what video card/how much RAM would you get?

[Walter Biscardi]

[scalvidgal] “How much RAM and what type of videocard do I really need?”

I’m assuming you mean graphics card since that is what you listed as options. Video Cards come from Blackmagic and AJA are an entirely different thing.

4GB RAM minimum.
ATI 1900 card.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Michael Sacci]

Just got an 8-core in and I went with the X1900 seems like ATI plays better with same of the new features and a lot of software using the GPU instead of the CPU so this is the value for your bucks. AE and Motion will thank you.

NEVER upgrade ram through the Apple store, I got the same RAM apple puts in for 1/2 the price an extra 8GB (4x2GB) for $1000 to give me a total of 9GB (vs. $2100 from Apple and you lose 1GB) macsales.com is where I have bought RAM for all my systems. Get at least 4GB and remember you don’t have to get this all at once, you can add as you get work.

Also don’t upgrade the HD either, order 500 or 750GB drives from mwave.com. then stripe these 3 drives together for an awesome internal storge. You can get (3) 500GB drives for under $400 Maxtor (Pro line). All you need is “bare” drives since you don’t need mounting hardware or cables.

[Don Greening]

Michael,

I went the other way and ordered my 4 core Mac with everything extra right from Apple, including extended warranty. I figured if anything screws up it’s only one phone call instead of one to the RAM supplier, one to the HD supplier etc.

Dare to be different 🙂

– Don

“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”

[Winston A. cely]

This essentially what I did as well, for the same reasons. I know that down the line I can add more RAM when I need it, but I got 4 GIGs and the ATI 1900XT from Apple. Besides, the adding RAM in these new Mac Pros is different from previous models, and didn’t want to risk placing it in myself (yet).

[Eric Hansen]

i can’t really lend advice for the graphics cards because i havent been able to test different ones.

i have 3rd party RAM and Hard Drives in my G5s and i’ve never had an issue with AppleCare. they consider them user-upgradeable parts so it doesnt affect the service. a good Seagate or Maxtor server-level hard drive has a 5 year warranty, and the RAM from OWC is half the price of the Apple store for the same brand. so it seems like a no brainer to me. i understand those who want the all-in-one Apple solution for simplicity, but with a fully loaded Mac Pro, your talking hundreds to thousands of dollars difference.

also, if you buy 3rd party RAM, get the non-ECC. ECC is only needed for scientific and math intensive systems. the fact that Apple only sells ECC RAM now is probably the reason for the large spike in RAM costs. its not necessary IMHO.

e

[David Bogie]

Be aware, the 4x nVidia is actually four of the dang cards, it’s not a 4 times speed option. The cards are supposed to have weird joojoo running in the background, nVidia’s “SLI” claims to to link the four cards together to max out performance.It’s marketing crap.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Mark Maness]

From what I understand from several of the Prost Productions conference speakers, you really need 2 gig of memory per core to get optimal performance. This means that you really need a miminum of 8 gig for optimal performance.

As for the video card, buy the best that you can afford. The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 is absolutely the best but most of us can’t afford the $1500 upgrade. At least, get the ATI Radeon X1900 XT. Its the best bang for the buck.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Ben Holmes]

[Wayne Carey] “From what I understand from several of the Prost Productions conference speakers, you really need 2 gig of memory per core to get optimal performance”

You mean I need 16Gb of memory in my 8-cores for optimal performance? Really? Oops. Got to get some more memory ordered. Seriously, do you see a real performance advantage (particularly for rendering) between 4 and 8Gb of RAM? I’ve never seen good figures to compare this – can anyone shed some light on this, say after upgrading their own system?

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations.

New HD edit/slomo truck on the road this month. Dual FCP systems/6 slomo positions.

[Mark Maness]

Oops… I said that wrong…. I appologize.

I meant to say 2 gig per pair of cores. So… Yeah, that means at least 8 gig to run effeciently.

I can understand this fully since I have the Quad 3.0 right now and I saw a marked difference between 2 gig and 8 gig in performance. My system has a total of 8 gig and I have had no problems with running all sorts of programs at the same time.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Ben Holmes]

OK. Panicking a little less now, thanks Wayne.

I can see that a) having adequate RAM for OS and FCP (say 3-4Gb) is a necessity, and then that having additional RAM will allow other apps to run at the same time properly. I suppose with the increased interoperability in FCS that’s going to be a lot more important, since at the moment I rarely have anything other than FCP open all the time.

Thanks again – your reply really clarified things for me.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations.

New HD edit/slomo truck on the road this month. Dual FCP systems/6 slomo positions.