lyca

hi all

here are my xperience with a macpro running xp.
buying any of the 3 mac-pro on apple site, don't buy any of the option
you can get a cheaper quadro fx on ebay as long it is pci express it will run on, but only with windows, not on osx side. the osx is a great os just let it on the machine, it will take only 10gb, not a big deal, i use it for surfing, video an so on, no worry about security problems!!
i than use XP for my professional work with maya, max and vray.
for the 1000 euro diffrence compare to a dell machine get some crucial rams and more sata disks, and put them inraid.

my 1 cents.

Nick_f

Sorry for my inaccuracy. I've been so use to calling older macs by G3, G4, G5 and I guess its habit.

Still undecided about Mac or PC and the moment. Mats test looks good with his new macpro dual 2.66 dual-core xeons running Vray 3 times faster than his dual 3.2 xeon.

I'd really love to see a test with same spc. Dual, Dual-Core Xeon MacPro and PC machines.

manta

Well I wouldn't expect anything magical, the Mac Pro is just a PC that can run OSX, so a similarly configured Dell or whatever should perform the same, so if its a $1,000 cheaper, maybe you should get the Mac...

__________________
DESIGN FORWARD
http://www.mantastudios.com

Mat@MDI-Digital

if you head over here, start on the last page and work your way back, plenty of Vray benchmarks (inc macpro on about pg 24 i think)

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...2220&start=600

AJLynn

The Mac and PC with the same parts should get you the same performance. Like some people have said, the major downside I see is that the Mac comes with fewer video card options, so that's something to take into account. Of course, if the Mac with a Quadro 4500 comes in at the same price as a Dell you've considered with a less powerful video card, what the heck, might as well get the better video. I asked the guy at the Apple store near me about video cards, and he said that in the past he's bought PC cards for his Mac and been able to get them to work in MacOS with some hacking, but I haven't seen anything on being able to do this with workstation PCIE cards, just older consumer cards. For me, the laptop with the ATI x1600 was quite enough - it doesn't perform at Quadro level but it hasn't got in the way of working with Viz.

lyca

be careful, the pc video cards does not work on the macos, but you can use them if you run windows on the mac-pro. for the moments there no hack to run them on osx (some EFI issues). so you will have to install 2 pci cards on the mac.

Greg Hess

That actually seems to be "the new thing" to do. Buy a powermac, put in a quadro or nvidia geforce card, and never run OS X...use it as a full windows box. Hilarous.

Nick_f

It does seem a little backwards, running xp on a mac, but for me its potentially a huge saving.

I work on mac platform using adobe suite creating Technical Illustrations and do so because everyone I work with uses mac. I also see that autodesk pritty much have the pre-viz market cornered with 3DSmax and AutoCAD. For me, this means buying two workstations which doesn't seem to hot. Hoping this is a solution to many of my problems!

Hoping, that is.....

Arnold Grove

Nick, I can offer my philosophy, not technical advice:

I'm still hunting myself, and I've had lots of great advice here. I do broadcast design and want to migrate to arch 3d, but I still NEED to do broadcast design to pay the bills, but I would love the use of the software in the Mac, Final Cut and others for design, I can still use the adobe suite, and the great software in a Mac, not to mention my wife's now an iPod head, (some issues in our pc with this). I want to use Garage band too!

But the fact that you can use Bootcamp and run Max and Vray on a Mac Book Pro, with no real issues, why not get the Mac, it cheaper, and you get the best of both worlds, not backwards at all but just the point, my .5 cents.
So far, the Mac is up front on my list.

AJLynn

Another option: I've been reading up on people softmodding Radeon x1900 series cards to FireGL 7300 series. There's actually no FireGL that corresponds to an x1900, but it seems to work anyway. You might get the Mac with the Radeon card and try to do the softmod in Windows before investing in a midrange Quadro for it. Look at the links in the thread I posted yesterday. (In theory there should be a FireGL softmod for all the Intel Macs with Radeons.