HP xw8600 VS MAC Pro for Edius NX Express

[Aristotelis]

I need to choose between the following two systems to use with the NX Express boards - there is no price difference between them...


HP x8600
2x 2GB DDR2 ECC 667
2x XEON 5460 3.16
1x 80GB Raptor 10.000
4x 500GB SATA 7.200
1x Quadro FX1700 512MB
1x HP Firewire board

MAC PRO (running Windows XP)
4x 1GB DDR2 ECC FB 800
2x XEON Quad Core 3.2
4x 750GB SATA 7.200
1x GeForce 8800GT 512MB
1x RAID Card

What would you choose?

[STORMDAVE]

If you get a Mac Pro, it won't be supported by Grass Valley...maybe on this forum, but not via tech support.

But I do use the NX with the Mac Pro, and have no issues...if that's telling you anything ;)

By the way, do not buy RAM and hard drives from Apple....

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory (choose 800Mhz)

Ram

and Hard drives are self explanatory

[Aristotelis]

I have used Edius with NX Express in a MAC pro and I had a very nice editing experience indeed! I know that there will be no need for support from GV…

However I need to know if I can have the same behavior from the new HP systems...CPU and RAM are slower in the HP but on the other hand I can have more internal hard disk drives, RAID5 configuration and dedicated system drive...Also I get more expansion slots for future updates

It is a hard decision...

[STORMDAVE]

I would go with an eSATA enclosure at RAID5 anyway (5 disk array)...so I wouldn't really care about internal storage that much.

By the way, you can install Windows XP on a separate drive...you don't need to make a partition on the OSX drive.

[Aristotelis]

I will keep looking...Maybe I must start considering external storage....