Migrating to Mac. Now, Later or Never?

r44b

r44b

r44b

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21 Dec 2006
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289
Hiho

I have a real problem...i just cannot make up my mind about if spending muchos $$$ on a mac system will really be worth the money. Or if i should just forget the mac and stick to a workstation/gaming PC.

My current PC consists of a 1.8Ghz s939 / 1 GB ram / x850xt pe / 24" dell 2405

I use it for 3ds max/photoshop/painter/web development etc etc. My use of these programs over the next 3 years is going to grow massivly and my current system is starting to loose its edge.

I spent the last few months going over every different setup you could imagine, reading reviews, forums and so on to get a wide range of opinions. I have no doubt that a mac is a really nice machine to work with but equally i come across people that say you could just buy a top end PC and it will run all the programs perfectly well.

So after all this thinking it seems to me i have 3 options:

1: (ultimate setup, get me everything i want but costs the most)

-2.66ghz Quad core Mac pro + dual 30" displays
-Gaming PC + 24" or 30" display
-MBP

2: (just stick with PC and forget the mac, that way i have a PC that will run PS/3ds etc but also my games)

-Gaming/workstation PC + dual 30" displays

3: (middle of the road option, main workstation a PC and a MBP for a nice portable but still powerfull Mac system)

-Gaming/workstation PC + dual 30" displays
-MBP

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Few Q's

-Ive read good and bad things about the Mac pro, major downer being the FB-DIMM modules (IE slow and expensive) any rumors Apple may be updating this system soonish?

-worth getting the x1900xt 512mb for mac pro or just stay with the 7300GT?

-7200rpm HDD on the MBP really worth the extra £100 the charge for it?

-Screen wise what would you recommend, the Dell 3007 or the apple 30"?

-Did the 17" MBP get the LED backlight upgrade or was that just the 15"?

-If i waited a year or so to get the mac and got a PC in the meantime + software is it possible to change the license or something to Mac without having to pay for new versions of it?

-Will the Mac's last longer without becoming obsolete in a few years like every PC ive owned has?

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So, more than anything im just looking for as much input as possible from a bunch of people that have used macs and have perhaps been in a similar situation.
Im going to take the 3 hour drive to my "local" :P apple store in the next week or so to see these systems in the flesh aswell.

Sorry for the length of this but its doing my head in and i just need some sound honest opinions from other people.
 
Personally, I'd go for the PC - but thats because I love to gaming and love to upgrade.

However, OSX is an amazing operating system and its very powerful. For web development and graphic design is would be 100% suitable. I have a MacBook Pro and I do all my Web dev on it - I only game on my PC.

Oh and Mac Pro setups with 30" look amazing!
 
if you go for dell 30" you lose a lot of connections on the monitor, personally the best screen setup is either dual 24" or single 24".

I currently have MBP 15" and dell 24" for when im at home, lovely setup from when I had my PC with dual 19".
I changed from PC to Mac and I do play games, BF2142, Steam, and few other PC games.
I just reboot into windows whenever I want to play as the benefits of a mac far outway all the problems i constantly had with most pc systems.

I want a mac pro for my placement next year but I cant really justify it having a MBP that does everything I need, just nice to have the best of the best really!
 
Just a quick question. Do you really need dual 30" displays? For gaming I cant imagine it. When you see how big the 30" displays are when your sitting less than 2 foot you will probably be fine with one.
 
Will_3rd said:
If you do get the Mac forget about the ACD's they look nice but you can get better performing monitors for less money like the Dell you have already mentioned.
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See this thread, I did the same and bought a top-spec gaming rig when I had the money to blow on a Mac Pro.. talk about regret!

Obviously, looking back I'd go with a Mac Pro as you could always bootcamp in to Windows and if you did get the X1900XT then you're going to be getting decent performance in BF2142 and CS: Source.

As for the dual 30" Screens.. :eek:.. After using one I was blown away.. dual would be MAJOR overkill + they're expensive. If you have the money, and aren't fussed with the colour reproduction then go for them :)
 
unknowndomain said:
Just a quick question. Do you really need dual 30" displays? For gaming I cant imagine it. When you see how big the 30" displays are when your sitting less than 2 foot you will probably be fine with one.
Click to expand...

Good question. For working they would be fantastic as im often working on massive pictures/artwork. 3ds max/maya would also be much nicer to work in as i can stretch the viewports over either both screens or have the program on one and documents on the other.

Gaming however is where i wasnt so convinced, i know the games would run on a 30" but im also aware that without some serious power setup like SLI i would more than likely ake a massive performance hit running on such a high resolution. So it looks like i wont bother with one for gaming.

Im still to see the size of one in person though and so i may find one would be big enough.
 
I've got the 8-core Mac Pro as well as a brand new 30" Dell panel - I really couldn't be happier with the setup and here are a few points I think you might find useful...

- Regarding the screen, I actually made the decision to move from 2x 19" panels to the single 30" as part of the upgrade. I haven't regretted it one bit as I can quite happily put two large application windows side by side and still have room to spare. You really need to work with a 30" panel before you get a feel for just how much screen real estate they actually provide. I agree the Dell does have a lack of inputs, however I'd never consider running this screen via anything other than dual-link DVI so not a problem for me. 2x 30" would be complete overkill in 99.9% of cases in my opinion.

- I'm a software developer and I spend most of my time under Vista x64 on the Mac Pro. Windows absolutely flies on this machine, and contrary to popular belief, it is completely possible to get the driver side perfect on this hardware - every driver required for the Mac Pro is digitally signed and I've had no performance issues whatsoever. Where gfx drivers are concerned of course, performance will only get better as ATI find their feet where x64 Vista is concerned. I need to do Mac dev now too though, which is why I went this route instead of custom building a Xeon box which is my usual wont.

- I used to do a good deal of 3D animation too and still like to have a play from time to time. Lightwave (my pet program) runs faster on this box than ANYTHING I've used before, barr none. Agreed that FB-DIMMs are expensive, and not as quick on paper as some DDR based alternatives, trust me though when I say that very few people can properly utilise more power than a high end Mac Pro like this can deliver now - the benchmark numbers where memory bandwidth are somewhat academic therefore.

- As a further note to the above, I also write heavily multithreaded image compression software and again, the Mac Pro has delivered absolutely astounding performance. I'm still tweaking our app to get maximum performance out of kit like this, but even in a non-optimal state, it's fantastic on this machine.

There's a lot more I could say, but this post is long enough already. Feel free to post back here if you have any other specific questions though!
 
r44b said:
Im still to see the size of one in person though and so i may find one would be big enough.
Click to expand...

If you're near enough to an Apple Store pop in and take a look at one - I opened up the Google homepage and made Safari fit the screen Windows-stylee just for pure overkill :p
 
Hey james_uk, any chance you could post a pic of the Mac Pro?

I've been saving for the same spec for a while (2x Quad, 8GB RAM and 1TB Storage for my recording studio), and interested in seeing a 30" LCD with the Mac Pro. I was contemplating 2x 23" LCDs, but if the space is that significant then I could be swayed to a single 30 :)
 
If you are a gamer, mac might not be for you at the moment. If you're only interested to play a few games (C&C3 , BF2142 all coming out soon), then you may start investing on mac. Mac is user friendly and everything is just superb! You wont regret
 
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