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Mac Pro for FCP
Hi all , I am new to the Mac Book Pro and FCP after NAB this year. Everything is fine with the laptop for what I do. In looking at Apple’s site regarding the Mac Pro destop I have a couple questions ? they say 4GB of ram and the Radeon x1900 graphics card. Are these good specs to go with on a purchase ? Also they say to get 4 500 GB hard drives ? Is this extreme if one is not doing HD productions. Also my last question, is it possible to use 2 Apple 23″ displays with the Mac Book Pro ?
Thanks for everyone’s help as I continue from PC to MAC land
Tom
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8 Replies
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[Tom] “they say 4GB of ram and the Radeon x1900 graphics card. Are these good specs to go with on a purchase ?”
Very good choices.
[Tom] “Also they say to get 4 500 GB hard drives ? Is this extreme if one is not doing HD productions.”
All depends on what you are doing and how much throughput you’re looking for. I have a 2tb array and besides being spacious, its very fast, thereby giving me lots of realtime performance. Considering excellent 500gb SATA drives can be had for $179 to $200 now, hard drives are no longer a big investment under any circumstance.
DRW
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Specs you posted are just right I’d say… Which CPU? The faster, the better unless your encoding and render needs are minimal… If you’re happy with these times on your laptop, any of the dual’s will do this faster.
The hard drive purchase could be put off until you need it… how much really depends on a lot of factors like format, and how much media you want to keep online at one time. What format are you working with now? DV? then I’d just get two drives, one for startup, one for media storage if 500 gigs is enough for your needs now. One thing’s sure this year’s prices on hard drives will be higher per gig than next years…
Yes it will run 2×23″ displays in its sleep.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
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I don’t think there’s any way to run 2 monitors on the laptop. I mean, you get the laptop screen AND an external, so that’s 2, but you can’t get 2 in ADDITION to the built in screen.
Also, for any machine, buy extra RAM from someplace like crucial.com and put it in yourself. Much cheaper than having Apple do it.
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[Jeff Carpenter] “Also, for any machine, buy extra RAM from someplace like crucial.com and put it in yourself. Much cheaper than having Apple do it.”
That used to be the case, but the Apple RAM has a special heatsink designed to increase
the performance.https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304235
So maybe you can you use third party RAM, but it will be noisier!
Peter
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I think we’re talking about a Mac Pro, not a laptop…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
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You’re right poster asked about a mac book pro running two 23’s… isn’t going to happen…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
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[Peter Wiggins] “[Jeff Carpenter] “Also, for any machine, buy extra RAM from someplace like crucial.com and put it in yourself. Much cheaper than having Apple do it.”
That used to be the case, but the Apple RAM has a special heatsink designed to increase
the performance.”Actually Other World Computing has the same RAM and Crucial will shortly have the same RAM if they don’t already.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Excellent, my Mac Pro is so quiet I don’t want to put anything in it thats going to get the fans working harder.
Peter
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