. I believe the i7 processor has some extra mojo for video that the i5 does not so perhaps this is your problem but the HD4000 card does seem to be the weak link.

My MBA has the 4000 card and it is surprisingly good. For big project I transcode. SSDs help a lot, I have one in my i7 mini. I’m a cheapskate so would love a 12 core Mac Pro but I use a i7 mini as my primary machine with maxed out Ram 16Gb and a SSD and the AMD option.