Elliotjnewman said:
this thread seems to be turning into a bit of a war! All I wanted to say is that the G5 is performing really well, better than I predicted. Besides how long can you own until the next machine becomes available, if you wanted the fastest machine all the time then you would have to update every 3 or so months. I think coupled with OSX the G5 is a great choice for 3D these days.
You're also forgetting Lightwave, Cinema 4D, and perhaps a bunch of smaller lesser known names.
My biggest gripe is the selection of video cards, not the CPU. G4's weren't that bad, but what is it that was holding back the 3D crowd? Why isn't 3D DCC as big on the Mac as say DTP, Photoshop, illustrations, basically anything 2D, as well as motion video. Couple reasons I can think of:
1. OSX is still relatively young for an OS. Why is it that from 10.1 to 10.2 and then to 10.3 backwards compatibility in some software is lost? Why must we absolutely have to have a specific version of OSX to run certain software? Steve Jobs wants developers to embrace Cocoa, I can't blame him, he is a NeXT guy afterall. But when it comes to porting software, companies still prefer to stick to their C/C++ APIs. It's not that OSX is lacking in any of these development areas, I believe it's just a misconception among many developers. Whenever I see a discussion about Carbon, too often I hear the non-programmers go: *gasp* a Carbon app? It's not optimized for OSX! It's gonna be slow! They should have done it in Cocoa. It's all fluff, Carbon programs are every bit as good as Cocoa. The only major show stopper is the hardcore integration with the OS and ability to use certain services.
2. Software aside, the video card is the next obstacle. You can show me all the ATI 9xxx and Nvidia 6800 Mac video cards all you want, they are NOT professional video cards. Believe me it does matter. These typical cards we find available for Macs are gamer cards, although they can be used in 3D applications, a hardcore animator will tell you it's not good enough. I also want to point out that the Nvidia 6800 is still in very limited availability, furthermore you have to have a G5 PowerMac to use it. What happens to the G4 towers now? Disappear into oblivion? The best video card that I can find to put in a G4 tower seems to be an ATI 9800 Pro. I won't knock that card because it is good, but it is aging, and the part that really irks me is: that's the end of the line for the G4 towers.
I hate to draw another comparison between PC and Mac because I know I'll be stepping on toes, but hear me out. With a PC I have a wider array of hardware to choose from. This "control" and "integration" of hardware in the Mac platform is great - less hassles with hardware drivers, everything plugs in and plays - but it can be limiting.
There was promise for an ATI FireGL (a pro card) Mac Edition but I've yet to see or hear more about it, still holding my breath apparently.