Adobe offering 50% off to switch from Apple and Avid

robfilms said:
nektonic-

does the adobe suite work that much faster on a pc platform rather than a mac?

not to challenge or start a flame war, i just want to know.

but is that opinion anecdotal or backed up by testing?

thanks in advance to those who care to share.

be well

rob
smalltalk productions
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As far as I know, it all depends on what the specs for each machine are when comparing them. In my case, my Mac Pro is from 2007, meaning that if I were to build a new PC with the currently available and newer hardware, then it would be faster than my Mac Pro (and more cost effective as well). Now a brand new Mac Pro might be a different story. I could probably run the Adobe software on my current Mac Pro, but I'd like to keep FCP running on there and have the second machine dedicated to the Adobe stuff (mainly Premiere).

Also, I have heard that the newer versions of Premiere run faster on a PC, but I don't know how accurate that is or how much faster. I still need to do more research before I start buying hardware and software. I am just glad to know that some nice options exist and I'm glad that I was forced to start looking at alternatives. I've kind of had the blinders on being reliant exclusively on FCP for the last 3.5 years.
 
My VAIO i7 from last year seems to run Premiere better than my 2011 MacBook Pro. Part of this may be do to the fact that I have an NVIDIA 330M which I can get to work with the Mercury Engine. The MacBook Pro '11 has AMD.
 
I just put a PC together to run Premiere/AE, I'm pretty happy with it. Under $2K and it's better than anything I've ever used. Most days I edit FCP professionally in others' suites (Dual CPU Xeon Mac, 12 gig ram, pretty solid), but my personal system is now a new Premiere-based Windows machine and I'm completely happy with it.

I based my purchase decision on the (overly informative) benchmarks at:

http://www.ppbm5.com/Benchmark5.html

One of the nVidia-chipset-based 'CUDA' compatible cards is a must if you're trying to build a machine for max Premiere performance. Adobe has a list on their site of the compatible cards. You don't need an over-priced Quatro, one of the cheaper approved cards does a fantastic job.

Someone may correct me here, but I don't think there's a huge difference between the performance on similarly-spec'ed Windows vs. Mac machines. The difference is in the price of the price of Mac hardware vs bucket-o-parts-from Newegg.

Hope that helps, if you have any more specific questions holler at me.

-Kevin

P.S. What I'm creating with this new-fangled bundle of Adobe goodness: http://www.gwendolyndangerous.com :)
 
I run CS5.5 on an 8-core Mac Pro, but I "feel" that it runs faster on a PC. I am seriously considering switching my platform to PC but I'll probably wait until the next Xeon upgrade (August?)
 
I own the CS 5 Production Premium suite already but have not used Premiere once. I use it for the other programs. Mainly PS and AE. Many moons ago I used Premier, back before it was "Pro' and it was a mule, which is why I switched to FCP (2.0). Ever since Premier Pro got going with serious support for it, and a lot of praise, I've been tempted to switch. Looks like now's the time, since I already own it.

I also like the way Adobe's website works if you properly register the software. There's a lot of beneficial stuff in your own account section on their website. Updates, community sharing, etc. They really do seem to care about pros in this regard.
 
Just bought. Thanks for posting this. I had downloaded the trial and was just waiting to pull the trigger. Thank all that is excellent for this great forum!
 
Did someone go through the install process already? I am wondering if you need to enter a second key e.g. from your older final cut version or, if upselling from ae or premiere, that key instead.
 
Thanks very much for this alert. I use CS3 and FCP, but called and purchased Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium yesterday. I asked about the upgrade price and the guy on the phone was going to “look to see what he could do price-wise”, but since I have CS3 on two computers, I bought this without the upgrade and will load it into a new laptop. Hopefully familiarly with Photoshop will be useful when trying to learn the new video program.
 
billh said:
Thanks very much for this alert. I use CS3 and FCP, but called and purchased Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium yesterday. I asked about the upgrade price and the guy on the phone was going to “look to see what he could do price-wise”, but since I have CS3 on two computers, I bought this without the upgrade and will load it into a new laptop. Hopefully familiarly with Photoshop will be useful when trying to learn the new video program.
Click to expand...

You definitely qualify for the upgrade price if you own CS3 Production suite, but the upgrade cost right now is $100 more than the "new" price with the 50% off promotion. That will change on September 30th more than likely.

I've used Premiere Pro for a long time (well, since before it was Premiere "Pro") and with comparisons between Mac hardware and PC hardware, it really is just a matter of price. You can build or buy a similarly outfitted PC for about half the cost of a similar Mac Pro desktop. If you plan to do editing on a laptop and use Premiere Pro, your best bet is to go PC because all Mac laptops have AMD/ATI graphics and that will do nothing for you compared to a proper NVIDIA GPU (concerning Premiere Pro specifically).

Building a computer nowadays is just a jigsaw puzzle. There are more than enough resources and reviews out there to help you do it right. You can use resources like the Premiere Pro Benchmark website (user site, not affiliated with Adobe) to see what many users are putting into their computers and what kind of results they are getting.

The user forums are also full of help from other users who have built their own PC systems. And just recently, Todd Kopriva from Adobe produced a set of videos detailing this sort of stuff (how to build a proper PC, parts to choose, how it all works). It's a good starting point.

Again, I think a powerful Mac Pro desktop will deliver similar results, but at a premium price. And you'll want to buy the cheapest graphics card because you're gonna throw it away and put in an NVIDIA card.
 
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