Is Mac better or a Full fleaged Pc is better for Animation?

[Smooth_Criminal]

Hi guys!
I am Smooth Criminal. (U can call me Smoothie) I am presently doin 3Ds Max 6.0 and later will take Game Devolopment as a career. I presently hav a
P4 1.6, 512 SD RAM, Geforce 5600XT and a 40Gb Seagate hard disk. I want to know whether a Mac system tht is a Power Mac G5 running at 2.0 Ghz or the other one running at 2.5 Ghz with duel processors. But these systems cost 2000$ to 2500$ and the amt of RAM and the Graphic Card present in the sys is not satisfactory. Sure Mac works like butter when it comes to animation stuff But again I will hav to take out another 1.2k for the monitor. BUt I am also a Gamer. And, I was also thinking about a Intel P4 540 3.4 Ghz processer, Asus 915 MoBo, 1 Gb DDR RAM, a Geforce 6800 GT a Western Digital 160 Gb HDD, Along with these I can also get a good LCD monitor, Mouse, Keybooard, Cabinet etc etc. Wht do u ppl say I should prefer, Mac or a PC.
P.S: PC with even more better config?

[Rolf_DeWolf]

If you're into gaming, I suggest you stick with PC. As far as I know 3Ds Max only works on the PC, and I've worked on Mac and PC alike and to be plain honest, there isn't much difference in speed (I've worked on G4's and G5's) when animating or working with graphics (to the touch of course, I didn't measure the speed). Mac's do tend to crash less often, but have the nasty habit of running out of RAM (and then you have to assign more memory to the programme).

But when you have a dedicated PC (this means, only the software you need, and NOT plugged in to the internet), it won't crash, and remain very stable for a long while. I prefer a PC, even after working on both of them. PC's are also more flexible in upgrading. When your G4 is last year's thing, it IS last year's thing and stays that way, you can't upgrade the hardware (as far as I know anyway).

Hope this helps!

[Khaos]

You can soft mod that 6800GT to a Quadro4000.

http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=18

[skinnylizard]

or you could wait for the dual Athlons coming at a store near you.

This June.

[beeblebrox]

From what you've described, a PC is definitely your best bet. The PC is better suited for games, and 3d Studio Max won't run on a Mac at all.

Also, Flash, in case you want to use it for animation, runs much better on a PC. I have Flash on both systems and there's no comparison.

[kdiddy13]

I'll come clean and preface this by saying I really prefer PC's, but that's because I know how to use them much better than Macs. If I were going to be doing serious editing, I would buy a Mac just so I could use Final Cut. Otherwise, I doubt I'll ever buy anything but a PC (and Premiere Pro isn't all that bad).

Back about 10 years ago it used to be clear cut, you needed a mac to do multimedia. Now it's almost not worth arguing about.

I was just talking to a friend in compositing and he was telling me of some informal tests he did between a Mac and a PC (sorry I don't have specifics other than it was a new top of the line G5 vs. a hefty PC, so take it with a grain of salt):

Shake:
- If shake was generating all of it's own imagery (ie. no imported images) it was about 2x as fast on the mac.
-As soon as images were added it was about 2x as fast on the PC

After Effects
-Same speed differences as in the Shake test

Maya
-My personal experience has been that Maya doesn't work very well on the Mac (speed wise it's significantly slower on the Mac on similarly priced machines). It works, but it tended to crash more, and was much slower, especially with real time lighting and texturing.

However, many times these speed differences are all but nil when it comes to the average, non-power user.

Basically, if you're doing 3d, I'd strongly suggest going with a PC. There's just more tools and support at the moment. Many use Macs and do fine, but the average person will have much better luck with a PC and 3d.

If you're doing 2d, get what you're most comfortable with. The speed differences on Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. are negligible (exept Flash apparently). If you want to spend the time you can get some pretty powerful PCs for a fraction of a high end Mac, but if you can't stand PCs or don't know how to use them, you'll be happier spending the cash on a Mac.

I always tell friends and family, look at your friends and co-workers. What are they buying? Get what they have. What are you comfortable using? Get that. Because when something goes awry (and they, mac or PC, always do about 5 hours before your deadline) you'll have more support when it needs fixing.

And from your description it sounds like you're pretty knowledgable when it comes to PC's. I'd stick with it. I doubt you'll find many advantages to switching flavors now.

How's that for a wishy washy answer?

[presto]

PC is better.

for 3D if you use Maya use Maya on Linux on IBM PC hardware. It is really fast on Linux. Especially when you render. Linux is also less prone to crashes. Shake is also available for Linux and work great on it.

For every other software Windows on PC is fine. Only have tons of RAM and don’t connect to the net from your workstation.

[matt2001]

Its not going to matter in less then a year cause Macs will be running on Pentiums. :p

[grafikdon]

Never touched a mac so I wouldn't know.

[Daniel Poeira]

Its not going to matter in less then a year cause Macs will be running on Pentiums. :p

Only if you buy an Intel-Inside machine built and sold by Apple Computers Inc., which will probably cost much more than an average PC with at least the same processing power.

Unless you're a pretty good hacker with a lot of free time...