Which Mac for AutoCAD?
Discussion
My parents business is in the field of playgrounds and skartparks. They are looking for a machine to design playgrounds and skateparks. They are looking at Mac's which will be running:
• AutoCAD 2002 (LappCAD)
• AutoCAD 2010
• Cinema 4D - Release 10 – 3D visuals and animations
• Poser 6 – For creating 3D kids
• Adobe creative suite 3 (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Golive, Acrobat Professional 7.0) – Presentation and photo editing software
Will a high spec iMac do the job, or will it need to be a Mac Pro. My parents are looking not to go crazy budget wise!
Thanks
Stuart
• AutoCAD 2002 (LappCAD)
• AutoCAD 2010
• Cinema 4D - Release 10 – 3D visuals and animations
• Poser 6 – For creating 3D kids
• Adobe creative suite 3 (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Golive, Acrobat Professional 7.0) – Presentation and photo editing software
Will a high spec iMac do the job, or will it need to be a Mac Pro. My parents are looking not to go crazy budget wise!
Thanks
Stuart
iMac with plenty of RAM should be okay.
Otherwise, consider a Mac Pro with the nice 24" seperarte screen, and a Macbook Pro as a second machine / backup / for taking to clients to demo.
Apple often have deals on the Apple Refurb store.
If it's for teh business, consider how the reduced rendering time of a faster Mac Pro will balance out against its increased cost.
Otherwise, consider a Mac Pro with the nice 24" seperarte screen, and a Macbook Pro as a second machine / backup / for taking to clients to demo.
Apple often have deals on the Apple Refurb store.
If it's for teh business, consider how the reduced rendering time of a faster Mac Pro will balance out against its increased cost.
Now the current iMac (and all consumer machines, IIRC) logic board can accept 8 GB of RAM, and Snow Leopard uses it properly, it's definitely worthy of consideration even for 'Pro' workflows.
The CPUs are fast, you can get a quad-core iMac now, the LCD panels are high quality IPS units, so yeah, no problem.
Previously, with the RAM limits on the 'normal' Intel chipset, the Mac Pro (and Powermac G5s before that) were your only option if your workflow was considerably enhanced by large amounts of RAM. The Mac Pro can take 32 GB or some other silly number - I've got 10 GB in mine currently and an SSD, so it flies.
But now you can put 8 GB (which is a lot, and enough for a lot of 'pro' tasks) into the laptops and iMacs, the additional cost of a Mac Pro only really makes sense if you have specific graphics card needs, massive RAM requirements, or special I/O requirements (only one drive in the iMac) - or if you already have a lot of money invested in high-quality displays.
The top-end iMac with the quad-core CPU and the 27" IPS screen is a lovely piece of kit, and incidentally also includes a display *IN* socket, so you can use the iMac's top-quality screen from another machine. For a change, Apple are fitting reasonably competitive mid-range graphics cards into their iMacs now. In the bad old days, the consumer all-in-one iMac would always have a uselessly anaemic graphics card, and if you did anything that used the GPU then you really needed a Mac Pro and *then* pay extra to get something half-decent installed into the Mac Pro. But IIRC the current iMac range actually have decent graphics cards.
If you want maximum speed, then consider the following - get the top-end iMac from Apple but with base RAM and hard drive. Then get maximum RAM from Crucial, and an Intel SSD. Replace the RAM and drive yourself. The machine will be a rocket - the combination of SSD I/O performance and RAM caching will make the system 'feel' utterly instantaneous in response. The four cores can then chomp down on rendering tasks.
The same deal in a Mac Pro - aftermarket RAM and Intel SSD - is a LOT more expensive, but if you're doing a LOT of time-consuming 100% CPU tasks, the Mac Pro will be substantially faster. The Xeon chips are built for heavy lifting.
I always recommend an SSD if you're after performance - but don't take the option that Apple offer. It will be a Samsung OEM SSD, and their controller isn't the last word in performance. Intel's SSDs are significantly better than the competition, and worth going aftermarket and installing into your new Mac yourself. The extra performance is worth the additional hassle of dismantling the iMac in the first place. Of course, you can always purchase the RAM and SSD separately, and then pay an Apple tech (either at an indie Apple-approved service shop, or at an Apple store) to fit it for you. I can't advise on how easy it is to swap memory and hard drives on iMacs, as I've never owned any of the iMacs - and I remember that some models were known as 'piss-easy' to upgrade, whereas others were as fiddly as dismantling a Powerbook. I'm not sure how easy the *current* iMac is.
The CPUs are fast, you can get a quad-core iMac now, the LCD panels are high quality IPS units, so yeah, no problem.
Previously, with the RAM limits on the 'normal' Intel chipset, the Mac Pro (and Powermac G5s before that) were your only option if your workflow was considerably enhanced by large amounts of RAM. The Mac Pro can take 32 GB or some other silly number - I've got 10 GB in mine currently and an SSD, so it flies.
But now you can put 8 GB (which is a lot, and enough for a lot of 'pro' tasks) into the laptops and iMacs, the additional cost of a Mac Pro only really makes sense if you have specific graphics card needs, massive RAM requirements, or special I/O requirements (only one drive in the iMac) - or if you already have a lot of money invested in high-quality displays.
The top-end iMac with the quad-core CPU and the 27" IPS screen is a lovely piece of kit, and incidentally also includes a display *IN* socket, so you can use the iMac's top-quality screen from another machine. For a change, Apple are fitting reasonably competitive mid-range graphics cards into their iMacs now. In the bad old days, the consumer all-in-one iMac would always have a uselessly anaemic graphics card, and if you did anything that used the GPU then you really needed a Mac Pro and *then* pay extra to get something half-decent installed into the Mac Pro. But IIRC the current iMac range actually have decent graphics cards.
If you want maximum speed, then consider the following - get the top-end iMac from Apple but with base RAM and hard drive. Then get maximum RAM from Crucial, and an Intel SSD. Replace the RAM and drive yourself. The machine will be a rocket - the combination of SSD I/O performance and RAM caching will make the system 'feel' utterly instantaneous in response. The four cores can then chomp down on rendering tasks.
The same deal in a Mac Pro - aftermarket RAM and Intel SSD - is a LOT more expensive, but if you're doing a LOT of time-consuming 100% CPU tasks, the Mac Pro will be substantially faster. The Xeon chips are built for heavy lifting.
I always recommend an SSD if you're after performance - but don't take the option that Apple offer. It will be a Samsung OEM SSD, and their controller isn't the last word in performance. Intel's SSDs are significantly better than the competition, and worth going aftermarket and installing into your new Mac yourself. The extra performance is worth the additional hassle of dismantling the iMac in the first place. Of course, you can always purchase the RAM and SSD separately, and then pay an Apple tech (either at an indie Apple-approved service shop, or at an Apple store) to fit it for you. I can't advise on how easy it is to swap memory and hard drives on iMacs, as I've never owned any of the iMacs - and I remember that some models were known as 'piss-easy' to upgrade, whereas others were as fiddly as dismantling a Powerbook. I'm not sure how easy the *current* iMac is.
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