Is it time to move to a desktop?

Hi,

I have a gen4 2.4 ghz 15" macbook pro, and use it mainly for 3d animation.

This machine is a replacement for a second generation MBP which died due to overheating. I've since bought a cooling pad.

However, even with this new machine, I've been noticing some things that seem to indicate to me that it may be time to move towards a desktop.

First, when I am doing my renders, my cpu sits at 100 percent. This I feel, is normal. However, due to the amount of information that is being rendered, (multiple frames of a movie), the computer sits at 100 percent for up to a few days. My last big project lasted a little over 2 days. During this time, the CPU climbed up to 83C, or about 180F, where it remained while it worked. This was with the laptop elevated, on a cooling pad. This sort of thing is what killed my last laptop.

The next thing, is the fact that I am not using the notebook as a notebook. It is constantly docked, connected to power, and hooked up to external monitors, HD's, etc. It got used portably maybe 4 times last year.

The next thing, is that I would like some more screen space. This means more monitors. I currently use a 27" screen connected to the MBP. There are precious few ways to add more screens to a laptop. I tried using some of the USB video cards, but the lag, and limited size of monitor I could drive through them eventually drove me crazy.

I found this:
Harmonic Inversion Technology - ViDock Gfx Mac
but $500 seems really expensive, for somthing that can be only used with mac laptops.

So, given these concerns, do you think moving to a desktop is a good idea?

It does sound like it could be time for you to upgrade to a Mac Pro.

If your 3D rendering software supports multiple core usage it should speed up your processing times no end!

Plus you could get two (or more) 30 inch displays on a Mac Pro to give yourself plenty of viewable space to work with.

I would move to a desktop especially since you are doing a lot of rendering. 2 Days for a Rendering is a long time and that doesn't sound healthy for your MBP.

-aj-uk

Yes, most of my programs do support multiple cores, and I know, that I would see an improvement there.


However, even if I sell the MBP, I won't have enough money to buy a MP for at least a year. I'm in college and money is tight.

I should also mention that the animation I do is not school or work related. Its a hobby, that I play around with because I've always been interested in it. So, moving to a desktop is not a necessity in that sense. I don't game much, but do spend a sigificant amount of time with the animation software.
I'd guess I spend at least 10-20 hours a week working with animation stuff.

I'm more worried about the time and the heat, as my first MBP died from the heat.

Was looking at G5's, as they're cheaper, but there would be a loss of power, the loss of intel, (one of my programs only runs on intel) and it seems so hard to find video cards that will work for them, and the video cards I can find are so expensive...

I bemoan the lack of a midrange, expandable tower in Apple's lineup.

Maybe it would be easier and cheaper to just upgrade my windows desktop...

Could you grab a Mac mini for $500 and just use that as your headless "render farm"? Create your project on your MBP set up, drag the file over, screen share into the mini and start rendering.

Obviously not ideal, but a lot cheaper than a 2k+ mac pro. And if it's not time-critical work it might be feasible.

-aptmunich

I could, and have thought about that, and actually have been offloading renders to my Windows PC, when it works.
It's a bit flakey. Aso, the pc doesn't have the full software set on it, and only has the render node software.
Rebuying all the software I have on the mac for the PC would cost around $600.

This was the reason I bought a better mac when I had the chance, as it made the price difference null.
So, moving to the PC for production would be expensive, and the mac renders faster.

The other bottleneck I am running into is not enough sdcreenspace while I am tryng to create the work.
I am often frustrated by not having enough room for all the windows I want accessible.
I either have to open/close a lot of windows/palletes, or shrink my work window down.
There are a lot of large graphs used to control object perameters. I am already running an external monitor at 1920x1200.
The only step up, is a 30" monitor, and for that price, I could buy 2 more 24" screens and a video card to drive them, If I had a desktop.

if you go with a desktop you are going to have to go with a macpro. all of the other mac systems are really laptops with out batteries so there will really be no improvements.

-rusty

That's what I figured. Didn't really think there was any other way around it.

The decision to stick with mac right now is really hard, especially with the price/performance ratio of some i7 systems around.

yes i7 are much faster systems but everything is slowed down because of the operating system. my old laptop was a powerbook g4 667mhz and compared to my dell which was a 2.0 core duo with 4gb ram the powerbook was faster. the operating system made the difference. if you plan to build a system and turn it into a hackintosh than that is a very good way to go, other than that a macpro should be a much better choice.