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Mac Pro Set Up
I plan on buying the Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon but not sure the amount of memory and type of graphics card to get. I’ve heard that you should max out the memory and in this case it would be 8GB but I have been told by an Apple guy that the system would never use all 8 and that 6 is enough. And would getting the
ATI Radeon HD4870 GeForce GT be that much better that the standard card that comes with it? I am pushing my money limit by jumping into the Mac Pro world. I had seriously considered maxing out the top of the line i-Mac and going with that? My current system is a G4 Dual-800 with FCP 4.5. I am looking forward to upgrading to the latest FCP and working with Motion. All help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -
2 Replies
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Final Cut doesn’t need more than 2GB of RAM, but if you plan on doing anything with Motion, then I would load up on RAM because Motion is a RAM-intensive program while working in the program. However, when you render out your final project from motion, I believe the GPU takes care of that task. Personally, I do not do anything crazy in motion. I usually do simple graphics and lower thirds. So dealing with the standard graphics card has been fine for me. I don’t spend hours waiting for something to render.
When working with FCP, only the standard graphics card is necessary. All of the rendering is done by the CPU, not the graphics card.
Also, for the latest Mac Pro, the max amount of RAM is 32GB, not 8. If you plan on getting more than the bare minimum for your mac, I suggest ordering the bare minimum from Apple and purchasing upgrades from Other World Computing.
Robert J. Grauert, Jr.
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Gene,
Go for the ATI card. Its a pretty inexpensive way to get the most GPU horsepower possible for your system.
Reading your post, it looks like you get a lot of use out of your systems before moving on to a new one. In that case, you might want to consider an 8-core 2.26 ghz. On the RAM front, moving from 6 Gb to 12 Gb is pretty cheap with an 8-core–only about $300.
Torrey
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