Shawn Miller
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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[Tom Sefton] “The title of the thread is surface studio pro vs iMac. One hasn’t got a touchscreen and one has a 5k display and more power for video editing. They are not the same in any way. Why not compare the iPad Pro and the surface studio? For graphic designers the pen and drawing functions of the iPad Pro are fantastic.”
Did you mean the Surface Pro? The iPad Pro and the Surface Studio are about as different as the iPad is from the iMac.
Shawn
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[Oliver Peters] “[Shawn Miller] “3D/motion graphics artists are jumping to Windows exactly for developments like this.”
Those artists – speaking of 3D animators, mainly – have historically always been on Windows and not Mac. And SGI is years past.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com”
That was more or less true up until about a decade ago – but with the popularity of cross-platform applications like Cinema 4D, Modo, Maya, Z-brush, etc. the landscape became a lot more diverse… maybe 80% Mac/Windows and 20% Linux (from my observation at least). There seems to have been a fairly steady migration of Mac users to Windows for the past five or six years though, mostly due to Apple’s reluctance to update the Mac Pro to something appropriate for CPU hungry tasks like lighting, rendering, simulations and large scene reconstructions. More recently, the popularity of GPU based renderers (Octane, Redshift, etc.) have been enticing artists towards really powerful but inexpensive graphics cards from Nvidia… or, at least that what I’ve personally observed.
Shawn
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[Bernard Newnham] “I see that Nvidia have announced a new consumer GPU, the Titan V at $2999 . That should satisfy the “only the fastest and most expensive will do” crowd. Though not if they have a Mac
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/8/16750326/nvidia-titan-v-announced-specs-...
Bernie”
3D/motion graphics artists are jumping to Windows exactly for developments like this. With the rise of the relatively inexpensive GPU renderers (Octane, Redshift, etc), it’s just foolish not to want this kind of performance at this price point. I image folks running Resolve are making similar decisions.
Shawn
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[Morten Ranmar] “When I use Windows 10, I get lost even trying to find the Control Panel”
Control panel has been replaced by “settings”, you can find it by clicking the windows key-x, or by hitting start>settings. If you just can’t live without control panel, use Cortana to search for it (or any of the Windows config apps), or start it from the command prompt, once you find it, you can pin it to the task bar or the start menu, then you you’ll never have to search for it again. You can also access many of the configuration and admin apps by right clicking on start.
Shawn
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[Bernard Newnham] “In the UK the processor and the two GeForce GPUs in the Silverdraft Davinci Resolve workstation cost a total of £2053 inc tax, which is the equivalent of $2756. The glitzy toy that B and H are selling costs $12,750. Hmmmm. I wonder how much mark up is in that price?
Bernie”
Agreed, it might be more instructive to look at a machine from a more reputable integrator. If you’re going to pay in the tens of thousands for a computer, it’s good to know exactly what you’re paying for.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/nav/genesis/II/customize.php
BTW, these folks have excellent customer service… if anyone is in the market. ☺
Shawn
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[Bob Zelin] “So you tell me exactly what is an $88,000 workstation for. “
VFX, visualization and scientific simulation. It’s rarified air to be sure – I personally have never worked on anything more powerful than a 4 CPU machine with 96GB of RAM, but there are use cases that justify the need for even more powerful machines. I imagine that rendering out 8k stereo VR videos could fit into this category. Again, I would be curious to know what’s inside the $88k workstation… a machine with 8 NVidia M600s alone would set you back over 30k… add 4 CPUs and maxed out ram (1TB), that’s possibly another $20k assuming you build it yourself. Does the $88k machine include some sort of premium support and software licensing?
[Bob Zelin] “This is like saying “I can’t use any shared storage system except Quantum, and it is SO worth the $200 – $300,000 that we spend for it”. My reply to this – that’ just stupid. “
I don’t think it’s a question not being able to work on anything less than a computer with less than a terabyte of RAM, 4 CPUs and 8 GPUs, it’s that for some work, these configurations make sense and are less expensive in the long run than building or sending projects out to a render farm. Most of my heavy 3D work is done on a workstation that could be done on a $3,000.00 laptop… in the long run though, it would make my projects a lot more expensive to produce.
Shawn
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[Bob Zelin] “for $88,000, it better come with one important feature – CLIENTS !”
But, if it cuts your render times down from days per frame to hours per frame, it might just be worth the cost. ☺ I would still be curious to know what’s in the $88k machine…
Shawn
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[Oliver Peters] “[Eric Santiago] “has anyone ever had fun on the DELL site and see how high they can get a single workstation price up too”
Since this is one of those usual Mac vs. PC debates, I have to say that the shopping experience on nearly every PC maker’s website is one of the worst shopping experiences on the web. You can hardly find anything and what’s there is hard to understand.”
Sure, some sites are certainly better than others. HP and Dell are terrible IMO, whereas Puget Systems and Bold Data systems are easy to navigate, and they make machine configuration fairly straightforward. Even better, companies like Puget Systems and Boxx make it easy to talk to a human about which configurations might be most beneficial to the buyer.
[Oliver Peters] ”
Contrast that with buying Apple hardware on their website and it’s easy to see why some folks are willing to pay a bit most, just for the more productive and pleasant experience. And if we are talking about name brands, mainstream PC makers, the cost is generally the same or more than that of the equivalent Mac.– Oliver
“Doesn’t having limited configurations make this much easier though? Your choices are basically between which two CPU models, which one of two GPU models, how much RAM and how much storage, right? Not knocking it, but that just seems an easier lift. That said, the last PC I purchased was through Puget Systems, and it only took a few minutes to configure the system I wanted – but, I’m a long time PC user and I’ve built a number of computers over the years, so maybe someone with less experience configuring workstations would have a more difficult time… hard to say.
Shawn
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[Eric Santiago] “Speaking of buying a $17K system, has anyone ever had fun on the DELL site and see how high they can get a single workstation price up too ☺
I do this when I’m bored at work and need a chuckle.
I think I was at $88K at one point.”Sure… what do you get for 88k though? ☺
Shawn
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[Oliver Peters] “Have you seen any of these in the wild in actual use? If so, in video-centric facilities? I see a number of Surface tablets, but not Studio. I DO see a shedload of iMacs ☺”
I know a handful of production artists who use the Surface Studio along with the Surface Pro (storyboard artists, production designers, concept designers, texture artists). Not huge numbers, but definitely more than before. It seems like younger artists are more open to considering the possibility of being all PC or bi-platform… at least, that’s what I’m seeing.
Shawn