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Power PC G5 vs Macbook Pro Intel Core Duo
I own a Power PC with Duel 2.5 G5 processors 3GB of RAM. I also own a Mac Book Pro 2.33 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo Processors with 4GB of RAM.
I am unable to upgrade my ram on my laptop to better use certain features on Apple Motion. I can upgrade my RAM on my POWER PC G5 to 8GB if need be.
My question is, is a POWER PC G5 with 8GB of RAM a faster Computer than a MACBOOK Pro with an Intel Core Duo Processor? I would like to know so that if I invest in more RAM for the G5 I’m not wasting my money. Thanks.
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4 Replies
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For Motion, most of your processing power comes from the GPU. Not sure if your MBP has a dedicated graphics card or if shared on the chip and also with the RAM. It would be a good experiment to see which is currently faster on a small project. If it is close, the extra RAM in the G5 might get you a small performance gain. I have a hunch though that your laptop will run circles around the G5 and no amount of RAM is going to make it match or exceed.
I don’t have a current laptop, but I keep my G5 around as a background render/transcode machine. Frees up the MacPro for serious editing. It may be an idea for you too.
Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com -
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“background render/transcode machine.” Could you elaborate on that a little? If it’s no trouble. I’m contemplating getting a refurbished MAC tower. Recommend any particular graphic card? Thanks.
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Transcodes – I capture quite a bit of work in HDV. First thing I do is drop it on the G5 and let compressor transcode it all to ProRes 422, sometime LT. MacPro can edit or accomplish other tasks while this takes place. Also, I tend to transcode many final pieces on the G5 to MPEG-2 for DVD or H.264 for web. (Not as often for the web because the MacPro is SO significantly faster.) It all comes down to load balancing. The more time pressing or bigger budget projects utilize the MacPro more while the G5 preps stuff for the smaller budget stuff.
Background rendering – This is my own made-up term in the way I use it. You can send sequences to Compressor in the background now, but you still can’t render without tying up FCP. So for long form stuff with lots of renders, I’ll open on the G5 and let it do that, while I work on something else on MacPro.
The MacPro is amazing! But it still can get bogged down with HDD I/O, swap I/O, RAM and CPU jockeying. I could probably spend a couple thousand dollars to upgrade some more RAM and faster drive arrays, but its much cheaper and easier to utilize the old hardware. (I think that I get more performance from the G5 than I would from the upgrades too.)
Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com
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