OTOY Forums

Hi guys.
I was surfing on this forum, and I saw someone with a mac wich has a 9400m GPU that in a simple scene with hdri and color maps scored 6/7 megasamples per sec. But I have a 8800GT with 512mb in my pc that in a simple scene with no hdri and other texture maps scored only 2/3 megasamples per sec. I mean, what the hell...what's wrong? I'm also thinking to switch to an imac with 9400m for his minimalism design and all in one solution. What do you guys think of this situation?

PS=Sorry for my bad English, I'm an Italian

your card is faster than a 9400, it's probably due to the differences in scene complexity.
i would recommend to get a PC with a propper GPU instead of an imac,
that way you can put a decent GPU on it and use octane to it's full potential, and also upgrade in the future if needed...

it's way more economic than a mac.
if you really want to get a mac, i'd get one with at least a decent GPU, not a X400 or X500, but a GTX200 or better.
those 9400 chips are tiny and are very slow.

Radiance

hi m4stro!
as a Mac enthusiast I would recommend you an iMac for anything but Octane... not only the 9xxx series is quite slow but the memory is not enough for mid/high complexity scenes and HiRes renders and I have serious doubts about cooling (this last is just a personal opinion, while the first two come from direct experience as you may see in my sign...)
You already have a more than decent machine to play with Octane IMHO, why don't you just get yourself a good GTX card to speed up the whole thing? a GTX260 | 1.8Gb or a GTX275 | 0.9Gb are sold for less than 200€ in Italy ATM, and the whole nVidia 2xx series price list will probably go down a bit (hopefully more than a bit) with the upcoming 4xx series...
then, if you got some money left, grab you one of the new iMacs (i.e. with ATi cards)... sure you gonna love it
just my 2c of course

cheers,
Alessandro

I decided that when the price will low a little bit I'm gonna buy a GTX 470.
Thanks for yours advices.