Posted: February 22, 2012 Post subject: Mac vs PC stability
I Have been using VUE on Mac since VUE 6. I do a lot of heavily wooded scenes and a 1-2 minute animations. With Vue9 I was never able to upgrade from the release version, because when I did, my rendercows would stop working. Well now I am on VUE 10 and I can't even map a JPG to a terrain without VUE crashing. Are there people out there that have made the switch from Mac to PC? Is PC a ton better, or just a different set of problems?
Any input is welcome. My next set of problems will be building a PC to suit my needs if people push me in that direction, so any help there would be awesome too. I read one topic this morning that talked about how VUE only renders with CPU. I assume this means I can skimp on a GPU and my render times will be unaffected. But here is another question, where does somebody even find out that VUE only renders with CPU? Where is that reading material?
Thanks for reading, and thank you for any help.
-Josh
Mark, your problem is probably caused by an unsupported flavor of Jpg.
Would you please be kind enough to report your crash to tech support and send them the Jpg map that is causing the crash?
Thanks!
>>I assume this means I can skimp on a GPU and my render times will be unaffected.<<
I wouldn't skimp TOO much. If you're getting a laptop, DO NOT get one with the onboard intel graphic chipset, but rather the Nvidia or ATI.
Won't affect render time, no, but it will affect your sanity in trying to build a particular scene. The intel chips, even in the late model i5's and i7's are truly awful.
I had the opportunity of experimenting with one for a few minutes just prior to popping in a real video card into my desktop that I bought at the same time as the desktop (a luxury you can't do on a laptop). I just wanted to see how bad.
Differences between PC's and Mac's? Different problems although to be honest, deep down, most apps work virtually identical except when made my Apple, who I suspect intentionally makes inferior PC versions of the same product. I have a macbook pro next to me but prefer PC's the same way I have an iPhone4s but actually prefer Android with it's legitimate local file system and folders and whatnot.
Mac's and PC's DO tend to have some differences when writing out image files. Occasionally can crop up in JPEG and other file formats but I've never seen anything too strange that can't be fixed by some simple resaving.
There can be issues if for some reason it was saved in CMYK colorspace on a mac in jpeg/jpg format and windows may not like that, although I would think photoshop would have no issues, but who knows.
Eric which i7 are you talking about? I have the new 2600k and it smokes my old i7 6core. The only difference in machines is the mobo and cpu, same RAM HDD rig. Now at stock useage yes they are a bit subpar, but they come with a turbo switch that must be activated to see them work like they should. Stock they come at 3.4ghz, with the HT technology, but with use of a proper mobo with correct settings via the turbo unlock you get 4.5ghz per core. Also they run about 1/3 the price of the old series i7's.
Also as I mentioned before they have a gpu built into the cpu as well now, its not the same technology as the intel gpu built into the motherboard, its on the die itself of the cpu. I played Skyrim at high settings at about 80frames per second. Not the greatest, but hell the human eye only determines about 60fps so anything above that is all a hoax anyways. I'm guessing the one you ma have tried was a stock ettings, but these cpu's come unlocked with stock fans that are capapble of efficiently cooling them at 4.5ghz via the turbo mode.
Now about Vue only rendering to the cpu is sorta correct, but not completely. when I hit render all 8 cores fire up to 100%, depending on the assets in the scene though the Ram does slightly increase. More or less I see it be affected if you have dynamic population turned on, then yes memory becomes a major factor, otherwise it is mostly yes CPU. Do a simple test on a PC. Open the task manager, click the performance tab, then click render without dynamic on. watch what happens. Then try with dynamic on. Big dfference.
Was referring either generation, but mostly regarding the onboard GPU intel makes which is pure garbage. I doubt anyone in here is suffering through that pain however, but it can be an issue when getting some laptop mac's or PC's.
Keep in mind couple factors:
The 2nd gen i7's (like your 2600k, Christian) blow the doors off the first gen from last year. As you can attest to.
The mobile version's of i7's are much slower than comparable desktop i7's, not even so much the Ghz speed but they are simply slower chips all around.
So yeah, was really just talking to anyone getting a new laptop (I used to be a big laptop Vue user bu have now flip flopped back to a desktop). Don't get a laptop without a dedicated NVidia GPU. You can replaced just about anything in a laptop except the video card/chip and if you skimp on that you will truly regret it.
I couldn't justify an i7 just now but went the quadcore i5 route. We had just bought a house (major $$$ outlay), then we had just had a minor plumbing issue in the house (which turned into a $3000 issue), then I needed a root canal, etc etc etc... and a whole mess of expenses cropped up...then BOOM... my computer died. So was bad timing but I needed a new machine.
But going from a Core2Duo to just a 2nd i5, For me this boosted my rendering speed 6x's over my old Core2Duo.
My Core2Duo machine, at the time, came in around $2400.
New machine came in around $700.
I would never try to do any highend 3d work on any laptop, they just aren't solid enough in the first place. But I do quesiton one thing Eric. I know you are refering to intel's built in gpu system into mobo,s but did you know that now they have a fully DX11 capable architecture built into the new cpus that isn't that bad really? I mean yea i agree i wouldn't use it for 3d apps, ut I did test and run skyrim not on ultra but high end graphics on it and its really amazing how well they work. For real time stuff that's low poly and more material based its good, for our 3d apps no, its too much.
I just built this machine a few months ago, new case and all for just under $1100. The most expensive piece is my gtx 580, but i wanted true gaming power at the same time.
i7 2600k
24Gb Ram
Gtx 580
p67 Sabretooth motherboard
LG Blu Ray burner and new giant case.
All at the CompUSA off Northlake, the manager saw my DD hat and since his kid is going to a school we are working with he cut me a huge deal. $2400 worth of machine for $1100 plus they did the build right there in store so I didn't have to do the labor. Already had my 3d monitor and 24 colorsmart programmable HP monitors. Even though those new i5's are sick too.
All I know is as soon as I unpacked my machine and installed my initial software packages, for the heck of it, I tried poser, vue, skyrim and a coue other items. I have one of the 2nd gen i5's with the intel 3000 hd onboard video.
All of them performed terribly, with poser being actually almost unusable.
Plopped in the nvidia card I bought a few minutes later and was pleasantly surprised, especially with skyrim which I wasn't able run very high on my laptop. Ran it now at 1920x1080 with the highest detail (although dropped AA down to 4x sampling)
Guesstimate it's displaying 25 to 40 fps. Extremely smooth and crisp.
Oh I completely agree its in no way form a reasonable replacement for a separate GPU, but they are way better than the old fashioned on motherboard intel graphics was a few years ago. Its nice to see the technology adapting, would really be nice to see Intel team up with Nvidia to make a seriously kickass CPU-GPU chipset, I'm sure its in the future sometime to at least try.
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