Once Again, I'm Considering a PC for DAZ Studio Only
Ron Knights
Posts: 2,072
My opinion remains that, in my experience, Macintosh computers are the best computer for everything but DAZ Studio. Iray is now the preferred choice for rendering. Apple just doesn't like nVidia video cards.
I expect to have some actual free money beginning in January of 2017. I still have notes from previous conversations in this forum. I look forward to the time when I gather enough money to consider a new custom-built PC.
The Macinstosh computers will still be around because they are absolutely better for "everything else," in my own estimation!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Go for it! I finally got a computer exclusively for Daz. The only thing on the internal hard drive is Windows 10, Daz Studio, and associated plug-ins. I keep content on one external and scene files on another. Best decision I've made. But I'm an extremist.
It sounds like it will make your life easier when dealing with software that needs the power of the latest NVIDIA cards.
I'll choose to keep my data on a different drive than Windows. Then I'll make a "clone backup" of the data drive. I kept some extensive notes from friends. It'll be a few months before I can consider the purchase.
Well nowdays I would only consider osX if I was publishing an app to osX or one of the Apple tablets, phones, watches; although when Unity 3D integrates the oToy Octane Renderer into Unity (for free) then that makes osX more appealing, although still severely overpriced and underpowered than PCs at 1/2 and even 1/4 the price of Apple.
I must confess that it's hard to ignore the fact that Apple has shunned nVidia, and that many PCs are much cheaper than equivalent Macs. Yes, the world of Windows is a harrowing one. Microsoft will never "get it." But perhaps I can wince long enough to Make Art on the PC, then move on to my Macintosh computers for a taste of safety and sanity.
...if you are looking to build it youself I suggest getting an OEM of Win7 Pro as W10 reserves a noticeable amount of VRAM and in general, is just a boated and badly designed OS.
kyoto kid, I understand what you're saying. Windows 7 was the last version of Windows I used. I got it free, from a Microsoft Promotion. However, I very much want to "future proof" myself as much as possible. It's possible that eventually reliance on Windows 7 will cause you to run into some pitfalls.
That's one reason why I'm thinking of going with a home-built PC rather than using an old "Mac Pro" computer. I don't want to buy the old Mac Pro, only to find it's obsolete and useless in a year or so.
At any rate, this move won't likely be for several months. I'll need to start saving some money.
HAH, I believe Tiger was the fisrt OS I got on my 24" iMac when I got it in 2007!
...Well Win8.1's EOL is 2023, though W8 was the beginning of the downfall for MS in my book. W10 puts MS in total control of what patches go on your system and sometimes when they occur (especially if you ony have the Home edition).
I plan on sticking with W7 as long as I can to avoid dealing with 10. Sometimes I wonder if they skipped W9 on purpose to give us two crappy OSs back to back.
I didn't mention it to you earlier when you are buying a new PC but:
1. Sellers of PC with old versions of Windows like 7, 8, 8.1 know you want the old version and they know it is businesses seeking to usually to run EOLed software. It's usually only a business that will try and continue to use EOLed SW, therefore sellers of PCs still using Windows 7 and Windows 8.x will charge you much more CPU/GPU/RAM/HD Storage unit than if you were to just buy a PC running Windows 10 (or whatever happens to be the latest released version of the OS when you buy).
2. Windows 10 includes DirectX 12 which is designed to be much better at parallel processing (aka faster render times) when utilizing at DirectX 12 GPU. This includes all Intel HD Graphics GPUs that are based on the Haswell CPU/GPU die and later. Because via improved parallel processing the contents of RAM is changing more frequently it's like getting more RAM added to your PC. Of course a scene that is too big still won't fit but SW designed to swap out from RAM will be faster.
3. SSDs are getting affordable enough to use as offline and internal mass storage, not just OS and programs. Have a little patience.
You have to make up your own mind regarding whether or not you want Windows 10, but you will get a lot of different, and impassioned views, from here and elsewhere. I now use W10 on all my computers, and so far it has run stable and without an real issues on all of them. For me personally the VRAM problem is also a non-issue, as I drive my monitors using the onboard graphics, leaving my nVidia card only for rendering, that way no VRAM is lost.
I do have a mac-mini aswell which I need to build my iPhone/iPad apps, so I do use MacOS. I know a lot of people are big fans of the Mac system, but I have no real preference when it comes to OS, they pretty much do the same things these days.
I will most likely go for a custom-built PC. I may or may not have Windows as part of the package. It's entirely likely that I'd buy Windows as a separate package.
Nothing passionate about Windows. You buy the version of Windows that will best support the software you want to use today and if you are doing computer graphics and not keeping your entire SW stack modern, that is fine. There are people that still like using Bryce and such SW, but if you are doing iRay and 3DL rendering there really is not an argument for keeping an old SW stack.
In my experience, it's best to keep up-to-date with your operating system, hardware and software. Anyone who's tried moving along with an old Operating System, old hardware or old versions of their software only experience un-necessary problems.
I want to look forward as much as possible when I make my decisions.
Well, I went this route but not quite intentionally. I had decided to sell my iMac and buy a custom PC and I actially did buy the PC and installed DAZ Studio on it so that I could finally use Iray. However, I couldn't part with the iMac so now I have both. So add the cost of the PC to the small fortune I've spent in this store and this hobby has turned out to be more expensive than I could have ever imagined.
Tell me, do you still use the Mac for working on scenes and send them over to the PC for rendering? I started off doing that but I was trying to keep the two libraries in sync and it got too complicated.
Ron,
I was a life long Mac user due to my previous 20 year career as a Professional graphic designer in the print industry which favored macs for using the big three adobe programs for print design
(Photoshop , Illustrator & Indesign).
Two years ago I made a "Fifty percent" Migration to a windows 7 PC after years of frustration and frankly denial of one inescapable fact:
If you are really serious about 3D /CGI
( particularly animation as I am),
You Need to be using a PC.....not a mac!!
Apologies to My Old Mac Die hards but this is the reality.
Once I got my Win 7 PC ,my animation pipeline exploded With access to Iclone Pro and Natural Motion Endorphin.( Both win only)
I was still running Daz studio 2.x over on my Old intel Macbook
and poser 6!! with no accees to Genesis.
Once on windows it was like being liberated from a sort of software prison as I could now use Genesis and the latest Daz Studio,along side all of the very useful win only plugins& Scripts
Mind you, I still use My Mac for 2D graphics in Adobe CS and using My seat of Maxon Cinema4D studio for my animation renders, Video edting and post effects work.
But for All my Character animation CREATION My Win 7 PC has been the best thing to happen to me since getting into 3D/CGI.
...just a note, I still have one system running XP as I use Office 2000. Never updated it because I like the more simple less cluttered workspace compared to the latest version (which now is only available by subscription, ugh).
If MS changed their tack about forcing updates down users' throats and came out with a lean version of 10 that just did what an OS is supposed to do without all the useless "feature bloat" it currently has, which is difficult, if not impossible in some cases to get rid of (like Cortana), I'd reconsider.
Mac is for Mac stuff only. I was given a laptop PC that I use for working on scenes. I sync the libraries by downloading/installing after every purchase, using the same names on the drives, and copying back and forth for user files. Anal retention is a highly valuable character trait in cases like these.
Thanks, everyone for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I got my first Mac (a 24" iMac), in 2007. It was a liberating experience for me. I didn't have any of the worries of running Windows. If Apple allowed me to get the hardware I wanted, then I'd stay with Apple.
Yeah, as lean as win7 is, I still ended up tweaking the hell out of it to get as much power for my programs. Had to disable all that fancy crap like aero and just about every visual stuff I could. I don't care about a pretty desktop, I care about my programs. Only thing stopping me from going to linux is lack of software support for it. The few programs I use that actually do have a native linux version, they all run better under linux than windows.
...did the same myself with W7 (Aero was the first thing to go).
Yeah If there were not so many different "flavours" of Linux there would probably be more programme support for it. Even Adobe Photoshop is Mac or Windows only. Maya does have a Linux version (odd that Autodesk's flagship 3DS Max doesn't) as does Modo (both only 64 bit), but those are way out of my budget.
You might want to look at a free file sync program called, naturally, FreeFileSync - I use it when I get into my anal mood. It works on Mac and PC and, obviously, across your home network. Does a good job of checking byte count or modification date to make sure that it doesn't needlessly copy or sync identical files.
In 2007 I made my big move from PC to Mac. I merely copied all my "Runtimes" over to a Mac formatted disk, and loaded it all into DAZ Studio on my Mac.
I completely understand. I did the same thing last black friday, and have been really happy with the windows computer. So much so, I think I'll probably replace my second monitor with a new 27'' one and migrate my 5K imac over to the side and make it the secondary machine and the windows computer will function as my main machine. OS X was great while it lasted, but apple has moved on to other folks and doesn't work for folks who actually want to do more than email and browsing.
I am also considering getting a Windows system for DS only; I have a 2014 imac (the last iMac with an NVidia GPU) and do not intend to part with it. One thing that would make things go more smoothly is if the iMac can be used as the monitor for the PC; theoretically there is something called Target Display mode that works through the Thunderbolt port, but I do not know if this is actually practical.
I am also unsure as to whether build-to-order, e.g., cyberpowerpc.com, is notably more expensive than buying the components and doing it myself. I have been waffling over this stuff for almost a year now, and still can't talk myself into a buying decision.
I got a pretty good deal on a game machine during black friday sales 2015. I could have built my own for about the same, but it would have been time consuming and would have probably been a little more powerful. My only real regret is that I got Windows 10 Home and had no other options. 10 Pro would have at least allowed me to run Remote desktop, which is sort of what you want, though, I can't promise it would much better than VNC, which is what I've been using. The mouse doesn't work well with VNC on most of DS controls for some reason (many work just fine, but critical controls go crazy if you move them with the mouse over VNC). So, I have two mice on my desk, one for the mac and one for the windows computer.
Build-to-order is going to cost you a lot more. But, I have seen folks say they were very happy with their computers. Mine was out of the box, and probably has minimal excess power supply and the case is a mid-sized tower. So, I probably can't upgrade to two cards unless the case is very cleverly designed (and almost certainly will have to replace the power supply). I'm hoping, at the very least, I can add in a cheapy secondary card to run the monitor and ultimately replace the 980 with a 1080 TI at some point in the future.
It really sucks that Apple has completely lost interest in folks whose usage pattern doesn't meet those of the executives there at HQ and the one industry that seems to be in their eye...video editing. But, I don't anticipate that will be changing in the next few years, so this really is your only option.
My understanding is that you can NOT use the iMac as a second monitor on any computer. But these days, 24" monitors are relatively inexpensive. I have two right now, which are being used for 2nd monitors on my 2014 27" iMac, and my 2009 Mac Mini. (The 50" TV is the other monitor for the Mac Mini!)
I built my own PCs for many years. By 2009, I ran into some problems. I finally got rid of all my PCs. If I paid to have a company build a PC, I'd want total control over the choice of each item installed in the unit.
Check around for a reputable PC repair shop and check with them. I took a case and a tote of parts to my local shop and 3 days and $340 later I had a system fully assembled, with Win7 pro installed and a 24-hour cpu and memory burn-in. They charged me their standard hourly bench rate for the assembly and their normal fee for a Windows install along with the price of Windows 8 downgraded to 7.
...the other benefit of BIY is you can use a wider range of components and have more freedom to selct the OS of your choice.
My "Workstation II" plan is for dual Sandy Bridge 8 core Xeon CPUs and 128 GB of DDR3 memory in quad channel configuration as I also work in 3DL and Carrara which do not benefit from GPU based rendering. For the type of work we do, DDR4 really does not offer a major advantage save for a wider range of memory clock speeds.
I'm content on waiting for the dust to settle on the GPU and front (as well as hopefully improved skin and hair, as well as grass shaders for Iray) before considering moving to Iray GPU rendering.