Liam wrote:
> Next month I'll be putting together a workstation for my wife for her
> graphic design and animation work.
> (Found a highly rated workstation video card in our price range even.)
> Now I'm wondering what OS is best: WinXP or Vista? Is Vista ready for
> use with applications like Lightwave, After Effects, etc?
> (We'd rather get her a Mac Pro, unfortunately the minimum cost for one
> with 8GB RAM and a workstation card is $6,000!)
> Thanks for any advice.
> (Oh, BTW, having 8GB of RAM and a 512MB Quadro workstation, what kind
> of CPU is recommended? Think we can get away with a single, moderate
> speed, quad-core CPU?)
> Thanks!
> Liam
Hey Liam,
Frankly, you might want to re-think the Mac Pro option. I added one to
my network late last year. I went with a mid range speed on the
processors and only 2 Gb of RAM. I can always add more easily. Windows
XP was installed via Bootcamp and that went smoothly. To this I added
BlackMagic Design hardware for video/audio I/O.
When net rendering Lightwave animation (on another system), each of the
Mac Pro's CPU's renders 3-4X any of the other systems. Video editing
(Prem Pro CS3)is quite smooth & fluid now, after a few updates from
Adobe. After Effects CS3 takes advantage of the video hardware and
outputs via a HDLink box to a second LCD monitor as I'm working, NTSC or
HD.
I've always built my own system and researched this for some time when
my previous editing system died last Fall. I started with video
hardware requirements & worked backwards, and was forced to get a newer
system at the outset. Not counting the BlackMagic hardware, I may have
paid only a couple hundred more for the Mac than what I would have done
in a PC, but I was up and running that night rather than another several
days of assembly and and installation as usually was the case in the past.
All of my software is Windows based as well so I really don't use the
Mac side that often, but I wanted the option of migrating to Final Cut
later on. Also, a do***entary I've been working on had all of it's
sound work done on ProTools. The drives they use are Mac formatted and
an XP system won't recognize them. No problem for me now. I simply
reboot into OSX and it sees the drives just fine. I can then copy them
over to a networked drive.
In short, I really got the best bang for the buck going this route with
a new system. I'll probably replace my oldest system with another Mac
Pro down the road in fact to augment my small render farm.
Just my 2¢.
Mark
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