February 11, 2009 Although Apple Macs are the most commonly used computers for creative professionals, there are still many IT departments which insist on a PC. Aimed specifically at this market that spend their days doing graphic design, video production or pro audio is MAINGEAR’s Remix Creative Workstation PC. The system features NVIDIA Quadro CX graphics card, which NVIDIA specifically designed and optimized to significantly enhance the performance of Adobe Creative Suite 4.
In Photoshop, MAINGEAR claims the power of the Remix brings unprecedented fluidity to image navigation by enabling real-time image rotation, zooming, and panning, and making changes to the view instantaneous and smooth. Also, on-screen compositing of both 2D and 3D content, ensuring smoothly anti-aliased results is possible regardless of zoom level. Brush resizing and brushstroke preview, 3D movement, high-dynamic-range tone mapping and color conversion are also accelerated.
For video editors the system is designed to shave hours off video encoding and rendering time with the ability to encode H.264 video up to 4x faster with the NVIDIA CUDA-enabled plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Adding graphics and visual effects to video such as motion, opacity, color, image distortion, depth of field, bilateral blur effects, turbulent noise such as flowing water or waving flags, and cartoon effects is also accelerated as is editing of multiple high-definition video streams and graphic overlays. The system also provides a variety of video output choices for high-quality preview, including DisplayPort, component TV, or uncompressed 10-bit or 12-bit SDI.
The Remix was also designed with audio editing in mind with an array of PCI Audio Interfaces from M-Audio which offer the fullest range of audio editing capabilities. It is constructed using advanced studio quality insulation materials to keep the noise in and dense mesh air filters to keep the dust out, while advanced liquid cooling provided in partnership with CoolIt Systems helps keep noise down while ensures that the Intel Core i7 runs nice and cool. The unit is available in black, silver, electric blue, inferno red, alpine white, and speed yellow and the option of custom branding is also offered.
The MAINGEAR Remix is available if a wide variety of configurations with a base price of USD$1,999, but those wanting the NVIDIA Quadro CX will have to shell out USD$3,999.
Darren Quick
