Workstation for Media/VFX/Audio Production

What would you recommend for a heavy use workstation? Budget around: $10,000

Dont look at the NEW Mac Pro, its not released yet

Mainly going to be used for motion graphics/visual effects using Maya/3DS Max/nuke.

1) Mac Pro with 12 cores?

or

2) HP Z820 Workstation with 16 cores? (or any windows based 16 core system)

Obvious answer would be the HP, but I've never used a mac before, but almost all recommend it.

Any advice?

 

Well if the programs you want to use work on Windows, go with a PC. You're probably (most definitely) going to be spending more money on a pre-built PC than if you were to make one yourself. As far as that goes, I'm not up-to-date on current parts and benchmarks so somebody else will have to help you with that. (I'd assume it's enough to get at least a dual processor setup, 3 or 4 high-end video cards in sli/crossfire, and still have enough left to get some sort of SSD RAID config) Also, the amount of cores really doesn't determine the performance of a CPU; you need to look at other specifications as well. If you're doing video editing, then you're going to want a PC with a good video card because that will count more towards performance than the CPU for those tasks. $10,000 is a lot of money to build a PC with, don't waste it just because you can, use it to it's maximum potential and have the best machine you can.