Bagman Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 Hi, I am trying to decide which imac to get primarily for Vectorworks 2011 with which I need to do a fair bit of rendering. I can get one of the following for the same price, both come with 4GB RAM which I plan to increase to 12GB: Late 2009 2.8GHz i7 with 512MB video card. or Mid 2010 2.8GHz i5 with 1GB video card. Can anyone advise which would be the better option? Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment
monkey Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 go for the i7, the video card is only used for openGL, the main rendering uses the CPU, so i guess the i7 would trump the i5 in that department, someone correct me if im wrong Quote Link to comment
Christiaan Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 Assuming the i5 is quad core and the i7 isn't, I'd go for the i5. Quote Link to comment
monkey Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 i stand corrected.... Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted November 25, 2010 Share Posted November 25, 2010 I have a late 2009 quad core 27" i7 and I like it a lot for VW's. Quote Link to comment
Bagman Posted November 26, 2010 Author Share Posted November 26, 2010 Thanks for the replies. They are both quad core systems, so if the graphics card only effects OpenGL then I guess I will go for the i7. Is Vectorworks 2011 multi-core and/or hyperthread capable? Thanks Quote Link to comment
CipesDesign Posted November 26, 2010 Share Posted November 26, 2010 Vectorworks does not use multi threading but renderworks does. Quote Link to comment
Bagman Posted December 4, 2010 Author Share Posted December 4, 2010 I bought a Apple refurbished i7 2.8GHz and as a free bonus it came with an extra 4GB RAM (total of 8GB) and a 2TB HD instead of 1TB. I have now increased the RAM to 16GB. However, using Activity Monitor I was surprised to find VW2011 and CineRender only ever use about 200 - 500MB of RAM each but are using around 1 - 2GB of Virtual memory when I have around 14.5GB of free memory. Is this normal even under heavy rendering? Quote Link to comment
grant_PD Posted December 4, 2010 Share Posted December 4, 2010 operating system? Cinerender will only take on more ram if you are using a 64 bit processor. Quote Link to comment
Bagman Posted December 4, 2010 Author Share Posted December 4, 2010 I am running Mac 10.6.5. It doesn't seem to make any difference if I boot in 32 bit or 64 bit mode. Quote Link to comment
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