Mac, fast one or Dual

[tainice]

first of all, DON'T FLAME ME CUZ I MENTIONING THE NAME MAC!! i don't like to eat "toasted-apple" either, so please just state the facts.

question: i am an visucal-communication major, and now, all my friends and instructor recommend me to purchase a mac...well, our lab is filled with mac anyway. but for real, Mac is freakingly expensive, and they ain't no fun at all. Anyway, will i be better off with a fast chip, say XP or P4, or should i build a dual out of tualatine, or...buy an APPLE? or i it does not matter, i can run my current chip with say..good graphic card and monitor?

 

[Ebola]

for a graphics degree I would go with dual amd mp's. probably the best bang for the buck. although my dual p3 setup isnt slow

the dually will let you run more apps at the same time.

 

[rugby]

Buy an Apple. If you're going to make money on your system then a closed environment with a very stable OS is your best bet. It will be initially more expensive, but downtime and driver conflicts will cost you money AND time.

 

[Sir-Epix]

first of all, DON'T FLAME ME CUZ I MENTIONING THE NAME MAC!! i don't like to eat "toasted-apple" either, so please just state the facts.

question: i am an visucal-communication major, and now, all my friends and instructor recommend me to purchase a mac...well, our lab is filled with mac anyway. but for real, Mac is freakingly expensive, and they ain't no fun at all. Anyway, will i be better off with a fast chip, say XP or P4, or should i build a dual out of tualatine, or...buy an APPLE? or i it does not matter, i can run my current chip with say..good graphic card and monitor?

All the art majors here say that the MAC's are overrated. I use a MAC to do video editing and I get crashes all the time, because it can't handle the effects that I do sometimes. I would say dual Morgan's would be cheap and effect. Load them with ram and they can handle basically all you through at them. If you can afford the Xp's though or MP's go for those Just my two cents though. 512MB of DDR would be tight

 

[diehrd]

I would go with the TYAN S2466n-4m main board and 2 Mp processors 1.2 gig or more.

I would also load it up with Regestered ram a gig or more.

Also suggest you read compatibilty with hardware at the tyan site prior to spending 1 red cent.Pay attention to power supply,RAM.Video card.

I would personally like to see which system can run down a task faster the Dual MAC or the Dual AMD.

 

[Monaco]

if i was in your shoes I would go with the fastest duallie Mac I could afford. It's the best choice only because everybody else in that field will be using Macs too.

Otherwise you'll always be slightly out of touch with your class, as you deal with the platform differences in addition to your schoolwork.

If you don't mind dealing with that tho, i vote for dual morgan durons

 

[tainice]

As i calculate the price, 3.306 is the total, with a 933mhz of chip..hey the G4 got L3 cache! 2mb of them! and dual graphic port (support 2 7500 or G4 mx)! u can use pci card for expension! pretty cool, but it is too expensive, hate to say that, but for my future car, i will drop it.. man, just think about that L3 cache makes s/thing s/thing...why not put it on my PIII-S..on G4? what a waste!

guess dual XP it is, no morgan..wait! dually boards are usually limited to 150fsb right (someone comfirms this please)? so 13*150 = 1950...*2 = 3900mhz..drooling...MORGAN HERE I COME!

 

[h20link]

i've heard there's a program called macread that'll let you read mac zip's on a PC.

Right now i'm a web design student. We work only on macs at school, and i work on machine #2 in my sig at home. So what I do is work on my homework at home (say, in photoshop, or fireworks, or whatever) and then I just email it to myself (i have DSL). That's worked the best for me so far, I don't have many problems. IMHO having a mac isn't absolutely essential for doing graphic design stuff... I'd rather have a PC just for the expandability. If you're crunching some serious 3d, duallies will help, rendering can really take some time if you're doing LW7 or Max.

 

[Ice_Gargoylle]

yes, the mac cpu's have HUGE caches, that is why they do so well at performance. AMD and Intel's wont fair as well for graphics as these will just cuase of that. But you will have to decide what is your main prupose and other uses for this machine. Macs will smoke, but you are limiting your software and hardware that way. PC platform is what i went with cuase of that fact alone.

I have put a total system together, dual p3 1.26, for 2200. At the time, xeons were too much and overated, and amd didnt have anything out plus the mp's were alot.

U might even wanna look into the old intel xeons with 2mg caches and see how they perform. If you can fit a PC for a specific need, then u can begin to build a system that will save you alot of money and get the job done as fast as any other system.
The interesting thing is, the software we use doesnt get more intense, it basically stays the same: photoshop, 3dmax, etc. So if u can use it for only work, nothing else(games) u can get buy on alot less system than u think.

example:
k2 400
256 pc100
8 mg rage lt on board
5400 10 gig hdd

this system ran 3dmax, photoshop, director, illustrator, and rhino for 2 years for me. Granted the performance wasnt great, but u can see what im getting at.

*notices system specs*

holy cow, those are your system specs...lol...u can stay with that, thats way more than enuff. It wont be blazing fast, but will get the job done.
You can also get a pci ide raid card, that will help speed things up faster than u think. Raid0 with your old drive on a standard ide channel for critical files.