Dude, You Gettin' a Dell? Former Apple Editors Choose 'Yes, Bro' over Mac Pro for Performance

nofilmschool by Dave Kendricken

Something weird is going on. We know the Mac Pro hasn’t had a substantial upgrade in some time. We know that something is looming over the horizon, but we don’t know what, exactly. We also know that Apple will probably over-charge us for it (or it wouldn’t quite feel right for anybody). And while it may not be fair to fault a machine that’s still quite hefty and robust for losing to brand new ones in spec tests and benchmark performance — just what are we waiting for here? Should we even be waiting for it at all? How much incentive to hold out for Apple remains when you can build your own Mac Pro, build your own specialized editing PC — or, for instance, as a recent StudioDaily feature shows many video editors are doing — switch to powerhouse Dell solutions?

Don’t take it from me — take it from these guys:

This is actually quite nostalgic for me, because I did my very first “movie editing” on a Dell desktop machine (on software called Roxio Videowave) — but from the sound of things, play time’s over. It’s hard to believe an industry leader — and one in our industry, as well — in both hardware and software would fall as behind as Apple has in this fairly significant niche, for any reason. The tech mantra of Moore’s Law doesn’t leave a lot of room to play catch up, nor treat the recently obsolete very kindly — assuming Apple still cares. Whatever the reason, the delay goes on and on, so it was only a matter of time before some significant population within that fairly significant niche made the switch to that other platform.

According to Jason De Vos of StudioDaily, Dell hired a neutral third party (a company called Principled Technologies) to perform relevant benchmark tests on the most powerfully configured Mac Pro and Dell Precision T7600 possible with $12,500 per machine with both using Intel Xeon processors. To test the type of hardcore number-crunching that comes with video editing, the study used Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, renderin’ up all kinds of mess. At this point you may be able to guess the outcome: read more...