imac or hackintosh? 3D / Audio

[nicorojas]

I finally decided to replace my trusty Powerbook, as it revealed itself unable to handle some plugins in Cubase, during my band recording sessions.

The thing is, my wife does 3D animation in Maya and StudioMax in Windows. She currently have a Dell Inspiron (Core Duo 1.8) with a Nvidia Quadro card (one of the cheaper ones). She does not move much, so actually there is no need for a mobile computer.

So, we wanted to replace both laptops with a desktop (I've already have a macbook air for office work). The new iMacs just arrived in Chile, but the only one with a decent price is the base model (Nvidia 9400M). The next model is nearly US$400 more.

My other option is a hackintosh (as per the lifehacker guide). One with a Quad Core 2 Duo, 2 500Gb hard drives, and Nvidia GT9800 GTX+, plus a 23" monitor (not nearly as nice as the imac screen, though) is pretty much the same price. Using a less stellar processor and video card would lower the price.

I like much more the form factor of the iMac and the assurance that all my software will work without the glitches associated to a hackintosh, however, I'm not sure that the 9400M would be enough for my wife work. She doesn't do complex stuff at home, but she wanted to be sure that everything will work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[charliex5]

Of course getting an iMac will give you a much better experience than a hackintosh. If you do decide to go the hackintosh route I suggest looking into an i7 processor. Check out Insanely Mac, there are dozens of tutorials on how to do it. For the same price (possibly less) than the Lifehacker guide you can get an infinitely more powerful machine.

 

[roadbloc]

I'd advise iMac. If you want to go cheap... Hackingtosh by all means, I couldn't care less, but you sacrifice your product support, and Apple can stop supporting your hardware at any time, preventing you from upgrading OS, which may stop you from running software in the future.

Think long and hard before hacking OS X onto a PC. It may seem a cheap way to begin with, but you could soon have a perfectly good machine, that is useless for what you want to do with it. Hackingtosh breaks the EULA... so if Apple try and stop you, you don't have the right to complain.

The decision is yours, I hope you make the right choice.

 

[nicorojas]

but will the nvidia 9400m be enough for maya and studio max?

 

[roadbloc]

but will the nvidia 9400m be enough for maya and studio max?

http://download.autodesk.com/us/qualcharts/2010/maya2010_qualifiedgraphics_mac.pdf

Yes. The above link should help you decide which iMac you want.

 

[nicorojas]

http://download.autodesk.com/us/qualcharts/2010/maya2010_qualifiedgraphics_mac.pdf

Yes. The above link should help you decide which iMac you want.

I did read that document, however, in the cgtalk forums some guys said the 9400M it may have problems with "complex shaders" and with "viewport". 3D is not my area of expertise, neither is maya, but when I told my wife about this, she asked me to find out exactly what the problems would be.

If the problem is only speed, we will go the iMac route.