Buying a mac, dont know what to get...

[selos69]

Hi guys,

 

Im considering upgrading to a Mac.

 

My problem is, im not technically minded so I'm not sure what Im going to need and im also not sure what is overkill.

 

A lot of my work is small - medium scale architectural projects with descent amounts of foliage.

 

I was thinking of the 24 iMac but im worried it wont be powerful enough for our purposes.

 

My budget is about $5000AUD (4600USD) maybe a little more.

 

Any help in this area would be much appreciated!!

 

Cheers!

[jrizzo]

You don't mention what software you're going to be using, but here's my $.02...

 

I do the exact same work that you describe, so I know where you're coming from. In my experience, foliage can add up to relatively high poly counts. I think you're absolutely right with the iMac not being powerful enough. The iMac maxes out at 4GB of memory, I believe. While that might be enough for you now, you will most likely want more in the future.

 

You don't say what kind of render engine you're using, but for the amount of money you have to spend, I really would consider looking at the 8-core Mac Pro. The 8-core starts at $4000USD. I'd look at adding on third party memory, as the Apple prices are a little outrageous. It'll last you a long time and has much more potential to upgrade in the future than the iMac.

[AJLynn]

As Jen said - it would be helpful to know what software you want to use, and are you going to do animation with it? A 24" iMac would be an obvious choice, with 4GB of RAM you didn't buy at the Apple store (when I got my Macbook Pro I wanted to add another 1GB, Apple's price was $300 and Crucial.com's was $90) but if you want to do GI animations using mental ray in Maya or Vray in C4D you're going to want a Mac Pro.

 

Unfortunately Apple doesn't offer a simple desktop box with a Core2 Quad. Maybe if we're lucky Steve will announce one in 2 weeks at Macworld (his usual time for new Mac announcements).

[selos69]

Thought i forgot to add something .

 

I use a descent amount of photoshop. 3dsmax, getting more into cinema4d and vray.

 

So far im only doing stills. In the future, i may do some animation but that's not my primary concern at the moment.

 

Cheers for the advice so far!

[jrizzo]

Using those, I'd really consider the Mac Pro. I'm a Cinema user, and we use octo/quad core Mac Pros exclusively at work. After using it for even routine things, I hate going back to a slower machine. The difference between the new 8-core macs and even my older g5 quad-core is still night and day.

 

In my experience, you get about 1.5x faster rendering time with the 8-core than the quads, give or take. Having the faster machines has allowed us to use some options that we previously couldn't have even considered - applying ambient occlusion, GI, higher anti-aliasing, etc. I really think you'll be grateful for it in the future if you go with a Pro instead of the iMac.

[selos69]

UPDATE: Going on the apple site to 'configure' the mac pro i've realized that i have absolutely NO CLUE what spec to get. It ends up costing around $10000:confused:

 

Can someone help me with how much ram i might need, processor speed, graphics card etc??

 

Thanks heaps guys (and girls!)

[AJLynn]

Try it with the dual-quad CPUs, 500GB hard drive, the Radeon or Quadro video cards, and 1GB RAM (use another web site to get 4GB). Get a Samsung 245BW monitor instead of the Apple.

 

If that's too expensive, consider something that's not a Mac (since it looks like you really want to run Windows) but with more options. For example, with the options I gave the Mac comes to $4,375 (US) and that's before buying the monitor, RAM and a copy of Windows, and the Radeon card isn't that good compared to other stuff out there.

 

OTOH, a Dell XPS 720 "black" with a Core2 Quad 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive, nVidia 8800GT, XP (it's still a better idea than Vista) and 24" monitor is $3,179. You get half the CPUs but, heck, it's faster than my work PC.