I need a new system

[garethace]

The biggest problem I've encountered over the years is piracy. It is so unbelievably frustrating to spend an hour or so helping someone, to find out their software problems are due to license cracks, or incomplete "borrowed" software packages.

No that is not the worst of all - the worst of all is a situation like this. A person who runs a company insists upon sticking too an Apple platform and running software like MicroStation - even though MicroStation version 5.0 was the last Apple MAC version of the program. Version 5.0 was around in the mid-nineties - and still a certain practice i know uses version 5.0. Even though version 8.0 is out now for windows. But the practice likes to have fancy MACs on the desk, rather than windows boxes.

 

See my reply here as regards working with Microstation version 5.0 solids. Insert loud sarcastic laughter here.

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000390

 

I've had very little experience with CAD itself, and thus am quite interested in all you have to say .

AMD chips just have the brute floating point performance muscle there Greg, no question about that. Their brute L1 cache design and extra floating point unit coupled with SSE extensions can just spill Pentiums blood i think. I would take the slowest AMD cpu over Intel any day in this department, i am afraid.

 

Well take just the most common vanila package out there - AutoCAD. Ever try to model in AutoCAD WITHOUT using the nVidia/Elsa board customised powerdraft drivers? There is a HUGGGE gain in system performance to be made there, over the standard autodesk heidi driver. Who would use MAX/VIZ with a heidi driver nowadays, except perhaps in a laptop on the move, and even thats changed for the better now too. Yet most AutoCAD modellers are still using heidi drivers that are painfully slow and unstable in AutoCAD.

 

You see with straight up cad packages, the lowest common denominator is often the biggest factor with hardware specs. Forget DX, we are talking way more basic. The tremendous advantage of using a CAD package 'neat' to model with is the amount of people you can collaborate with all of a sudden. Guys with oceans of design knowledge can suddenly begin suggesting ideas by means of a rough cad model.

 

MicroStation is even more developed in this regard - the solids kernel and the tools are all there to be used - anything i could possibly ask for in a package like Z say. And Z is a pretty good modelling environment for architects to work with too. Lightwave is probably the most natural of all spaces to be in, as regards general modelling of objects - i like it alot, but have only ever met one person who bought his own copy and started using it. (I would nearly buy Lightwave myself now since it is no more expensive than VIZ and would allow me a much higher polygon ceiling too)

 

ArchiCAD is a package that DOES take good advantage of dual cpus, scsi drives, opengl cards, raid.... you know the list. But is now joy on the standard desktop system at all. So strike that one from the list of common vanila applications - if you want to get the most from it.

 

Allplan from Nemetsche is certainly the most powerful piece of kit under the bonet i have seen - as a standalone cad environment - i was shown a thing or two in Allplan by my pal ovidiu.

 

www.allplanforum.com

 

Then you have a guy such as Frank Gehry at the very bleeding edge using CATIA to generate budgets on designs at early stages. Gehry has someone called Jim Glymph working who started that ball rolling first - a pioneer in cad based architecture design.

 

http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/0712/design_1-1.html

 

http://www-3.ibm.com/solutions/plm/pub1/05256965005d4817/6/0a78bc05d3c3aa9d87256b3e006aec5d.jsp

 

Imagine the amount of data involved in attaching part specs and pricing information to each and every component of your model.

 

Basically, all the object oriented CAD products follow the same general pattern. I would put them in order of merit something like this:

 

CATIA, Allplan, MicroStation Triforma J, ArchiCAD, Autodesk Architectural Desktop.

 

But that is purely based upon my opinions - some may put ADT close to the top of that hierarchy. All of the above has been done by mechanical engineers in programs like Inventor and Unigraphics a long, long time ago. I always envy the guys in industrial design schools with their Vellum solids, solidedge, alias wavefront software and so on. Architecture school have nowhere near come up to the same capacity for cg visual methodology yet.

 

[ April 30, 2003, 01:27 PM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[Brian Cassil]

Well, I'm still looking for a motherboard that has everything I want on it, but I may have decided on getting the ti 4600 8x video card. I still can't tell if that has dual monitor support though?

[bigcahunak]

Originally posted by Brian Cassil:

Well, I'm still looking for a motherboard that has everything I want on it, but I may have decided on getting the ti 4600 8x video card. I still can't tell if that has dual monitor support though?

Brian, the Chaintech dual AMD board is the only one that has it all onboard. Sound, Raid, USB 2.0, but no LAN though.

Here is the newegg link, and here is the direct product link.

Hope it helps.

Good luck.

 

[Edit] I'm pretty sure that none of the Dual AMD boards support AGP x8.

As for dual monitors - I think that the Ti4600 doesn't support it, but I'm not sure about it. Plan on an extra GF MX PCI for the second monitor. Its only a small addition to the overall price (less than $50).

 

[ May 01, 2003, 03:33 AM: Message edited by: bigcahunak ]

[garethace]

I've had very little experience with CAD itself, and thus am quite interested in all you have to say.

1. A couple of other things about CAD workstations - NT 4 workstation is still the best from a point of view of OpenGl acceleration and drivers, definetly - w2k and wxp screw the pooch there i think.

 

2. CAD models can literally be so maissive that it takes ages even to open them - Itanium 2 can open the biggest model in the world like in half a day as oposed to three days. However, once open the model stays open for years to work on - chemical plant equipment monitoring, ... blah, blah, maintenance blueprint for very complex industrial systems - big money if you can use CAD to know exactly when and how etc.

 

3. ArchiCAD uses some kind of swap file, one time i saw a guy use a network licensing system for archicad. That defaults to putting the swap file on some network drive where the license resided, and the program then opted not to use a swap file at all!!!! I need not tell you how much that crippled the performance of the software.

[David Knourek]

Originally posted by Brian Cassil:

Well, I'm still looking for a motherboard that has everything I want on it, but I may have decided on getting the ti 4600 8x video card. I still can't tell if that has dual monitor support though?

Actually I'm running a Leadtek GF4Ti4600 and it has duall monitor support that works great for me. As far as I know most of the GF4Ti4600 and up boards usually have dual support.

 

-dave

[Cesar R]

what about a G4 ? I am looking into those

[ingo]

Well, Cesar, this is defintly the wrong thread for this. This is Tom's hardware... err sorry Greg's hardware thread

As said in another thread i recommend waiting for Apple's developer conference in mid june before making a decision. But the big advantage of the Mac is that 3DS didn't run on this machines, and no Autocad too

[Greg Hess]

G4's are great machines as long as performance isn't of concern.

 

Apple machines (even the dual 1.46 ghz) are not competitive against any of the current pc based offerings. (performance wise) Even if the application is specifically coded for the G4's, it still doesn't compete.

 

There are a lot of articles/websites that may debate this, but when it comes down to the wire, its just plain faster on PC's.

 

This is why Apple is moving to a non motorola processor, and may even be using a chip from IBM, AMD, or Intel in their next mac release.

[Ernest Burden III]

G4's are great machines as long as performance isn't of concern.

This is why Apple is moving to a non motorola processor, and may even be using a chip from IBM, AMD, or Intel in their next mac release.

Please elaborate! I have been on the recieving end of Apple-zeleot's rants for nearly two decades (even from my own sister). I would love to hear about Apple using one of my processors.

 

Would an Intel/AMD-based Apple running the OS10 be able to run Wintel apps? OS-PC?

[ingo]

Well i guess we wont see any AMD/Intel Mac very soon, that doesn't make sense for Apple. Changing their system every two weeks because they got new processors or changing prices every two weeks isn't Apple's policy. Thats why Mac hardware prices are stable over the years and you can even sell your old Mac for reasonable prices. And of course the big advantage for Apple of having Hardware and Software under their control is gone, anyone who knows Steve Jobs know thats that the main reason why we wont see OS X on AMD/Intel.

 

Otherwise we likely see the new IBM 970 for Macs, that means no need for AMD/Intel processors. In my eyes it looks like we will see the mobile line with the excellent Motorola chips, even the iBooks that use IBM's now, and the desktop line using sooner or later only IBM's 970 or even the Power 4 and 5 for servers.

 

Not to forget with Virtual PC you can run a lot of apps today on the Mac, although that is nonsense. The big plus is Apple's Unix base, and we see more and more Unix and even Linux apps coming to the Mac.

 

Just the 2 cents from a longtime Mac user

 

[ May 05, 2003, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: ingo ]

[Greg Hess]

Comparing LW7.5 scores across Xeon's vs Dual DDR G4's....

 

A Dual 1.42 (Or whatever the ghz) G4 is roughly equiv to a Dual 1.8-2.0 Xeon in rendering performance.

 

This of course is impressive until you realize that their are Dual 3.06 HT Xeon's.

 

Then you realize the Dual 3.06's are in a similar pricing bracket to the Dual 1.42 G4's.

 

There is also a cinema IV benchmark thread in this forum which has G4 comparisons to various PC scores.

 

As to future Apple decisions...

 

I agree that apple will most likely be going with IBM's pp970 chip sometime in June. This of course will put Apple as a partner to IBM which has some interesting side effects.

 

Of course this "RUMOR" can not verified. Or needless to say, if it could be verified, the one verifying it would quickly be utterly annilated by a huge host of lawyers.

 

There is also a secondary rumor floating around that IBM may be looking to purchase another chip company.

 

Couple guesses who .

 

So needless to say, Mac's will continue to become more and more pc like as they try to close the performance gap.

[ingo]

>>This of course is impressive until you realize that their are Dual 3.06 HT Xeon's.

 

Well this is completly boring, since i still use a G4 450 to make decent pictures. And i doubt that my pictures get better with a faster computer, rendering time is only a small part of my job, so who cares. Of course that doesn't mean that i like to have a 17" Powerbook with two PPC 970 in it So lets just sit back and relax and see what the PPC alliance from Apple/Motorola/IBM brings us this year.

[schmoron13]

ingo, you wouldn't happen to be a jim rome fan, would you?

[ingo]

Who is Jim Rome ?

[Brian Cassil]

Ha Ha! I don't think there are too many clones in Hamburg. I'm a huge fan though!

 

BTW, he is a Sports Radio Host out of Los Angeles.

[Brian Cassil]

I finally ordered everything for my new system. In fact everything except the motherboard arrived today. Here's what I ended up going with. Add a geforce4 ti 4600, two viewsonic 19" flat crt monitors, a Logitech multimedia keyboard, and a Logitech optical cordless mouse. Tally that up and ch-ching: $2035.48 which includes shipping and any taxes.

 

Thank's to everyone who helped. I feel confident I will be quite pleased with what I get. I definetly got more that what I thought I would be able to aford and that credit goes to several of you.

 

P.S. I had no idea this thread would last so long!

[Greg Hess]

Well this is completly boring, since i still use a G4 450 to make decent pictures.

 

Like I said.

 

"G4's are great machine's as long as performance isn't a concern"

 

Before you get upset, realize that I'm a mac user too.

 

 

I always try and vary my experience with as many workstations as possible, so I can comment on my experience with them, instead of just regurgitating what I read about them.

 

I don't use the mac as a primary workstation merely due to time constraints. Alot of my work is print related, and I can't afford to wait 2-3x longer for a render to finish. I'd miss deadlines, which of course means less money, and less free time. (Or a LOT more free time)

 

So please don't get frazzled. I didn't mean to insult your computer, or insinuate that one needs a fast computer to produce quality work.

 

In my situation, I need a pc. In yours the mac works fantastic. Everybody's happy.

[bigcahunak]

I dont want to sound like "that machine is better or worst..." so let me just say I have enough experience with MACs (G3s, G4s) to hate them.

 

Greg, that doesn't count, you use a MS mouse...

[ingo]

Sorry Greg, that wasn't meant as an offense to you. As you might have realized we Mac heads are always a bit louder so we get heard as a minority. And my ironic comment was obviously against all "processor performance is everything" guys/girls that have the fastest comp in town and the most expensive software but make lousy pictures.

In my opinion its much easier to make a decent picture with a slower comp, because you have to think a lot more before you do a testrender or try somethink new. And like i said before, the need for speed is only a small part of my job, lets say around 15 to 25 %. So better performance for me is better system performance, and in that case the Mac is still ahead in my eyes, because working with the Mac is a much smoother experience than working with Linux or any other OS.

Earlier this year i got a 2x2,8 GHz Xeon for two weeks for testing, a 20 hour rendering on my G4 takes still 4 hours on that PC, but i had to work with a lot of problems like wrong drivers for this and that so that i worked more on the computer than with the software. Thats my reason why i still use the old G4 with old software, it simply works. But yes, when the new PPC 970 equipet Macs are out, i will take a close look at it, but i think i will not buy the one of the first series.

And oh yes, i'm looking forward for your first test with that new machines

[Cesar R]

Here is my "apple" hehe

 

 

Im so happy with this screen, I thinking of getting a second one, but then how do I hook it up to my tower?

[LivinOnTheEdge]

yeah, definetely go with bigger ram sticks per slot. u will get better performance.