Good workstations for CAD, Adobe, and other graphics apps?

[groovin]

Our graphics dept is using fairly new Dell Precision workstations... all P4 3 GHZ with a gig of RAM and SATA HDs...

given the sizes of these files and the amount of work they put through them, they experience many problems such as app lock ups and overall slowness.

so i am wondering what anyone else uses for their graphics work. back in the day, apple was the best platform for this... is this still true now??

thanks

 

[ohnnyj]

As far as I am concerned Apples are still great for video and graphic editing (a la Photoshop, Final Cut, etc.) but as for CAD and 3D applications I would lean toward a high end A64 system. In fact you will be hard pressed to find Mac versions of most of the latter programs.

 

[halfadder]

Macs are great for Photoshop and video editing. But the 3D cand CAD work is more iffy.

For the average graphics person, Maya, Lightwave, or Cinema4D will work just fine on a Mac. But if you're a really high end 3D user, you willl want a 3D Labs Realizm, ATI FireGL, or NVIDIA Quadro. These cards are not available for the Mac. The best graphics you can currently get on the Apple G5 is just GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Another problem with doing 3D or CAD on a Mac is availability of software. There is no Mac version of Softimage or 3D Studio Max. There also is no Mac version of AutoCAD, Pro/Engineer, or CATIA. You basiclly have to use one of the following if you're on a Mac:

Maya
Lightwave
Cinema 4D
Strata
Blender (heh)
Form*Z

VectorWorks (very popular)
High Design
SketchUp (Neat!)
MacDraft

Cadintosh ($33)

 

[ohnnyj]

Originally posted by: halfadder
Macs are great for Photoshop and video editing. But the 3D cand CAD work is more iffy.

For the average graphics person, Maya, Lightwave, or Cinema4D will work just fine on a Mac. But if you're a really high end 3D user, you willl want a 3D Labs Realizm, ATI FireGL, or NVIDIA Quadro. These cards are not available for the Mac. The best graphics you can currently get on the Apple G5 is just GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Another problem with doing 3D or CAD on a Mac is availability of software. There is no Mac version of Softimage or 3D Studio Max. There also is no Mac version of AutoCAD, Pro/Engineer, or CATIA. You basiclly have to use one of the following if you're on a Mac:

Maya
Lightwave
Cinema 4D
Strata
Blender (heh)
Form*Z

VectorWorks (very popular)
High Design
SketchUp (Neat!)
MacDraft

Cadintosh ($33)

That's actually a bigger selection than I thought, but the whole video card limitation is a big one IMO.

 

[halfadder]

There are a few more 3D and CAD apps as well, but these are the most common general puprose apps.

Yeah, the video card limitation could be a huge problem for many professionals. The GeForce 6800 Ultra and Radeon X800 XT are all the higher a Mac user can currently go. Fine for games and for light duty CAD work. Plenty fast enough for designing a house or making some sort of animation for your TV show. But if I had to, for example, design a cruise ship or make the next Pixar movie, I would want something like the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 or 3D Labs Realizm 800, and those cards just aren't available for the Mac.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: groovin
Our graphics dept is using fairly new Dell Precision workstations... all P4 3 GHZ with a gig of RAM and SATA HDs...

given the sizes of these files and the amount of work they put through them, they experience many problems such as app lock ups and overall slowness.

so i am wondering what anyone else uses for their graphics work. back in the day, apple was the best platform for this... is this still true now??

thanks

If it is the P4 system, they bought the low-end. Sounds like budget issues. Apples have been caught and the PC realm has many choices as Halfadder has listed.

Do you know if they have more than one drive in the system? Some apps like scratch drives, some work better if OS/Programs are on one drive and media files are on another. If they had been serious about the machines, SCSI 320 still does beat SATA in raw power when using the right combinations. It just is not cheap. Some of the apps seriously benefit from duals.

But, usually the best fix is to make sure that all of the patches have been applied. They just may be out of step. Missing ppp patches and older video drivers are usually the #1 cause of instability.

 

[ribbon13]

Dual opteron beats apple and intel in photoshop.

look at my rig for a real kick ass graphics workstation.

 

[groovin]

great information guys, thanks!