Hi all,
I'm a mac user who's wondering how I can get the biggest bang for the buck in investing in a new mac to run houdini's apprentice. I'm hoping to stay with mac.

Below are a few examples of current apple sold computers. My main question is, does houdini's apprentice take advantage of the dual quad core systems or is it pretty much going to run just as good on the other models?
Thanks for your help.

desktop towers:
8-core tower: Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors

4-core tower: One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor

or a macmini: 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

You definately don't want the mac mini. That is not made for hard renders. I've done allot of research and seen consumer report and there doesn't seem to be a large speed jump between the 4 and 8 core according to their finds. Definately a mac pro. I love my 2.66 quadac pro and it is plenty fast.

Hey virtual,
thanks for your suggestions. I just followed up with your research and can see that the 8-core isn't twice as fast as the quad. It looks like it depends a lot on the software one is using. I wonder if Houdini is setup to take advantage of the dual processors as well. By the way, how much ram do you have as well as vram? Do you find that ram is a factor in rendering or is it mainly just used in regards to playback?
thanks,
Nick