Which Computer Is Better?

[Al Bergstein]

It’s incredibly expensive, isn’t it? If you really are buying into the Mac world, *and can afford the price* then just pull the trigger and buy the Mac Pro. Another option that I did, was to buy a slightly older Mac Pro, and buy a state of the art Windows 7 machine. I got a a full function Windows machine for under $1000 (though a real state of the art HP workstation is likely to be more like $2k). I bought a Mac Pro for $2200. Added 1 TB drive to the 2 drives in there already (for RAID 1), then bought 2 more 2 TB drives for the MacPro and one 1 TB for the Windows 7 machine. Two monitors. I can work on two machines, rendering one full video while I work on a second one on Vegas. Or I can use both monitors almost at once, because the Vegas machine is using VGA to the second monitor. You can’t do all that with only one Mac. My Mac Pro is fine, slower than the Windows 7 machine, which is more powerful.

The iMac only has one 800 MB FW port, which if you really get into it, is not enough. No expansion slot for esata cards, which I needed. I think you’d regret that choice, if you really get into video editing in a big way. 800 FW is ok, but eSata takes full advantage of the 7200 RPM drives. For HD work, it’s almost a must. Not quite a must, but getting there. I do use 800FW for two of my external Mac drives. You don’t want to daisy chain too many FW devices, as they end up with contention.

Or you can forego the Mac entirely, buy the HP workstation and both Vegas and Adobe, and buy a Mac later if you really need one. I wager that between Adobe and Vegas there is nothing that FCP can do beyond the functions of these two programs. I’ve found that the only thing holding me back from full on Vegas work is that stupid preview of HD footage never being able to keep up. I am constantly having out of sync audio in preview. Sony is going to lose me and others if they can’t fix this problem. I have a 1GB CUDA graphics card. I’ll likely end up going to Adobe because of the problem. Quite odd really. But if you can work around it, Vegas is much friendlier a product than FCP. That’s what I’m doing until I’m done with the latest batch of videos I’m doing, which I need to do fast and cheap.

Alf

[David Johnson]

I work on both platforms daily and have for many years so I’ll just chime in to agree with the point Alf made … that that being able to “work on two machines, rendering one full video while I work on a second one” is invaluable (and not quite the same as being able to switch between two O/Ss on the same hardware).

That said, you asked about a choice between two Macs so my opinion on that is definitely go with the Mac Pro if you can afford it. The reason is the expandability … although Apple is very skilled at and has a long history of making hardware obsolete shortly after we’ve shelled out large chunks of cash for it, you’ll definitely get more mileage out of a Mac Pro. In today’s 16-bit world, the ability to expand to more than 16Gb of RAM is a big deal. If you end up doing much After Effects work, that’ll be a huge benefit … many people are considering 16Gb the minimum amount of RAM for heavy AE work now (I have 32Gb in my Mac Pro at work).

The RAM issue alone could make the decision, but the iMac’s lack of ports and slots is a big factor too.

That all said, at the end of the day, it obviously all depends on your budget …. as well as how much and specifically what types of video work you’ll be doing. I hope this is helpful … best of luck.

[Scott Francis]

I agree, if you need a Mac, get the Mac Pro…if not, stay in the PC world. I have 3 editing suites all PC and ALWAYS can be editing and rendering!!! Vegas’s only issue for me as well is the previewing…And you can get 2-3 PC’s for the cost of the Mac pro….good luck!

Scott Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[John Rofrano]

I would not get either of those because both they use ATI graphics cards that don’t support CUDA which is only supported by NVIDIA. Both Vegas and Adobe Production Suite use CUDA graphic cards for acceleration. If you plan to use either of these, you want to have an NVIDIA graphics card.

I would suggest you get a Mac Pro with an NVIDIA card. iMac’s just aren’t expandable enough anyway.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[David Johnson]

John makes a good point … in addition to the performance capability differences, about 80% of the pro editors I’ve ever known much prefer NVIDIA graphics cards and I personally have had some very bad experiences with ATI … in all fairness, most were years ago now, but I’m still not convinced ATI ever truly caught up with NVIDIA.

That said, when you buy a Mac Pro, you choose whether you want an ATI or NVIDIA card … not sure, but I doubt that’s the case with an iMac.

[Danny Hays]

If your not using Finalcut or some Mac based software, why spend all that money for one, add Bootcamp and run Windows software? especcialy when an i7 PC setup with a good NVidea card, a few hard drives, even USB 3,(Mac shows no signs of supporting it as well as no 1080 60p video file support), could cost you 1/3 the price. I have 7 PCs and one MAC, that recently died. I can’t see any reason replacing it. Hope this helps, Danny Hays

[Dave Haynie]

I agree… Macs are overpriced. Now, if you need FCP or other Mac software, or think the MacOS is worth paying 2x-3x as much for the same hardware, you won’t think this. If you’re just adding up the relative features of the hardware, you will.

With that said, I’d definitely go for the Mac Pro if you want the Mac. Yeah, it’s pretty expensive, but any 8 core system with 16GB is not going to come cheap. You could “build” one based on the lower-end Xeons used in the Mac Pro for a bit less based on the HP600 platform… or spend much more and get a 12-core system at 3GHz. But regardless, you pay a premium for any system at this level, so there’s not as significant an “Apple Tax” on the Mac Pro.

The iMac is a triple whammy. iMacs use laptop-class motherboards, thus, no expansion to speak of — you get the graphic it comes with, and your extra HDDs add on outside. Plus, Apple’s nailing you for a premium monitor, the built-in, which lives or dies by that iMac. I bought dual 24″ MVA LCD monitors 4-5 years ago. I have upgraded the main board/CPU in my PC twice since then, but the monitors I still love. You need dual monitors for a serious NLE anyway, and mine are matched — you’ll not have that option, either, with the iMac.

And yeah, what John said about the GPU. I have used ATis and nVidias, never had a problem with either. In raw power, nVidia just edged out ATi, but ATi has been price/performance winner for awhile. But in GPGPU support, nVidia is way ahead… and that’s the only real reason you want a higher end GPU for a video machine anyway. You want the GPU to be your choice. I don’t think the GPGPU capabilities of Vegas 10a are significant, but you never know ahout 10e or 11, 12, etc… all coming within the lifetime of your new system, if things keep going. When I can spend $200 to get a 50% speedup on ANYTHING, I’m goin’ there soon. The iMac locks you in, and you may wind up hating it for that.

Don’t get me wrong… one of my sisters has two iMacs and loves them. They’re fine for an iPhone fanatic who needs to write post-doctoral papers on Educational Psychology, or for web surfing and videotainment. But a workstation they do not make.

-Dave