Hi All, I am having trouble sorting out exactly which models are “64-bit” (and hence Houdini will run on). As far as I can tell the only Houdini-ready Mac you can currently buy from Apple is the 8-core Mac Pro (the 2 and 4 cores seem to have disappeared). At almost $4000 dollar for the 8-core doesn't seem a “starving artist” option Although the Intel core duo CPU seems to be 64-bit, Houdini doesn't seem to run on any of the iMac models? Is this correct?
AFAIK Houdini runs on any 64-bit mac with a decent graphic card (so no mac-mini with integrated intel graphics). NVidia is highly recommended, ATi much less so. The iMac can be ordered with nvidia graphics [apple.com]so no problem here. There are also lots of people using Houdini on MacBookPro. Actually it might run even on a mac mini as long as you disable hardware OpenGL with the environment variable HOUDINI_OGL_SOFTWARE=1
I asked because I have a friend who tried to run it on his Intel iMac (with 10.5) and Houdini said it needed a 64-bit machine. He has managed to run it on the Windows partition on his iMac, but not on the OS X partition. So it seem not all Intel iMacs are “64-bit”.
That's correct; the Core Duo is based on the Pentium-M, which itself is based off the Pentium III, and has no 64b support. It's also slower than the Core 2 Duo, which is the successor to the P4 and fully supports 64b extensions (among other things). It would be nice if Intel had done us a favour and named the Core Duo something different (like the Pentium-M2?), but oh well… marketing.
Although the Intel core duo CPU seems to be 64-bit, Houdini doesn't seem to run on any of the iMac models? Is this correct?
