I'm thinking of getting a Windows computer soon, in part to use A:M. I've been using it on a Mac, and I think it plays better on the Windows side.

I'm still debating between a laptop and a desktop. But in general, what's recommended in terms of hardware for:

- Rendering
- Real-time display
- Other factors in workflow, etc.

And is there a preferred version of Windows 7 for A:M?

I just got a new Windows7 PC... haven't tried A:M on it yet, but can't WAIT to make that purchase.

I am not a 'geek' that can go out and buy all the components to build a dream PC...wish I was... so instead I hike into Best Buy and lay my money down. My PC builder friends say I can get all the latest-greatest for half what you pay in a big-box store... but I did not spend NEARLY as much for this PC as I did for any of my old ones... this one is a name brand (HP) and all the guarantees warranted.

Windows7 so far has been very 'transparent' to me, who comes from Win XP. That is a good thing. Hooking-up printers, networks, tablets, software and USB stuff has redefined the concept of 'plug-n-play'.

I think you will thank yourself for going Windows.

from what i can tell, there are fewer issues with AM on windows, but renders are much quicker on a mac. i did a high def render on a mac in about 12 minutes, and the mac had less ram, processing speed and HDD, rendering the same video on the windows at VGA, and is supposed to take about 30 minutes or more

Wow... that is amazing DW... you are saying you rendered the same image on a Mac and a PC(?) and the Mac finished in 12 mins and the PC was 'supposed' to take over 30...? I'd like to see some further data on that. You gotta remember when you say 'PC" it could mean a $150 Acer... a $300 Dell... or a REAL computer, same thing on the Mac side... to be fair- compare similar machines...then consider how much you spend for each.

sorry, i'll post specs, course the mac has render issues, but i did render each frame as i watched it:

HD 720p, 3 econd clip using a streak emitter

MAC:
Macbook
Intel Process, 2.13 GHZ
2 GB RAM
160GB HDD
Cost: $1200 CDN (before tax)
Time to render, 12-15 minutes

WINDOWS
Render Size: VGA 3 Second Clip with a streak emitter
HP M8100n Media Center
AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor, 2.64GHX(something around that number)
3GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium
500GB HDD
Cost: $1200 (before tax)
Time to render: was at 33 minutes when I cancelled it, still had 1 more second of footage to render

Wow, GO MAC!
We used to do more 'benchmarking' on this forum...perhaps we could get back into it in a scientific manner. Everyone used to use the 'Buzz Lightyear' project off the CD, but it would be good to post a project that employs some of the more modern features and folks could DL it and render 1 second of animation and do a screen-grab of the per-frame times with a report on system spex.

Maybe all of us who run both Windows and OSX on the same Mac should do a benchmark test. I have both OSX and Windows 7 installed on my Mac. I'll install an older CD version on it and will see how much difference in speed I get the on same project.

doesn't having multiple OS's slow down the PC though? still, would be interesting to see. I'm thinking of racing my laptop against my desktop this time to see if it was a fluke that things rendered faster on the mac

I second Luuk's motion, I also have Xp as well as OSX on my MacBook. Is there a good scene to use as a benchmark?

Photoman

It will only slow down your computer if you use a program like Parallels and run both OS's at once. If you bootcamp (like me) windows on a seperate partition of your harddrive there is no speed differential.

Photoman

I'm using Bootcamp on my Mac too. I've run a short benchmark and the results are quite confusing. I've installed A:M 13.0l on the Mac on OSX and Windows 7. I've also rendered the same scenes on the PC I always work on with Windows XP this one has A:M 15.0g installed.

Details iMac: (OSX / Win 7)
3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 800Mhz DDR2 SDRAM

Details PC: (Win XP)
2.85 GHz Intel Q9550 Quadcore
8 GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 SDRAM

The first scene I've rendered was created with V13 (MrFeto) it has complex materials, decals, hair etc. The results where baffling:

iMac Windows 7: 16 passes 1280 x 1024 15:17

iMac OSX: 16 passes 1280 x 1024 12:56

PC Windows XP: 16 passes 1280 x 1024 1:35:56


The second test I did was the dragonfly scene, also build in V13. Here the results are almost the opposite:

iMac Windows 7: 4 passes 1280 x 1024 2:45

iMac OSX: 4 passes 1280 x 1024 7:11

PC Windows XP: 4 passes 1280 x 1024 3:09

I wonder what causes these huge differences. I'm not getting any wiser this way. The only obvious thing I've noticed it that A:M runs very unstable on the Mac. It crashed in the first 10 seconds I was using it, but this is an old version.

yeah, V13 aparently doesn't work on the newer macs and stuff, which is a massive pain in the bum

I'm thinking of getting a new machine - hopefully soon. I don't much like Macs probably because I'm simply used to the os of a pc - people say, "oh, try the mac, you'll get used to it right away." I have and I haven't. Maybe I'm just slow. It sounds, however, like macs have some real potential for rendering. I'm curious to see if anyone else does bench tests and what the results are.

I digress. Does anyone know if AM takes advantage of duel and quad core technology, or does it run on just one processor? My understanding (and please correct me if I am mistaken) is that the newer machines split up the equations for you rather than relying on the program to do the work; however, certain programs - photoshop for instance - are built for multiple processors and run faster because of it.

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving.

Doug

I went to Macs from Windows a while back because I got tired of dealing with viruses, spyware and other malware. In 2004 I lost a lot of work time when viruses took down my office computer. A few months later I lost a lot of personal time when two pieces of malware were fighting with each other and with me for control of my home computer.

Plus I liked Mac better for how it does things. For the most part, things that were a pain or required geek knowledge on XP were simple and easy on the Mac.

But I've found there are some things I want to do, but for which software isn't available on the Mac or doesn't work as well.

Windows 7 supposedly is about as easy on the user as the Mac is. I'm just hopeful that it's a lot less vulnerable to viruses, etc., than prior versions of Windows. Every time news went around about the latest virus -- one is going around now via Facebook -- I've been glad I paid the Apple Tax. Some of my friends' computers have been badly infected. They got slow to the point of uselessness, files were corrupted, Google searches were hijacked, etc.

As for A:M, the Mac version has to me always felt like an incomplete port of the Windows version, with the crashes, slower rendering speed (per benchmarks reported here), gibberish on one of the help features, errors in the technical reference manual, etc. Plus a lot of the useful add-ons either aren't available on the Mac or arrive significantly later than the Windows version. So if I'm going to continue with A:M, I think I'll be better served with Windows.

Athlons are not good number crunchers. The high end macs use the same xeon chips as the pc workstations so I would assume that they would render about the same. Since AM is still 32 bit, running on OSX, Vista 64, XP 64, or Windows 7 might actually render slower than an XP or win 2000 system that is natively 32 bit.

Big difference between the high end macs and workstations and PC workstations is basically the choice of video cards available. Nvidia only has very low end quadra cards or the very high end card for the mac and no choice for midranged cards. I wouldn't recommend ATI for any 3d work that uses Open GL.

AM is pretty resource friendly and definitely not finicky about high end video cards so most gamer cards may be just fine. Don't waste your money on a low end Quadro, many desktop cards can actually be faster since they will have more video memory.

If your planning on running dual monitors then also plan on a card that has at least 512 on it.
I have AM on a 22 and a 17, the 17 hold the animation and properties panels nicely

I gota chirp in here ,I have an ATI card running dual monitors and it works fine never had a problem with it