QuadCore .vs. APEXX 4 (dont kill me)

[kungfuelmosan]

hey guys now dont kill me and try to look at this unbiastly.

currently ive got a 1.8GHZ G5 powermac and im looking to buy a quad core aswell although im taking a shining to the BOXX Apexx 4 - 4 64bit AMD opteron processors with dual core each (and up to 64GB of DDR4 ram! and dual SLI), now u may guess as to what im going to put on it verry first thing ... lol.

its going to be for animation purposes only and i just love my mac so i dunno which to get based on power (im using maya + zbrush). keeping in mind ill still have a powermac to sufice my mac cravings.

gimme some pointers guys!

also i heard some speculation about a similar thing from apple, 4 dual core processors, will this be available any time soon and will it be as good as the apexx 4.

[kungfuelmosan]

holy #%^%$ i just saw how much they are, 27g's !!!,

ok new plan - whats the clear winner between a dual processor dual core BOXX pc as to the QuadCore

[FFL]

link?

[SpecMode]

Presumably this box (http://www.boxxtech.com/products/apexx4_specs.asp) is the one he's talking about. Four dual-core CPUs? Yipe.

To be fair, you can get at least two, probably three decently-equipped PowerMac G5 Quads for the price of one of these. Hrm.

[shell]

Would you actually put 64 GB in it? Holy $#!% just about says it all.

[Luca]

The Power Mac G5 is a great workstation, no doubt. The dual-dual core is a wonderful machine. But clearly, Apple cannot fulfill every possible market. Some people just need machines like the one you linked to. Apple does have the Xserve and the Xserve cluster node, but that's not exactly the same.

I don't think it's really fair or prudent to compare the Power Mac to the machine you talked about. It's certainly a hugely powerful box, but it's not in the same category.

[kungfuelmosan]

what do you mean? the APEXX is a workstation right, although the $27,000 price tab sort of puts it in a corner.

[Luca]

Well, yeah, that's basically what I meant. The APEXX may be a workstation like the Power Mac, but it's still in a different class just because of the price. I'm sure the performance is much higher than a Power Mac, but it's up to you to decide whether you need that performance and whether you can afford it. I'm sure there are better places to ask for advice on buying ultra-high-end workstations like that. I don't know much about them at all, nor do most people here.

[MCQ]

I agree with Luca - this isn't the best place for finding such information. Forums on digital media/content creation should be much better for this.

All I can do is post a couple links for you to look at, you can get a feel for the performance of both sets of machines. Cross reference the first article against the second for a Quad G5 / Dual Opteron comparison. Not sure if this helps with respect to animation suite performance though.

Quad G5:
http://www.macanimationpro.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=36312

Dual G5 vs. Boxx Dual Opteron 275
http://www.macanimationpro.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32951-1