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More RAM needed for FCP 5 and Tiger?
I have a Dual 1.8 G5 with DL SD, a Dual 2.0 G5 with DL SP, and a Dual 2.7 G5 with DL HD, all with current software. I’ve been reading about sluggish timelines and beach balls from several users with Tiger and FCPHD 5, and my experience on ALL 3 machines is that I have more beach balls and slower timeline response, similar to what used to happen with too little Ram (or a Ram leak).
I have 2 Gigs of Ram in each, which used to be enough for 4.5. I’m contemplating adding another 2 Gigs to each system.
Is this really a ram issue in either Tiger or FCP 5? Has anyone out there added more Ram, up to 4 to 8 gigs, and seen better performance?
Thanks…
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4 Replies
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FCP5 can address up to 2GB of ram per application. IE get Motion 2, Compressor, and FCP5 rocking and you could be looking at 6GB of ram utilization. OS 10.4 can only address 512MB of real ram, and another 3GB of Virtual Ram, or HD Cache. If your running just FCP, look at 3GB as the best compromise. But, in your case, I fear a poor instal is more to blame than Ram problems. I recommend doing a clean install of 10.4 -> upgrade to 10.4.2 -> and then install FCP5 and upgrade to 5.02 via software update. I have a Dual 2.7 with 8GB ram and fast 10K boot drive with a 5.6TB xserve and Kona 2/io card box combo. I was crashing with the original shipping version of 10.4 and when I reinstalled, and upgraded, everything has been great. As I type this I am at 238 Hours uptime running an HD 720P online.
VM
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To get better performance, you really need to improve the graphics card on the system. I have two identical G5 systems, but one has the ATI x800XT card and it’s a much faster and more responsive system than the system with the stock G5 graphics card.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
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Thanks for the tips…when I installed Tiger, I backed up the disk to FW, formatted with 1’s and 0’s, and installed fresh, software updated, then installed FCP HD 5. But I will do it again on one system to see if it helps (after adding more RAM for a total of 4 GIGS).
As for Graphics cards, the faster ATI is better than the older one, but they both performed much better under 10.3. The nVidia card, which is the slowest compared to the 2 ATI’s, seems to perform better in FCP HD 5. I understand that the new Motion requires more video ram and performance, maybe FCP HD5 has higher needs also.
But before I experiment with different cards, has anyone done this first and care to share? Is the fastest card with the most video RAM card always better? Is there a difference in FCP between ATI and nVidia?
Thanks,
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NVIDIA or ATI
I know that for me the biggest drawback of the nvidia is that you lose one card slot because of its size.
Is there a difference between the ATI X800 XT and the X850 XT models.
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