Should I switch to Windows?

Jaime Valles

Jaime Valles

Veteran
Hello, all.

I love my Mac. I have a MacBook Pro Retina 15" (original 2012 model) maxed out in RAM and SSD. I've been using it for the better part of 3 years to edit HD footage using Premiere Pro CC.

It's slow.

When I'm working on projects the playback often becomes choppy and stuttery, and this increases the longer I work. I suspect it's due to overheating, but it's becoming difficult for me to meet client deadlines using this equipment, so I'm going to upgrade my editing station.

Let's say my budget is between $1500 and $2000 (not including a monitor).

A Mac Pro is EXPENSIVE. Also, it's OLD (released December 2013) so new ones should be just around the corner. Maybe.

A new 15" MacBook Pro won't have NVIDIA graphics, which means I can't use CUDA in Premiere, so I doubt I'll see significant speed gains. Plus, I may face the same overheating issues (if that's even what's happening to me now).

An iMac 5K that's fully loaded to the degree that I'd want is also EXPENSIVE, and I'd be afraid of overheating like with my current MacBook Pro (why do they keep making the damn thing skinnier every time? Add some fans in there!)

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm seriously considering switching to a Windows desktop. Am I an idiot? Am I finally seeing the light? I realize this is like asking which religion is better, but I'm not very familiar with the world of Windows (especially post Windows 8) so I'm not sure what I should do. OSX has treated me well for over 10 years, so I'm nervous about switching. But I'll still be using Adobe Creative Cloud for almost everything I do, which looks the same on either platform, so it shouldn't be too different once I'm editing (except much faster than my current laptop).

Thoughts? If I do switch to Windows, what should I buy? I am comfortable building my own desktop, but if there's a better deal on a turnkey solution, I'd consider it as well. So, what processor should I buy? Graphics card? RAM? I'm not up to speed on the latest PC components.

Also, I once tried going the Hackintosh route, but it was way too finicky for professional work, IMO. I need a computer that delivers solid results. Hackintosh is not an option for me at this time.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
Kinda in the same boat. I love my Macs. They are all great for what they do. Mac is typically under powered. Even the new Mac Pro is "decent." Its not mind blowing for an $8K+ computer. The iMac is really not even an option. It all really comes down to Skylake. Then we are all playing the waiting game. Spending $4k on an iMac when Skylake is 8 months to a year away is not great.

That said, I left PC a while ago for good reason. Not terribly excited to go back. For me...I decided to do the hardest thing...the thing I have been doing for the last few years. Wait it out. Once Skylake drops, iMacs should have the capability to hit 64GB RAM easily (I think).

Mac typically underwhelms a bit...but I love a lot of the other elements of their machines (much better than other companies). I've sold a few of my Mac Pros this year. Now just down to one...and waiting. So I sold all my towers and have been plugging away on my 2012 MBPR. Its solid enough to hold me over until the next generation, and hopefully significant upgrade, comes.
 
Before jumping the gun...

Try using Activity Monitor (from Applications/Utilities) and when the computer is running slowly, look for what resource is tapped out.

If it is CPU or memory, you may need a new computer if yours is already maxed out (or look for other programs/services that are running that can be stopped while you are editing).

If you are working completely off the internal SSD though, rather than using external drives for your media, then my guess is that it is disk performance that is suffering. In this case, moving your media to one or more external drives (a RAID 5 setup is generally optimal for video work if you can afford it) is more likely to improve your performance than is a new computer.


EDIT: do NOT use a USB external drive/array for this - use Firewire or Thunderbolt for video work. Thunderbolt > Firewire 800 > Firewire 400 > USB
 
I switched over to PC several years ago and haven't looked back.

It's nice to be able to upgrade GPU cards when I want to and have the expansion slots to put BM or AJA cards in.
 
ReelWorksMedia said:
Kinda in the same boat. I love my Macs. They are all great for what they do. Mac is typically under powered. Even the new Mac Pro is "decent." Its not mind blowing for an $8K+ computer. The iMac is really not even an option. It all really comes down to Skylake. Then we are all playing the waiting game. Spending $4k on an iMac when Skylake is 8 months to a year away is not great.

That said, I left PC a while ago for good reason. Not terribly excited to go back. For me...I decided to do the hardest thing...the thing I have been doing for the last few years. Wait it out. Once Skylake drops, iMacs should have the capability to hit 64GB RAM easily (I think).

Mac typically underwhelms a bit...but I love a lot of the other elements of their machines (much better than other companies). I've sold a few of my Mac Pros this year. Now just down to one...and waiting. So I sold all my towers and have been plugging away on my 2012 MBPR. Its solid enough to hold me over until the next generation, and hopefully significant upgrade, comes.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I feel exactly like this, except I don't think I can wait any longer. I'm going to have to buy in the next couple of weeks.

fde101 said:
Before jumping the gun...

Try using Activity Monitor (from Applications/Utilities) and when the computer is running slowly, look for what resource is tapped out.

If it is CPU or memory, you may need a new computer if yours is already maxed out (or look for other programs/services that are running that can be stopped while you are editing).

If you are working completely off the internal SSD though, rather than using external drives for your media, then my guess is that it is disk performance that is suffering. In this case, moving your media to one or more external drives (a RAID 5 setup is generally optimal for video work if you can afford it) is more likely to improve your performance than is a new computer.


EDIT: do NOT use a USB external drive/array for this - use Firewire or Thunderbolt for video work. Thunderbolt > Firewire 800 > Firewire 400 > USB
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's nothing else running when that happens. And I'm editing off of external drives, so that's not it, either.

David W. Jones said:
A fast raid drive setup is very helpful.
Click to expand...

I'm editing footage off of a Thunderbolt OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual RAID 0 drive. Would I be able to use the same drive if I move to Windows?

Greg_E said:
This might help

http://www.videoguys.com/blog/category/guides/diy-systems/
Click to expand...

That's a fantastic page. Thanks!
 
I would love to get someone like Jeff on REDuser to give us a black and white PC option that a total of $6000 or lower. Not sure if its possible to edit 5K full res on that machine...but that would be great. UUUUg, I'm not a fan of windows.
 
You can also look at the Avid Mediacompser suggested computers, they suggest HP Z series which are certainly high performance. GPU is always the bestest thing you can afford at the time. For 4K or higher, I would probably put together a dual Xeon with as many cores as I could afford, at least 8GB of ram per processor (at least 16GB total absolute minimum but more like 64GB or higher if funds allow), and probably more than one GPU card from the Quadro family (Keppler or Maxwell chips), again the best thing you can afford. It would of course require a 64 bit operating system, either Windows or Linux if you software works on Linux (Lightworks and Resolve among others).

Storage would almost certainly be some kind of external device, probably a big array and probably attached with one or more 10GB ethernet connections. If you work at it, you can get the performance of something like FreeNAS plenty high enough to work as the storage platform, and it will handle aggregating multiple ethernet connections into a multi connection high speed pathway. A 40GB worth of ethernet is only about $400 ($200 each card) to around $800 ($400 each card) depending on features. I would probably use off the shelf SATA drives, but if money allowed I would go with SAS drives, plain old JBOD controller that is fast. The OS will handle error correction and dispersing the data among the drives (ZFS RAID-Z3 file system). I built a small FreeNAS for work (general file store, not video) with eight off the shelf 5200rpm 2.5 inch drives. The random throughput internally was well over 1Tb per second, sequential was over 5Tbps, and these were large data packages, not tiny little things that would fit in the RAM buffer. Yes, I was amazed at what it suggested I could get out of it. It would take a lot of network connection to tap that dry. This storage cost me around $1500 built on single rack unit Supermicro server chassis.
 
Matt,

Have there been situations where it's been difficult going between your system and other editors with non PC edit suites?

Jaime,

I built a PC because from what I read it was cheaper than going down the Mac path (I don't even know if this is true). The huge con for me was learning about computer builds. If you're not into computers, who in their right mind wants to learn about motherboards, RAID set ups, cooling systems etc.? Who would have thought hardware components could be so personal? They give some people endless wood, traditionally only matched by those describing the Cooke looke, Sound Devices Preamps, or pelican cases after TrekPak dividers have been added. My point is that you need to respect and be prepared to enter the world of PC build enthusiasts. I saw it as a necessary evil but am glad I went with that option. At this point I still know next to nothing but have wrapped my head around the builds enough to know when parts need upgrading. Then I ask others about the specific brands/model #s. Start a thread in the hardware section on the adobe forum - they will sort you out.

I certainly don't want to be a fully grown man arguing about how my mac's rounded edges look super cool or that my PC build was dirt cheap. So look at it purely as a tool and it seems like speed/price are your biggest criteria.

It might be important to weigh up other things like workflow compatibility with editors, colour graders/anyone else.

If you need me I'll be searching for these "prores" files I keep hearing about...
 
In building the computers for the editing classes where I work, once you reach a certain performance point, the cost difference between high end PC and high end Mac is zero!

But, at this point in time, if money is no object, you can build a higher performance PC than the current highest performance Mac, and all of that comes down to the type and number of graphics cards that you have installed. People will argue that you can put cards in an external box on thunderbolt, which is true, but thunderbolt does not currently run at PCIe 16x speeds like the native bus on high performance main boards.

If a person does not want to wrap their heads around a custom build, then go with an HP Z series workstation. Again you don't need to go farther than the Media Composer spec. sheet to see the top end machines. Go to the Resolve spec. sheet to see what they recommend, then pick something in the middle. Then just check your bank account because buying a $10k workstation can be easy when the graphics cards can be $2000 each. A mid level HP Z8xx or Z8xxx series would be in the $3000 range with decent (current average) nVidia Quadro card and 16+ GB of RAM. Dell is a little harder to suggest because they kind of custom build the high end stuff, so I can't point to a specific series. I normally deal with educational prices and sales people, but I can give you contact info for my local Dell rep if anyone wants it. He is central NY region so he may not be able to cover your location, but might help put you on the right path.

In summary, you will be looking at $3k bottom end and $6k should make a very capable machine. Might consider leasing so you can turn it over every 2 or 3 years for newer and faster. Also make sure to specify your OS, yes you can still buy Windows 7 Professional 64bit, you just need to ask. I would probably go win 8.1 if all my applications were compatible.
 
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