Switch from mac G5 (PCIx) to a PC?

[Tiki King]

I have only owned Macs. However I am considering buying my first PC to run my PT HD2 PCI-x system.

I have accepted the fact that I have to spend at least $2500 to upgrade my G5 to a new Mac Pro. The increase in power will be worth every penny. But I can't justify spending $2700 for new digidesign cards that do not add one once of power to the system. I am also not going to spend $1700 on a Magma chassis for the same reason.

Then it hit me. I can buy a PC with the same Xeon chipset for about $1000. It will have the same power for 1/5 the money.

Honestly I would prefer to stay with Apple. I was hoping that digidesign would offer more for $2700 like plugins or HD2 to HD3. Something so I could call it an upgrade rather than a crossgrade.

Has anybody done this. How easy is it for an Apple fanboy to switch to a PC? I assume all my plugins will still work. I am researching it now. I will mostly be recording music. I will have to use an email program. As I often email my work. I will have to network and use iDisk? Does the PC use AIF's?

Is there an unforeseen problem?

[kinghand]

First, the HD core card of PCIX and PCIe is different. The DSP chips on them is not the same, so the PCIE HD core card have more calculate ability than PCI X core card, it has the same calculate abiliy as HD Accell card. But of course, it doesn't worth $2700.

And I have to say, It's not a good idea to switch your system now, because you have seen here, Protools 8 is not stable recently. I'm waiting for the newer version that can fix those problems. Before that, I'm using hackintosh right now.

[tonygoodall]

I was thinking of going the other way (from windows to Mac), with HD2 PCI-X as well.

There's a few facts I can tell you that might help:

1. Dell T7400 machines are very cheap refurbished from dealers or used from ebay, they are at least MacPro spec (Mind you, Mac Pros are cheap refurbished from Apple)
2. There is a cheap expansion case that works OK mostly that can take 2 PCI-x cards, so you could go to MacPro and use it as a fix. Not as high-spec as Magman, but about $300-400. There is another that is basically a PC case with the same slots in it. See the Mac TDM forum, I posted some pieces in it
3. If you are familiar with windows, could be worth trying - it's a low-cost trial. Almost all my plugins are win/mac. I cannot advise on how easy you will find the change. I expect you will need a windows guru on call to help for the first year.
4. Regardless of some Apple fans' opinions, the upmarket PCs are serious professional platforms, which are used to deliver large multi-machine applications to banks, retail etc. I personally worked on a project to deliver all the Middleware entirely on PCs for a large UK bank (By day, I am an IT architect/analyst). The big boys use Sun, IBM, etc and UNIX or Windows for real projects ($10m - $500m). I have never heard of anything being delivered on a Mac, the large-scale tools are not really available on Macs (e.g. MQ, Oracle only in name). Mac's niche is workstations, and after seeing the iPad speech, I wonder if Apple will care about that much in future - they now make all their cash from phones and ipods. I do think that Digi and the plugin guys work harder to make DAWs work on the Mac, but there is nothing inferior about Windows when used properly. I just don't know how flaky PT8 is on Macs, Pt5 - pt7 were all rock-solid for me on windows, but since I started using all the large RTAS plugins, everything got less stable - looking at the Mac TDM forum, I am unconvinced that Macs are trouble-free when loaded heavily this way, so at the minute I am sticking with windows
5. No Logic Pro on Windows (btw I am sure Microsoft would be taken to court if they bought Adobe and closed it's Mac product line)

You can get a used T7400 for around £1000 with 1 CPU
If you like it, put 2 fast Xeons on it, with Win 7 ultimate 64 bit and 8-16GB Ram

otherwise - MacPro 8 core and one of:

1. Magma chassis
2. Cheap chassis
3. Go to LE and sell the cards. I have investigated this, and depending on your use of IO, this may work, my main dealer has several clients who have done this. With Digi 003 I think you can run logic too. On my 8 core, 75% of the work is in the PC's CPUs, not HD. Of course, there are latency, track count and IO limits in LE, but if most of your work is VIs, everyone seems ot say Logic on an 8 core is better anyway

I can't see the market for $$$$ DSP cards persisting anyway, so at some point, I assume a fast host is the answer, with just an IO card (or fast firewire). For my home studio, I can't see the benefit of a $4000 crossgrade to PCIe.

Cheers
Tone

[Tiki King]

I have a PCIx Accell card. From what I have read it is the same as the new PCIe card. I also run trouble free for years on my HD2 system with PT7.

Ultimately when I upgrade I would like to have a powerful, reliable PT HD system. I record as well as program and mix. I also work with video.

I have zero interest in leaving the PT HD environment. It works to well for me and my business. But it is time to upgrade.

Is PT8 more unreliable on the PC?

Does PC see Aif's?

[kinghand]

Is PT8 more unreliable on the PC?

YES

Does PC see Aif's?

yes

[Third Eye Studios]

Originally Posted by Tiki King

I have a PCIx Accell card. From what I have read it is the same as the new PCIe card. I also run trouble free for years on my HD2 system with PT7.

Ultimately when I upgrade I would like to have a powerful, reliable PT HD system. I record as well as program and mix. I also work with video.

I have zero interest in leaving the PT HD environment. It works to well for me and my business. But it is time to upgrade.

Is PT8 more unreliable on the PC?

Does PC see Aif's?

PT8 is running stable here. We're running HD2 PCIx on Windows 7 64bit with no issues.

Aiff's are no problem.

[Brandonx1]

Originally Posted by kinghand

Is PT8 more unreliable on the PC?

I'd say stability is the same and performance is better on a PC.

[GtrDude]

" I'd say stability is the same and performance is better on a PC. "

I agree.
Stability the same but a much better performance on the PC.

[AREED]

Do you think avid/digi will drop XP anytime soon?

[Eric Seaberg]

Originally Posted by Tiki King

Is PT8 more unreliable on the PC?

Does PC see Aif's?

We've got 6 ProTools systems on Macs and one on PC. They're all running PT8 and are all, generally, without issue.

Going from a Mac to a PC, I can tell you one thing that will DRIVE YOU CRAZY! Every time you plug something new in, whether USB or whatever, everything on the system grinds to a halt as Windows needs to go find drivers for the device, EVEN IF YOU'VE USED IT BEFORE. There's also that issue of updates, updates, updates, updates almost every time you boot the system.

Of course, since you've posted this question on the PC forum, everyone's going to say it's more stable on a PC than a Mac. As far as ProTools is concerned, it's 50/50 to me... it's just all the other Windows stuff I hate that Mac users never have to deal with.

Something else to consider is all of the 'support' software you may be using. Toast, Jam, BarbaBatch, etc. It's a big jump moving to a new OS if you've been on something else for a long time.