MAC or AMD

[hobier]

hi all,

i'm a graphic designer focused on web/multimedia designs for the last 3 yrs or so and have been working on intel PCs, but now moving towards print publishing and the intel cant handle the large HI RES files. therefore looking to buy a new pc now most of the industry ppl suggested go with MAC.

BUT most of the people said that the AMD 64bit athlon 55 fx is faster than a MAC, price aint the issue i just want to buy a PC soley for design work not for gaming purposes so can you ppl help me decide which to go for AMD or a MAC and with what configuration. The application i'll be using would ofcourse the ADOBE suite (photoshop, indesign, illustrator) so will these run faster on MAC or AMD handling file size from 700mb to 1gig. (typically posters, billboards n all)

your help would be highly appreciative.

[Got3n]

Your comparing two seperate products, A MAC is a computer with a GX Processor and MAC OS, and then your talking about an Athlon FX, i think you mean you wanna know weather to go with a G5 processor or a Athlong FX processor.

[hobier]

the comparison is of MAC system (with ofcourse Mac OS + G5 processor) and AMD system (winXp) since both are 64 bit, i wanna know which would be best for print publishing work. I've had a bad experience with intel so now that im willing to spend money i want to get a faster machine, dont like to spend big bucks only to find that it wasnt worth it.

[sundayx Veteran]

this is a mac or pc discussion i guess.

[Got3n]

hmmmm........I dont think my opinion would be to good of input cause the only mac i have used was in the public libraries in my high school. they were fast at the time, but in todays time, to me nothing beats an AMD, no matter what the benchmarks say. I have a 3500+ and its awesome, video rendering and photoshop and what not are really fast.

[hobier]

its a discussion for mac n pc both which would be best for design purposes......if u think mac is best then post the configuration same goes for amd lovin ppl.

hey Got3n? can you post the configuration of your rig ???

[cq_]

personally when having many windows open at the same time, OSX handles them way nicer. expose and the fact that each window is its own seperate entity...

with windows xp, photoshop images are limited to within the "photoshop application" where in os x you can do whatever you want with all the windows...

i don't know if that makes sense, but if you have used both systems i think you would understand...

[Colonel_Angus]

ADOBE suite (photoshop, indesign, illustrator)

None of these apps are 64-bit yet on either platform.

i wanna know which would be best for print publishing work.

A PowerPC based PC will be faster than an x86-64 based PC at multimedia work because PowerPC CPUs have faster vector execution units than x86 CPUs.

AMD or a MAC

That should be "AMD or a Mac". you really make yourself look ignorant when you call it a "MAC".

[hobier]

this is POWER MAC config im aiming at i dont know about the display, APPLE display are just too expensive can anyone suggest a better alternative:

? Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5

? 1GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 2x512

? 160GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm

? ATI Radeon 9600 XT w/128MB DDR SDRAM

? 8x SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)

? Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English

? Mac OS X - U.S. English

I dont know about the AMD config, still need help on that

[Japlabot]

Dual Opteron 275s (2x 2.2Ghz AMD Dual-Core CPUs = 4 Total Cores) with More than 2x 1024MB (More than 2GB) of RAM

or

Dual PowerPC G5s (2x 2.5Ghz IBM Single-Core CPUs = 2 Total Cores) with more than 2x 1024MB (More than 2GB) of RAM

[SojIrOu]

you might want to get more ram like 2gig (4x512mb) or 4gig (8x512mb or 4x1gb) but you should buy the ram from other vendors and not apple since its cheaper.

you could get the dell 24" monitor or 20" monitor

[hobier]

im located in middle east and dell monitors arent easily available......i just checked out.....there are sony, viewsonic, samsung, lg......... are CRT monitors any good ?

[Deanobear]

Either AMD or Mac would be a good choice, but do tell about the bad experience with Intel... ;)

I do the same kind of work that you're planning to do, and to be totally honest, either platform would be fine. It depends on what you're comfortable with, and with what your clients use the most.

Both platforms have the same software, and as far as 64bit goes... forget it, I seriously doubt that Adobe will release 64bit versions of their software (in the near future) for either platform, when 32bit versions would run faster in either environment. Even Apple has said that their 64bit environment in Tiger is for command prompt apps and that even though Tiger is 64bit, the UI is still part of the 32bit system. The same with XP, you might find a performance degredation using 64bit XP with 32bit apps.

I'd concentrate on a fast processor, great video card, FAST hard drives and lots of ram. Btw... what kind of files would be 700mb to a gig?... getting them run out to film would be a nighmare and costly...

Hope my 2 cents worth helps :)

[SojIrOu]

hmm get either samsung or viewsonic and 20inch or more. well crts have better colour accuracy and are able to display mulitple resolutions. but they have greater eye strain and consume more power. lcds have dvi, perfect geometry, take up less space. so its up to you to decide which you prefer. a good crt would be the LaCie ElectronBlue

[maxsquared]

If you use adobe suite, I really suggest you get a Mac, in my studio, we used have two powermac, with adobe, it runs really much faster on mac, and mac is much easier to operate.

Then my stupid manager wanted avid, then we changed to one intel xeon and one athlon fx, ye, the avid seems better then final cut, but photoshop runs much slower.

My home computer is a powerbook, compare to my flatmate's centrino adobe runs faster, colour is more correct, but macromedia doesn't run well on mac.

[dougal.s]

I use my iBook for lots of photoshop and illustrator work. It runs them perfectly. Only complaint is that I could do with more memory.

Am considering getting a powermac, but would need to take on more work than I can at the moment due to Uni. Is over in a few weeks, so we'll see how things are going then. :)

In reply to what Hanxu said about macromedia apps, I would say they run just as well on the mac. In fact, I get extremely annoyed with them running slowly on the 3.4Ghz P4 one of my clients has!!

Dougal.

[Roomiestdruid]

My vote really really really goes for the Mac in this case. I've been working in and out of some major blueprint restoration in which Im dealing with massive, high res, uncompressed images. While the "old" Macs I have will open these files with ease, it took several resolution-drops to get the images to even open on my AthXP machine. Maybe it was just an isolated, odd event and had I played with it more things would have worked. But I think that for really big files, the Mac is gonna have an edge, just because of the way it handles memory.

[DrunkenMaster]

Consider it carefully. Try out OS X and see if you like it more than Windows.

For me, I have an Athlon 64 3000+ w/ 1 GIG of RAM. Its supposed to make me 'more' productive, but I find Windows holds me back. The software isn't as powerful in some cases (iCal kicks Outlook), the Unix stuff kicks the DOS shell..... I find I'll be more productive with OS X.

Its a purchase I regret making and will be selling my PC.

[the evn show]

At my current job I'm using a Dual Xeon 2.8 with 2GB of RAM. It belonged to one of the other designers who switched for a powerbook. At my last job I used a dual 1.42 GHz G4 with 1.5 GB of RAM (or maybe it was 2 GB?I can't remember anymore). My current system has some sort of flashy SATA 10k RPM hard disks in it, my old one ran SCSI drives. The machine on my desk is woefully inadequate but that's another thread.

The faster computer?and in terms of raw number crunching power my PC is much quicker than my old Powermac in most circumstances?has made me less productive. Part of it has to do with the software I take for granted on a mac not being available on a Windows PC (skedit, the command line environment, applescripts), and part of it has to do with the general clunkiness (IMO) of the Windows GUI. "Business Instant Messenger" is completely unintuitive compared to Adium or in the case of 10.4 iChat. Photoshop's stupid MDI interface is a pain. Zend Studio seems crappier on Windows than on any other platform, but then it's always been a pig. Task management is nightmarish: I find the taskbar completely lacking for multi-monitor window management, etc. etc. etc.

For all the "problems' I have with the PC I use, the one thing that has never really been an issue is the performance. When I'm working the slowest part of the equation is almost always me. If you gave me a 10,000 GHz system I wouldn't be able to work any faster: creative work goes at it's own speed and for me a dual 1.25 is capable of getting the job done.

If you work is paying for your machine then use whatever you enjoy using. I'll be switching over to a powermac reasonably soon - not because it's faster but because it means I'll get more work done in a day. Most of the other people on my team will be moving to macs over the next year, so will the systems department but there's only 3 of them. Developers still prefer the Dell workstations they've been on: I'm not sure what their reasoning is - but they're smart people so I'm sure they know what they're doing.

[spartan232323]

Guys, we need people with experience with top-of-the line Macs AND top of line PCs with AMD processors.

[the evn show]

Guys, we need people with experience with top-of-the line Macs AND top of line PCs with AMD processors.

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If you really want I'll go over to one of the developers and ask to borrow their machine (they use HP 9300s) but it's not going to matter one bit. As long as the computer doesn't run OS X I'm not going to be as productive as I am on a Mac. Likewise, if you sat one of those guys in-front of a powermac or sun workstation they'll get less done than if you gave them a Windows XP machine.

Once you pass a certain point?a point that varies from person to person & job to job?creative work stops being hardware bound. The software is what really makes the difference, so when money is not a concern you should always use what you like.

[yayo]

Either would be good. I switched from PC to Mac for graphic/web/publishing and the added benefits of Mac OS.

[LaNcom]

I'm using only a dual Opteron myself - a friend of mine is into pre-press and design, he has a dual G5 at work. He prefers to work at my machine for it's way faster compared to the Mac (according to him - makes sense, the Opteron is faster according to most benchmarks), and he currently tries to convince the company he works at to replace all Macs with Athlon64 and Opteron systems (depending on the workload). He mostly uses Mirage instead of Photoshop (which is available for Windows and OSX), and the Mirage OSX port is somewhat premature, but he also tells me all the time how crappy Adobe software like Illustrator and Indesign performs on the Mac compared to the Opteron. He's not really into PC's, just wants to get his work done, and he doesn't like OSX for it's 'toyish' look and feel. He doesn't really like Windows, too, used to use Linux-based workstations where he worked before, but that's a different issue - at least, on an AMD64 system, you'll have the ability to use Windows _and_ Linux (with Xen and future CPUs even at the same time, without a performance penalty - and yes, I know that it's possible to use Linux on a Mac, but there's no commercial software - like VivaDesigner, Softimage|XSI or Apples very own Shake - for Linux/ PPC)...

One thing also to consider is that Adobe officially stated that Windows is the platform of choice for their software, and due to the recent Macromedia deal, there might be no other alternative soon!

[Bluetooth]

These kind of threads are pointless. If you post it here then you are going to get a biased reply (on the mac side) and if you post in the windows forum then you will get a biased reply (from windows users) lol. btw... get a mac. ;)

Josh

[eAi]

I've used both for graphics work. I use a PC on a day to day basis, but I've used macs extensively, and I'd use them more if I wasn't so cheap ;) I'd go with a good mac, if not just for the operating system :)