4yr old Mac vs i7 Windows Machine

[Graphite]

Hey Guys;

So heres what's going on.

Landed a new design gig doing 3D and graphic arts. (Utilizing Adobe software suites, AutoCAD, and 3D Studio Max. The machine they have me on is a 4yr old Mac Pro running a virtual version of windows (not on boot camp).

 

Im familiar with the mac OS but im mainly a PC guy so dont know to much about Mac render machine builds, and I have to option to possibly build a new machine and use the mac as a render node.

 

I Was curious if someone could take a look at the benchmarks and Info on the Mac and let me know how it compares to a Windows 7 64bit, i7-970, 16gig, running SLI Nvidia Cards. (I wont be running a single high end quatro, prefer the refresh rate over render time.)

Thank you for any help, Mac Specs Below.

 

Mac Pro2.1

Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3GHZ

12Gig Ram (1.33ghz)

Single ATI Radeon X1900 x16 512MB

[luthias42]

if your trying to compare a 4yr old mac to building a new machine with an i7 chip, I'd have to say its a no brainer that the new machine will work much faster than the older one. however, I'm sure you can find a new mac that is comparable to the new build your looking at, but even so I'd still try and get your boss to let you build the new PC just so that you might be able to problem solve anything that comes up. person opinion anyway.

[AJLynn]

The Xeon in there, if it's 4 years old, is a Core 2 generation. And it's running on virtualization. I don't have benchmarks for it, but if you downloaded Cjnebench and ran it in Windows on the computer and compare to what's on cbscores.com (warning: when looking at that site, check the CPU speeds listed against a list of CPU models on e.g. Wikipedia, because a lot of them have been overclocked) and you're going to see that a new 6-core model is much, much, much faster than what you have. Even if you had a newer model Mac, virtualization is not appropriate for running the apps you name.

[Graphite]

Thanks for the Input guys.

Just finished putting a parts list together;

PC:

 

12gig Triple Channel Ram

2 GTX460 SE's (1gig/per)

i7-970 Six Core

Corsair 800D Case

Asus Rampage III Extreme Motherboard

Corsair 1000HX Power Supply

Curcial 128 SSD (operating System)

Western Digital Cav. 1TB Drive (File Storage)

total Cost:$2,277.84

 

Comparable Mac Pro;

$7,099.00

 

The cost is INSANE!!!! how can Apple Justify that??

[Tommy L]

Im not an expert here, but Im under the impression that SLI does not help with viewport performance. But Im still on Max 2010. Things may have changed.

[Graphite]

i've noticed significant performance improvements on my personal machine. vs a comparable Dell workstation running a single quatro card. (my machine is running old GTX9800+'s in SLI, and the WS was running a Quatro FX4800)

Especially when dealing with 1.5Million Poly scenes. *shrugs* could be the systems themselves. I know theres alot of debate about the high end quatro cards vs gaming cards, but i've personally found the minimal time the high end cards provide during the rendering performance, doesn't compair to my work flow performance when in SLI at home. (This is running Max 2011).

Not saying this is proof. Just my experiences.

[AJLynn]

That's not an SLI thing. I'd go for one Geforce 570 instead of two 460s. Aside from that you've got a good setup.

 

The reason the Mac is more expensive is that it's a workstation class box with TWO Xeon CPUs. That hardware is a lot more expensive than consumer grade single CPU boxes -even though in many situations it doesn't run the software faster. And quality vendor boxes are more expensive than DIY. The Mac isn't out of line with what other major vendors charge.

[Matt McDonald]

Im not an expert here, but Im under the impression that SLI does not help with viewport performance. But Im still on Max 2010. Things may have changed.

 

Pretty sure you're right about SLI and Max.

 

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/shane/the_iray_faq

 

Scroll down to the nvidia driver section. He's discussing iRay in max 2011 but I'm pretty sure he's not going to advise disabling a feature (SLI) which would dramatically benefit the viewport operation. Additionally, in the Max 2012 materials they clearly tell us that the viewport operations are now multi-threaded (thank God!) but I haven't seen anything which specifically mentions SLI.

 

So to the OP, I'm not sure SLI is giving you the viewport performance you think that it is...but it's your money. If you are planning to use iRay there would be some real benefits of multiple GPUs...but that's really not my specialty so I'll leave that one for others.

[AJLynn]

Any of you guys who want to use iray, I'd just go straight to the big guns - one video card for the display (an ATI would be a good choice, to avoid confused drivers) and a Geforce 580 3gb to process the CUDA. Or more than one of those Geforces, if the MB and power supply are sufficient and you have more money than time.

[Slinger]

BTW, eVGA just released a 2.5gb GTX570 too for only $400. http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=025-P3-1579-AR&family=GeForce%20500%20Series%20Family&sw=

 

GTX580 3gb for $589 here: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=03G-P3-1584-AR&family=GeForce%20500%20Series%20Family&sw=

[AJLynn]

570 with double RAM? That's got a nice sound to it.

[Slinger]

yep. 2560mb of ram to be exact