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Beefing up the ol’ G5
Hi all. My studio at work runs FCS off a G5 dual 2.7ghz PowerPC. I have 4.5GB RAM, i.e. the original pair of 256MB chips plus 2 more pairs of 1MB chips, leaving the last 2 slots empty. My graphics card is ATI Radeon 9650, allowing me dual DVI ports for dual monitors. Oh, and running off 2 RAIDs, since the boss hadn’t added any internal SATAs beyond the 250GB it came with. Short of replacing it, I’m looking for quicker, cheaper upgrades. And, yes, I know that Snow Leopard might not work on this PowerPC Mac [pre-Intel].
Question: How best and safest to beef up this computer?
a. RAM chips — I think I can’t get chips bigger than 1GB per slot for this computer. Should I also replace the original 256MB chips?
b. Should I replace the graphics card with a newer and faster one? Will it melt [seriously]?
c. Should I bother with add’l internal drives? Or since everyone here either uses server or hot swap drives or the RAIDs, maybe having more emptiness in the computer case gives the machine and innards more breathing room and less heat. Man this thing’s noisy.Suggestions? Anything funky I could add on that I’m leaving out? How about a PCI card with additional A/V I/O, like RCA ports or BNC ports? Maybe a sound card or at least a good D/A signal booster?
Thanks, Dave.
David J. Smolar
Preditor
Creative Video of Washington
creativevideo.com
inbetweenthings.com -
2 Replies
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You can add additional RAM, but there is no better video card that will fly in your G5 other than the ATI X800 XT, which is no longer on the market. There are occasionally used X800 XTs on Ebay, but beware, many are Windows cards that have been modified or older cards that overheat, and both have big issues.
There are plenty of I/O cards and device available, but they do not offer hardware acceleration other than scaling of anamorphic formats such as DVCPro and HDV, which has no huge impact on rendering speed whatsoever.
Neither FCS3 nor Snow Leopard will run on your non-Intel machine.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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[David J. Smolar] “Suggestions? Anything funky I could add on that I’m leaving out? How about a PCI card with additional A/V I/O, like RCA ports or BNC ports? Maybe a sound card or at least a good D/A signal booster? “
Honestly David, all the upgrades in the world just won’t make your machine as fast as you would want it to get. Even if you just get the base model Mac Pro that’s out there now, it would be money better spent over trying to upgrade that machine.
Other World Computing and Daystar are the two companies I can think of offhand that would be your supplier for all parts to upgrade that G5, but again, I could not justify it at all. I’m even going to sell off my Quad G5 soon because it’s just not worth running even against a base model Mac Pro.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
Credits include multiple Emmy, Telly, Aurora and Peabody Awards.
Owner, Biscardi Creative Media featuring HD Post
Biscardi Creative MediaCreative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital.
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