New Build or an iMac?

[MostUnfurrowed]

Hello there guys,

Been a long time since I posted here, song long in fact that I've forgotten my old user/password as well as the email address I'd first registered with.

Anywho, I'm looking at getting a top-end PC (or Mac) primarily for video editing and occaisional gaming (Civ 5, FM11 etc.) and wondered what the best course of action would be. I'm planning on studying TV Production next year at degree level and understand most of them use Final Cut Pro/a room full of Macs. I'm aware that this is one of the better pieces of video editing software out there and unless I want to 'hackintosh', it may have to be an iMac.

But for the price, exactly how decent a spec PC could I get which would meet/exceed my requirements? Looking to spend somewhere in the region of £1000 as well as suggestions for software I could use. If there any any Mac-fans here, what're the relative merits of each one, seeing as I could spend anywhere from £900 up to the £2000 mark?

Thanks guys,

MostUnfurrowed.

 

[shroomz]

Hi, for the PC front you would be better to wait till the new Sandy Bridge cpu line-up comes out early next year. If you really want something now, I'll brb with an i7 spec. Can't comment on Macs though.
EDIT - here it is:
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/5598/vidspec.png[/ IMG]

I have included the GTX460 graphics card because you said you'll be doing only a bit of gaming. There is still plenty of room in your £2k budget to upgrade that to a GTX580 if you wanted to

EDIT2: just noticed your budget is only £2k for a Mac, will get one for £1000
EDIT3: here it is, kept the 460 it is a great card -
[IMG]http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4519/vidspec2.png

 

[jakesnake]

the sandybridge in eairly 2011 is going to be dual channel memory. the triple and quad memory is not due out until winter 2011. i think an i7 950 and 6gb triple channel memory would be a solid core for the system you need. im sure the intense video software your going to be using will utilize a lot of the i7 hyperthreading power.

 

[skylineboy]

+1 to jakesnake. I think that your best bet would be to invest now in a i7 and then develop and improve it from there getting it stable etc before uni.

 

[Liampope]

Great spec that one above if you go PC. It may still pay to wait and see what the new SBs bring in Jan. They will include i7s with HT and will be faster clock-for-clock than current i5/i7s, and being 32nm should overclock better too. Yep they will be dual channel RAM (so really the new i7s are replacing the 1156 i7 8xx), but tripple channel makes no to little difference in most apps. It would be worth seeing how they overclock and how they bench against current i7s before making a decision. It's not long to wait. Then, if it turns out the new stuff is better, go for that, or if current i7 9xx is a better choice, go for that, and you might even find prices have been pushed down a little by the new stuff.

However, an iMac isn't bad value for money when you consider they come with a sweet IPS screen, the PC equivalents (Dell Ultrasharp) costing hundreds. If you may need to use Mac only software, then Mac may be the way to go. The downside is you have no hope of overclocking on a Mac so you will never match PC performance.