Hi! Anyone here working in productions business? (Newbie question :) )

[macorhack]

Hi all!

Well, I recently decided to open a small productions business. The problem is I am on a tight budget. I have around 5K to spend and wondering if I should build 2 Hacks
So I got a question for anyone outthere working in productions. Is there any problem with Hackintosh if we run Adobe CS 5.5 package? and sometimes Maya or Cinema 4d? Any crashes, hang or Windows-like errors ? You know if an experiment below 1K then I would go for it but 5K is not a small amount so I really need to consider.

Of course I dont expect Hackintosh to be as good as a Mac Pro but how would you rate the performance compare to Mac machines? 7? 8? out of 10?

Hope to hear from you guys soon

 

[BitterMelon]

Considering the current Mac Pros are ooold, you should have no problem matching och exceeding that performance without shelling out even close to that much cash.

 

[dtrvndrn]

I'm relying on my hack for my artwork production: audiovisual performances and installations.

Whether it's a good choice for you depends on how technical you are/want to be. I did tons of research before starting to build, working out which parts are going to work from the guides and forum posts here. Then spent a weekend installing. You have to realize hackintoshes are never going to be as reliable as the real thing in the long run. Sure you can get it stable at some point in time but a future update might/will throw it off. You have to decide for yourself if you wanna be tinkering instead of producing every once in a while, also sometimes when it's really not convenient. Some things might never totally work out on your system either (my USB3 is not reliable for example).

All softwares can probably be made to run well, but not necessarily with all hardware. Some things like CUDA support in Adobe apps require hacks. It's really up to you to research whether your apps are going to work with what hardware. All the info on the net can be dizzying but there really isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

Personally I was getting frustrated because I was stuck with an older but well supported HD6870 gfx card, seeing too many problems reported with newer partially supported cards to dare an upgrade. Was even considering going back to Windows after 10 years on Mac. But just this week new Nvidia drivers were released and I ordered a new card. I'm gonna spend my weekend on updating to Mountain Lion, installing and test driving the card.

My advice is really that you have to weigh the possible pro's and con's well before making your decision. If you get it right you can get Mac Pro performance for a fraction for the price, but you have to invest in time and attention.

Btw, I have an aging Macbook pro to fall back on. Comes in really handy from time to time!

 

[mickdundee]

I have a Hackintosh workstation with ivyBridge 3770K, 32GB RAM with nVidia GTX650 and my system works verry well. I am using this for DVD production and film trailers. I using Avid Media Composer 6.5, Cinema 4D, After Effetcs in VMware and Digital Fusion from eyeonline on Samsung 830 with 256 GB SSD with Win7 64 bit! I have a Media Drive with 3x1 GB HDD in a RAID_0 configuration. My next purchase will be the GTX 650Ti from Nvidia.
My HackMacPro is realy nice and works in production environment. Absolutely no problems. Before i pay a lot of money for a good original MacPro I preferred to buy selected products and in 2 Top 27 "monitors invest with 2500er resolution. The MacPro is nice but to expensive and no better than my HackMacPro. I know a really good reason the money in a MacPro from Apple.

 

[Going Bald]

Many in business. Some reading for you - http://www.tonymacx86.com/video/

 

[ggeorge]

One thing I HIGHLY recommend for any sort of mission critical Hackintosh is that you have at least two of the drives you are using as your system (boot) drive.

You can never be quite certain what an update or patch will do to a hackintosh. So the idea behind this is to have the second drive be a clone of your working OSX drive (CarbonCopy Cloner or Superduper) and if you want to install a patch or update, you will boot of the cloned drive, install the update/patch. If it causes a problem or changes something you don't want changed, you can then boot from the untouched primary drive, wipe the secondary (cloned) drive, re-clone the primary and try it again. This way you do not have to worry about trashing your functioning OSX system disk.

It's particularly useful since some patches or updates will require files be changed, added or deleted and this is much easier to do if you have another working boot drive.

 

[dcharlesworth]

One thing I HIGHLY recommend for any sort of mission critical Hackintosh is that you have at least two of the drives you are using as your system (boot) drive.

You can never be quite certain what an update or patch will do to a hackintosh. So the idea behind this is to have the second drive be a clone of your working OSX drive (CarbonCopy Cloner or Superduper) and if you want to install a patch or update, you will boot of the cloned drive, install the update/patch. If it causes a problem or changes something you don't want changed, you can then boot from the untouched primary drive, wipe the secondary (cloned) drive, re-clone the primary and try it again. This way you do not have to worry about trashing your functioning OSX system disk.

It's particularly useful since some patches or updates will require files be changed, added or deleted and this is much easier to do if you have another working boot drive.

This is excellent advice. I use mine for business, and recently moved offices. Things started to act up and I was getting some crazy stuff happen. The peace of mind to know that I had 3 boot drives, and all my data was super safe was well worth the extra time and money it takes to produce. I was still frustrated, and figured I was out some time and $$, but I knew that I could always find a replacement or boot of my MBP.

I got mine working great with the last incarnation of Snow Leopard, and have refused to upgrade beyond that. It has been rock steady for over 15 months now, and I feel I can depend on my computer more now than I could with a traditional Mac Pro. If something on a Mac Pro goes, you're in trouble. If something goes on your hack, you can swap more things out, more quickly, and get it back on the road so to speak.

All the best with your new business.

 

[macorhack]

Thank you all for replying. All the responds sound positive to me. I guess I'll take the "back up" advice and gonna start building my first Hackintosh. Actually, I am not the kind of guy who loves to install every update. Even when I was with my BMW.. oops MBW ... i didnt really apply any patches for my MAC OS. (I think its an old Windows habit because the more you apply you patches, the slower your computer gets).

Anyway thank you all for the advices. Let's rock