[Fredrik Averpil]

Hi,

I'm using Maya on a daily basis in a Windows/Linux environment. I went to a local Apple reseller this week and gave Maya Personal Learning edition (v. 6.0) a test drive on the iMac G5 17" 1.8Ghz. I asked them to put 1GB of memory in it and while trying it out I found the processor intense stuff to work pretty okay. Also the graphics card will get an "okay" from me. It wasn't flying, but it was working nicely.
I spent about 30 minutes with it and I'm glad to say that for my personal projects (not as heavy as in feature film production, obviously) this computer is just perfect for me. I move around a lot and need a semi-portable, yet powerful computer.

I found just one odd, negative thing - when switching between different modes in Maya (vertices, faces, edges using the RMB) the iMac had to think for a second (there's no wait on PC). I'm not sure why ...since everything else went really smooth - it was weird and very frustrating. Anyone know if this is the way Maya behaves on an iMac?
Also, the price was a little high I think. After customizing the iMac with 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive the price went a bit bananas: $1.924.
It wouldn't be possible to put any 3.5" hard drive in the iMac I guess? That way I would save a lot of money.

I'll probably end up getting me one of these but I'm not sure. I could get a laptop running Linux for that same money and Maya would indeed fly. BUT! I'd have to keep struggling with the operating system, which I would rather not do. What should I do?
Please reply to this thread and share your experience with 3D applications on the iMac G5!

Kind regards,
Fredrik

[Captain Egotist]

Cool. I'm going to have to start to use Maya and Alias this year,.... but anyway, to save money buy the ram YOUSELF, ditton on the hard drive. Apple overprices all the options.

- Rob

[jamez bond]

Just got an iMac G5, 1gig RAM a little while back. I could download the Maya personal learning edition and have a play with it over the next days. I am using electric image universe for rendering on the mac, and Autodesk Inventor for mechanical modelling at work. I could take a fairly large assembly with me home and check it out on the mac...

Anything in particular you want to know about the performance (rendering times or stuff like that?)

[Fredrik Averpil]

I never got to do a lot of rendering since the files I brought couldn't be opened in the learning edition of Maya (they came from the real version and PLE can't import .OBJ) ...so a few observations on rendering would be great

I forgot to post this yesterday ...it's the benchmark results from a Cinebench (G5 optimized) benchmark (with processor speed set to "highest" in the power settings) :



CINEBENCH 2003 v1
************************************************** **

Tester : Fredrik

Processor : iMac
MHz : 1800
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : MacOSX

Graphics Card : nVidia FX 5200 Ultra
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

************************************************** **

Rendering (Single CPU): 177 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 170 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 481 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 720 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 4.22

************************************************** **



and to be able to compare, here's the same benchmark performed on my hyperthreading Pentium4 2.4Ghz with 512MB of RAM and equipped with nVidia Quadro2 Pro:



CINEBENCH 2003 v1
************************************************** **

Tester : Fredrik

Processor : Pentium 4
MHz : 2400
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : WinXP

Graphics Card : nVidia Quadro2 Pro
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

************************************************** **

Rendering (Single CPU): 204 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 206 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 773 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 1085 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 5.27

************************************************** **


There's no doubt that my graphics card outperforms the iMac's FX5200Ultra ...since my card was made for this kind of thing. When it comes to rendering, my PC renders about 15% faster than the iMac, which is okay I think.

[net]

please note that you are using Cinebench which is not G5 optimised. My iMac G5 1.6 is faster than what you have with your 1.8. The CPU is faster than P4 2400 also!