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Help! My Memory isn’t Helping!
I have a Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5. A while back I decided to upgrade my memory because I was tired of my Final Cut Pro being sluggish at times, plus I wanted to do less rendering.
I bought four memory sticks and installed them (I believe they were all 1 GB each), so now my memory reads as 4.5 GB DDR SDRAM
Well, my computer not only doesn’t seem faster, I have to render WAY more than I ever had to do before. For instance, I’m creating a project with just photos. The photos are small, about 1 mb each. I’m also on the setting of “Use Playback Settings” + “Low Playback Video Quality” which I switched over on the left.
Any photographs that I have placed on the timeline after minute two, go into the red. And I have to render them right away in order to see it. What’s strange is that before I installed the memory sticks, I was able to put more on the timeline without it making me render it.
Is there ANY way I can allot more memory so I don’t have to render so soon? (I know I was able to do that in the Classic setting, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it in my OS X 10.3.9 version). And is there a reason that the memory sticks I installed don’t seem to be A) making it faster and B) have given me more rendering to do on the timeline?
Thanks!
Sal
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6 Replies
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https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86414
Is the RAM installed in pairs, going from the inside to out? In other words, the RAM slots are like this:
C
B
AA
B
CMake sure that the same kind of chip is placed in the slots that are the same letters.
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RAM doesn’t help with realtime performance or rendering speeds.
Hard drive speeds, graphics card, video card, processor power all determine realtime performance and rendering speeds.
Additional RAM simply allows you to load up larger projects faster.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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Really? Shoot. Well, I’ve already displayed my ignorance, so I hope you don’t mind my asking: What can I get for my computer that will help with Real Time Performance in FCP?
Sally
Sal
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Faster drive array (RAID) will help a bit, but the only thing that will help significantly is a new computer. Processor speed is the biggest factor in your realtime performance.
I’m still chugging away on a dual 2Ghz G5 on my own system. Just freelanced the other day on a MacPro Octocore. Damn, does that thing smoke my machine. No coffee break renders on that baby.
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[sally obrien] “hat can I get for my computer that will help with Real Time Performance in FCP?”
Faster media array. The faster your media array, the more realtime performance. Also, the AJA Kona series can help improve realtime performance with several video formats such as DVCPro HD. They take over some of the scaling work so the processors can do other tasks.
The single most important feature for FCP and realtime performance is the media array. Slow media array, poor realtime performance. Our slowest array runs at about 150MB/s while our fastest runs at 500MB/s.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!
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Walter,
I think to a large degree you are right…but with her setup, even with a top of the line disk array, I don’t think she’s going to be able to squeeze much more speed out of Dual 2GHZ G5.
I run a 5 disk SATA raid with my machine (also a 2ghz G5), and a MacPro with a G-RAID FW800 will still run circles around it with most formats. Of course, I can get limited uncompressed HD performance with my gear, and that MacPro G-RAID system would probably choke…so its all relative.
I’m not sure what format she’s working in (she only mentioned still photos), but I would hate to see her spend all kinds of money on faster disks, when possibly she should be saving some cash for a new machine. Would need more info about the kind of work she is doing.
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