Arrghgh! I don't know what to do

Bouncer

Bouncer

Bouncer

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2008
Posts
88
Having a really tough time choosing my options here!

I've got £1500 (ex VAT) to play with.

Do i either:

a) Buy a Mac Pro with 2GB, upgrade the Video card to an 8800GT, downgrade the processor to a single 2.8GHz Xeon Quad core chip and buy an extra 750GB (a 250 and a 500) HDDs and one 20" monitor

b) Build myself a Q6600 overclocked machine with 8GB of RAM, 8800GT, 1TB of storage and two 20" monitors. And have a bit of money left over, possibly to buy an ASUS EEE laptop :D

I run Maya a bit of CS3 and edit on Final Cut atm.

I know 'everyone' does design work on a mac but these days, especially in the 'animation' world you'd be surprised how much PCs are used.

What would you guys do in my position? Am i just tying myself up in knots over the sake of £300?
 
using maya for digital set design. I'm not doing character animation. I model sets and build my textures for them with Photoshop. I would say my sets have upwards of 500,000 polys.
 
i know about bootcamp - gosh i wish it was the otherway round! mac os x when you needed it on a windows machine. I was considering a hackintosh only for final cut (maya and CS3 on windows), though from what i've heard it really isn't worth the hassle of messing about with system files.

The other option is i have a G4 ibook atm which currently sell for about £300 on ebay at the moment this would bring my budget up to a more comfortable £1700(ish) which would put me squarly in the reach of a mac pro and one screen with enough left to buy a second in a few months and some more RAM.

I'm waiting for tuesday (MacWorld) where i'm hoping Jobs is going to announce new products. The mac pro took me by surprise a bit this week (i was expecting it at macworld)

I'm thinking he's going to release this new slim macbook thing. If that is good enough (and cheap enough) to run final cut i'll get one of those and then build a cheaper windows box to run maya and CS3. All coming in at about £1500 (£750 each say)

Hurry up Tuesday!!
 
i love it!!

"Defo option a)"

"Defo option b)"

only kidding - thanks for the input seriously.

It kind of suggests to me though, that at the end of the day, with opinion split like this - does it really matter which i go with!

Or whether i shouldn't go for both:

a) Macbook + Powerful desktop
b) this new slimbook S. Jobs is bringing out + Powerful desktop
c) mac mini + Powerful desktop
d) Mac Pro

The editing work i do is infrequent, but is of professional standard and needs to be done on a deadline.

I'm now thinking about a mac mini for my 'home' pc and editing, and building a desktop for my maya/cs3 work.

I need to look at how final cut runs on a mini - HDD is my main worry.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom