MAC vs. PC

[Jon Jones]

I agree with what you say about APPLE not competing in this market at this time. I think if your building a new machine you should go PC. Not only will you get more bang for your buck, but literally the one and only thing that APPLE has that PC can't trample all over is Thunderbolt. And PC will have that in due time. If your getting a new video card I would go with a GTX 690, I mean it's fairly cheap and you get tons of video ram, and enough cuda cores to fill a small wheel barrow, and that's saying something!

This is never going to be an apples-to-apples comparison as Apple competes in very few markets.

The cheapest way to get to 1/2 res debayer is a desktop Core i7 solution, something Apple simply doesn't offer. Something between iMac (all-in-one with largely laptop/ULV components) and Mac Pro (Xeon based workstation).

As a result, the cheapest way to get smooth 1/2 res 4K would be to assemble a ~$1200 PC running Core i7 3770K and GTX 670.
(Note: For the future 6K at 1/2 res you would need to go for a Core i7 3930K instead, or overclock 3770K. That should be about ~$1500.)

It's a simple matter of Apple not competing in this market.

On identical hardware, the Windows version of Premiere Pro CS5.5 was about 5%-10% than the OS X version, which also counts for a bit. I would guess largely due to much more mature GPU drivers.

[Jon Jones]

If you want to start out really cheap, start out with a motherboard that's highly upgradeable as your base, and upgrade it as you go. I have done that and it works really well. a little bit of pre rendering never hurt anyone :)

[Subhadip Sen]

I agree with what you say about APPLE not competing in this market at this time. I think if your building a new machine you should go PC. Not only will you get more bang for your buck, but literally the one and only thing that APPLE has that PC can't trample all over is Thunderbolt. And PC will have that in due time. If your getting a new video card I would go with a GTX 690, I mean it's fairly cheap and you get tons of video ram, and enough cuda cores to fill a small wheel barrow, and that's saying something!

Just to clarify, I didn't mean to restrict it to building a PC. You can buy such a PC off-the-shelf from several vendors. A system capable of 1/2 res 4K will cost about $1500. All I really meant is that there's no Apple product that uses components like Core i7 3770K / 3930K or GTX 680 - which is what enables 4K-on-a-budget.

There are several Z77 motherboards shipping with Thunderbolt. In fact, ASUS even has an expansion card which lets you upgrade select motherboards (even AMD!) to add 2 Thunderbolt ports. Since Windows recognizes Thunderbolt as a PCIe x4 slot the implementation is potentially more useful than on OS X as well. (Sony Vaio Z has been shipping with an external GPU/power dock for well over a year now)

All that said, between USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0 slots there's very little benefit to Thunderbolt on such a system. I can't really think of an application scenario right now.

[Paul Schneider]

Spec'ing a Win7 system with a 3d post friend right now on AVA Direct. Its a pretty simple way to do it and very configurable. They also build it for you and provide a warranty.

Pricing is in the $6500-8000 range depending on how much ram and internal storage you want. You can also get slightly faster processors for a bit more.

Pretty sure this system would scream through R3D...probably at full res, but certainly at half or higher. It will also be a compositing, grading and 3d beast.
He recco's the newest Intel E5 chipset over the I7. It certainly destroys MAC on all performance levels, which is sad because like many of you I'm a mac guy.

Here is the breakdown of my spec more or less. Still working it out a bit and will be talking to them about cooling etc.
System comes with USB3 and Esata on the board as well. Make sure you get video boards capable of supporting Mercury Playback from Adobe. A second video board will act solely as GPU acceleration for Mercury and grading systems like resolve.

+ WORKSTATION PC, Dual Xeon® E5-2600 Eight-Core Graphics Computer Workstation
LIAN LI, PC-A71B Black Full-Tower Case, EATX, 7 slots, No PSU, Aluminum
COOLER MASTER, Silent Pro M 850W Power Supply w/ Modular Cables, 80 PLUS® Bronze, ATX12V 2.3 EPS12V 2.92, 6x 8/6-pin PCIe, SLI® Certified, Retail
ASUS, Z9PE-D8 WS, LGA2011, Intel® C602, DDR3-2133 (O.C.) 256GB/64GB ECC/UECC /8, PCIe x16 SLI CF /4+2*, SATA 6Gb/s RAID 5 /6, 3Gb/s /8, USB 3.0 /4, HDA, FW /2, GbLAN /2, EEB, Retail
INTEL, 2 x Xeon® E5-2650 Eight-Core Processor 2.0 - 2.8GHz TB, LGA2011, 8 GT/s QPI, 20MB L3 Cache, EIST EM64T HT VT-d VT-x XD, 32nm, 95W, Retail w/o Fan
ARCTIC COOLING, Freezer i30 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket 2011/1155/1156, Aluminum/Copper, Retail
ARCTIC COOLING, Freezer i30 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket 2011/1155/1156, Aluminum/Copper, Retail
CRUCIAL, 64GB (8 x 8GB) PC3-8500 DDR3 1066MHz CL7 SDRAM DIMM, ECC Unbuffered
EVGA, GeForce® GTX 580 772MHz, 3072MB GDDR5 4008MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI+mini-HDMI, Retail
EVGA, GeForce® GTX 580 772MHz, 3072MB GDDR5 4008MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI+mini-HDMI, Retail
WESTERN DIGITAL, 2TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache WESTERN DIGITAL, 2TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
INTEL, 500GB 710 Series SSD, MLC, 270/210 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 3 Gb/s, Retail
RAID, No RAID, Independent HDD Drives
SONY, AD-7280S Black 24x DVD±R/RW Dual-Layer Burner, SATA, OEM
MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM

[Jon Jones]

Yes well just because PC has Thunderbolt ports on a couple of MB's, doesn't mean that there are any PC compatible Attachments. If there are any, they are very few. USB 3.0 is quite different from Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt does 10gigabits both directions (read and write) at the same time, whilst USB 3.0 only does 5 gigabits in one direction only. I agree that when PC becomes fully functional with Thunderbolt, it will be much better than APPLE in that particular field. Other than that PC is way better already. I don't disagree with you about that. But I still am staying with MAC at the present time because of the functionality of Thunderbolt.

[Jon Jones]

I love AVA direct for that. I in fact even bought my last PC there, and it was a great experience. Although their knowledge beyond the setting up of the system is limited. Joe at AVA is a cool cat to deal with.

Spec'ing a Win7 system with a 3d post friend right now on AVA Direct. Its a pretty simple way to do it and very configurable. They also build it for you and provide a warranty.

Pricing is in the $6500-8000 range depending on how much ram and internal storage you want. You can also get slightly faster processors for a bit more.

Pretty sure this system would scream through R3D...probably at full res, but certainly at half or higher. It will also be a compositing, grading and 3d beast.
He recco's the newest Intel E5 chipset over the I7. It certainly destroys MAC on all performance levels, which is sad because like many of you I'm a mac guy.

Here is the breakdown of my spec more or less. Still working it out a bit and will be talking to them about cooling etc.
System comes with USB3 and Esata on the board as well. Make sure you get video boards capable of supporting Mercury Playback from Adobe. A second video board will act solely as GPU acceleration for Mercury and grading systems like resolve.

+ WORKSTATION PC, Dual Xeon® E5-2600 Eight-Core Graphics Computer Workstation
LIAN LI, PC-A71B Black Full-Tower Case, EATX, 7 slots, No PSU, Aluminum
COOLER MASTER, Silent Pro M 850W Power Supply w/ Modular Cables, 80 PLUS® Bronze, ATX12V 2.3 EPS12V 2.92, 6x 8/6-pin PCIe, SLI® Certified, Retail
ASUS, Z9PE-D8 WS, LGA2011, Intel® C602, DDR3-2133 (O.C.) 256GB/64GB ECC/UECC /8, PCIe x16 SLI CF /4+2*, SATA 6Gb/s RAID 5 /6, 3Gb/s /8, USB 3.0 /4, HDA, FW /2, GbLAN /2, EEB, Retail
INTEL, 2 x Xeon® E5-2650 Eight-Core Processor 2.0 - 2.8GHz TB, LGA2011, 8 GT/s QPI, 20MB L3 Cache, EIST EM64T HT VT-d VT-x XD, 32nm, 95W, Retail w/o Fan
ARCTIC COOLING, Freezer i30 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket 2011/1155/1156, Aluminum/Copper, Retail
ARCTIC COOLING, Freezer i30 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket 2011/1155/1156, Aluminum/Copper, Retail
CRUCIAL, 64GB (8 x 8GB) PC3-8500 DDR3 1066MHz CL7 SDRAM DIMM, ECC Unbuffered
EVGA, GeForce® GTX 580 772MHz, 3072MB GDDR5 4008MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI+mini-HDMI, Retail
EVGA, GeForce® GTX 580 772MHz, 3072MB GDDR5 4008MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI+mini-HDMI, Retail
WESTERN DIGITAL, 2TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache WESTERN DIGITAL, 2TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
INTEL, 500GB 710 Series SSD, MLC, 270/210 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 3 Gb/s, Retail
RAID, No RAID, Independent HDD Drives
SONY, AD-7280S Black 24x DVD±R/RW Dual-Layer Burner, SATA, OEM
MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM

[Paul Schneider]

Yeah, they seem great.

The system I'm going with is pretty much what a friend of mine recco'd for his heavy lifting at a big post facility. They deal with a lot of varying file types and deal with 2-4K visual effects workflows stemming from R3D regularly. I think this is the ticket for that.

I also like that I can swap stuff fairly easily in the near future as GPU's become even more powerful. It supports up to 128gb of ram so there's room to move there as well.

Biggest issue for me is the loss of OSX, but I feel I'll get over that the first time I render.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Gotta come right out and say that price range seems a bit high for that configuration. There's a couple other issues I see. First and foremost, that is the wrong type of RAM for this system. Yes, it will work, but you need to be running PC3-12800 1600MHz and at that speed on the C602 / E5-2600 platform you really should be running ECC registered memory at capacities over 32GB. They have you spec'd with unbuffered ECC at 1066MHz. You're cutting your memory performance by nearly 35% of what it should be, just by installing that RAM as opposed to what you should be using.

No Blu-Ray writer? No RAID?

If you're going to spend the money on an SSD, the Intel 710 is not where it's at. The Samsung 830 and OCZ Vertex 4 are twice as fast.

With dual GTX580's and dual E5's, you need a larger power supply. I recommend something in the 1100W to 1200W range.

The ASUS motherboard has some basic overclock functions, mostly for RAM. But they're pretty much worthless as the Xeons are internal multiplier locked and it's difficult to drive the external clock and ramp voltage as they're already power-hungry and generate a lot of heat to begin with. The larger surface area of those 8-core processors are more difficult to keep uniformly cool, especially when you start tinkering with overclocking. I don't know about the Arctic i30 units, but many LGA2011 compatible water blocks don't properly cover these E5 Xeons, I would double check that one, especially since the units also claim compatibility with the smaller sockets. I bring up overclocking, but don't recommend buying this system for that purpose or traveling down that path. Rather pointless...

I would also recommend Windows 7 Pro and not Ultimate. The only things you get with Ultimate are all bloat anyway.

Spec'ing a Win7 system with a 3d post friend right now on AVA Direct. Its a pretty simple way to do it and very configurable. They also build it for you and provide a warranty.

Pricing is in the $6500-8000 range depending on how much ram and internal storage you want. You can also get slightly faster processors for a bit more.

Pretty sure this system would scream through R3D...probably at full res, but certainly at half or higher. It will also be a compositing, grading and 3d beast.
He recco's the newest Intel E5 chipset over the I7. It certainly destroys MAC on all performance levels, which is sad because like many of you I'm a mac guy.

Here is the breakdown of my spec more or less. Still working it out a bit and will be talking to them about cooling etc.
System comes with USB3 and Esata on the board as well. Make sure you get video boards capable of supporting Mercury Playback from Adobe. A second video board will act solely as GPU acceleration for Mercury and grading systems like resolve.

+ WORKSTATION PC, Dual Xeon® E5-2600 Eight-Core Graphics Computer Workstation
LIAN LI, PC-A71B Black Full-Tower Case, EATX, 7 slots, No PSU, Aluminum
COOLER MASTER, Silent Pro M 850W Power Supply w/ Modular Cables, 80 PLUS® Bronze, ATX12V 2.3 EPS12V 2.92, 6x 8/6-pin PCIe, SLI® Certified, Retail
ASUS, Z9PE-D8 WS, LGA2011, Intel® C602, DDR3-2133 (O.C.) 256GB/64GB ECC/UECC /8, PCIe x16 SLI CF /4+2*, SATA 6Gb/s RAID 5 /6, 3Gb/s /8, USB 3.0 /4, HDA, FW /2, GbLAN /2, EEB, Retail
INTEL, 2 x Xeon® E5-2650 Eight-Core Processor 2.0 - 2.8GHz TB, LGA2011, 8 GT/s QPI, 20MB L3 Cache, EIST EM64T HT VT-d VT-x XD, 32nm, 95W, Retail w/o Fan
ARCTIC COOLING, Freezer i30 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket 2011/1155/1156, Aluminum/Copper, Retail
ARCTIC COOLING, Freezer i30 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket 2011/1155/1156, Aluminum/Copper, Retail
CRUCIAL, 64GB (8 x 8GB) PC3-8500 DDR3 1066MHz CL7 SDRAM DIMM, ECC Unbuffered
EVGA, GeForce® GTX 580 772MHz, 3072MB GDDR5 4008MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI+mini-HDMI, Retail
EVGA, GeForce® GTX 580 772MHz, 3072MB GDDR5 4008MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, 2x DVI+mini-HDMI, Retail
WESTERN DIGITAL, 2TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache WESTERN DIGITAL, 2TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1002FAEX), SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache
INTEL, 500GB 710 Series SSD, MLC, 270/210 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, SATA 3 Gb/s, Retail
RAID, No RAID, Independent HDD Drives
SONY, AD-7280S Black 24x DVD±R/RW Dual-Layer Burner, SATA, OEM
MICROSOFT, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM

[Joseph Winchester]

Jon, I don't know what to tell ya, Im looking at 1/2 res playback right now. No pre-render.

[Paul Schneider]

Thanks Jeff. Will look into all those suggestions. This is just the first spec. Want it to be as fast as possible, but also want to do as little personal building as I can.