New iMac purchase and Chief X4 question

[DHerber]

As a hard-core, tried-and-true, PC user since 1987, I had enough of the Windows camp, and after heavily researching the purchase, bought a new i7 27" iMac this past week from the Apple store. That said, I want to be able to run Chief X3 (my current version) and upgrade to X4 soon.

I've read the various threads on Bootcamp and VMWare Parallels. The consensus seems to be Bootcamp, which I'll run an OEM version of Windows 7 Professional in 64 bit.

What would be the optimal amount of RAM to use for the entire system when running Chief X4? It comes with 4GB standard but has room for maximum of 16GB.

This thing screams and should work well for the next 3 years. The cool thing is, is when the iMac has served its purpose, there are companies that will buy the iMacs back...Wish that was the situation with my custom build CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 with RAID 1, Intel Dual Core chip and all the now outdated "good stuff".

Are there any potential conflicts that one should be aware of with running Chief on an iMac? Any possibility on porting Chief to the Mac Lion OSX? AutoCAD 2012 just released their build for the Mac a few months ago.

[lbuttery]

Dave:

concerning the ram, CA has stated that 8 GB should be sufficient and more would probably be overkill unless you are working with HUGE models

4 GB is a ok for X3/X4 for most modeling and rendering

1 GB is recommended for the video card
more only if the models are larger than normal

Lew

[DHerber]

Lew, thanks for the comment. Is there any problem with running an AMD Radeon card? I have a GeForce 9800GTX in the old computer. Renderings with a lot of detail would take a long time (5-10 hrs) to render in high quality mode.

[lbuttery]

Dave:

sorry but not familiar with the Amd or Geforce etc

CA does recommend Nvidia over ATI's, tho ATI's can be suitable

a video card with OpenGL support is necessary

Lew

[5sheds]

I run X4 on a 27" imac with a 512 ati card and 4gb ram through bootcamp w7 64.
I had to tweak the render settings slightly, but other than that, it goes great!

[DHerber]

Thanks for the encouraging news on Bootcamp. I was just about ready to shell out $65 at Best Buy for Parallels and Fusion. The Apple store consultants were saying to give Bootcamp a try first.

Since bootup is relatively short with a Mac, it won't be a big deal to bootup in Windows 7 and launch Chief, and do the work.

Now the question is to try and run Windows 7 Pro OEM or to buy the full version and pay an additional $100...?

[David J. Potter]

Geforce is a trade mark of NVIDIA and so would have an NVIDIA chip set. That does not guarantee good performance but NVIDIA does have a better track record with Chief than ATI does, historically speaking.

You ATI guys please save your counter-comments, I am well aware that ATI also works quite well with Chief, it is a personal prejudice of mine, which I acknowledge as such.

What will work best with your Mac is probably more important than other considerations. I am not a Mac person and really have no useful opinions to offer about Mac's.
You need a Mac-Geek for good advice.

There are some Mac users here that use boot camp and perhaps they will chime in.

DJP

[DHerber]

What's interesting here is a guy (me) who's used a PC forever and bought an iMac. I'm enlisting the help from others who have made the jump to a Mac and it will all be a learning process.

Really appreciate the comments.

[moak]

I used an old iMac with a dual core processor (2004 +/- ?) for a number of years - with bootcamp. X3 was pretty slow with that setup, but not unbearably so. X4 actually performed better on it. It wasn't my full time machine but one I used for the odd job at home. We're still using it for email and watching movies. I replaced it as far as Chief goes only a couple months ago wit the asus in my signature. I always thought XP looked and performed better on the iMac than the dell I had in my office at work. You'll always catch yourself hitting apple-c to copy.

[kernsdan]

Dave, I have the same 27" and upgraded to 16gb. I don't run chief on it though.

I have a screaming fast PC. to run chief.

I would be interested in hearing your experience after you've been up and running.

Thanks Dan

[DHerber]

I'm currently downloading AutoCAD LT 2012 and other apps/files and getting this thing set up. Today was the first day of getting this set up.

Windows 7 OEM Professional will arrive from Amazon on Wed. Checked a lot of sites and reviews out, and as long as I keep it on one (iMac) computer, an OEM version will work. I used Win XP about three years ago with a build on my PC and had no issues.

Am really anxious to get Win 7 set up in Bootcamp and will download X4 at that time. Not sure how much room to allocate on the 1TB HDD but will figure about 400GB's or so. Also have Creative Suite 3 (old PC version) which needs to run under Windows 7.

Will keep you updated on progress here.

[lbuttery]

Dave:

My C: drive is 455 GB and I'm only using 220 GB

I have Chief 9.5,10,X1,X2,X3,X4 installed

along with a ton of other stuff in the Documents folder etc (66 GB)
including a huge Chief library of 70,000+ items

bottom line - if you are just using X4 then you don't need a huge C:

my X4 install uses 298 MB

so if you plan on using other windows apps I would venture that 100 GB for C:
would be adequate

if only Chief then 50 GB ???

Lew

[dchaley217]

I use an iMac 27 inch as well, i7, 8gigs, Bootcamp, Windows 7 64 Pro bit. Runs great, but it seems to me that Windows limits Memory use and is limited to actual use of 4 gigs instead of using all 8. I have called and asked questions with Chief and Microsoft and have never gotten a straight answer. So I would say 4 gigs for the Windows (side W)usage but when I turn to side A (Apple) I use all 8 so if you are planning to useyour machine for the Apple platform as well go for the 8 gigs.

[lbuttery]

Windows limits Memory use and is limited to actual use of 4 gigs instead of using all 8

Windows 7 64-bit should be able to use all 8 GB and much, much more
same with Vista


I will have to google to find its memory limit

Lew

[dchaley217]

Yeah, that is what I read as well but when I use resource monitor to watch it work it looks to me to use only 4 gigs. Frustrating as I know I could get things done faster. If you find anything that I am doing wrong I would be sooooo happy to know. I will throw the switch like right now!