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Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:24:53 -0400
From: <chris@mettle.com>
To: After Effects Mail List <ae-list@media-motion.tv>
Subject: Re: [AE] iMac and AE
In-Reply-To: <list-4682801@media-motion.tv>
References: <list-4682801@media-motion.tv>
Message-ID: <16eaa149fab6b64b4c646eafcdb88517@mettle.com>
User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/0.6

Rob, we are so torn on this right now. We use both WIN and Mac set-ups. 
Most of the Mac Pro's are 3.1 or higher.

Not a fan of iMacs at least not for what we do at Mettle. What we have 
done in the past little while is to beef up our Macs. More RAM, faster 
HD's and better GPU's.

I no longer see a compelling reason for us to stay with Macs BTW. Not 
price and certainly not performance. Drivers for GPU's are better on WIN 
(generally). CUDA is NVIDIA only as you know. They have gone open source 
with it but I doubt that ATI/AMD would adopt that any time soon.

I run one WIN set-up with very similar spec to the current iMac and it 
set me back about $1,250.00 - it performs just as well on the CPU side 
and even better on the GPU side of things than the iMac - so bang for 
the buck is definitely there. I can also upgrade the GPU etc.

Gone are the days of NT... WIN 7 is pretty solid. As solid as MacOSX.

So unless Apple comes out with an incredible offering soon, I think we 
will be going the HP, Boxx or custom PC route in the future.

HTH
Chris
mettle.com

>>>>>> a workhorse, is showing its age and is ready to slide down
>>>>>> to the #2 spot in my workflow. But with no new pro
>>>>> offerings
>>>>>> from Apple, I'm wondering if a top end 27" iMac will fill
>>>>>> the bill. My biggest concerns are with heavy duty AE
>>>>>> rendering and to a lesser extent no CUDA capability.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I hope to have a better idea of where things are headed
>>>>>> after next week.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Rob Birnholz
>>>>>> Absolute Motion Graphics, Inc.
>>>>>> Longwood, Florida
>>>>>> www.absolutemotiongraphics.com [1]
>>>>>>