About to Upgrade to 5.1.2 (crossgrade) from FCP 4.5

R

RicFic

Active member
Hey all,

Just ordered the crossgrade to FCS 5.1. I'm on the original Power mac G5 dual 2 gig (not the duel) and have the original graphics card (ati w/128mb ram-not sure which one) and running panther 10.3.7.

My ram is 1.5 gigs and I'm looking to up that. Currently it's 2-256 MB sticks (original) and 2-512 MB sticks. The machine has 8 slots total and I know I need to upgrade in pairs.

I'll upgrade to the latest Tiger b-4 installing FCS 5.1.

Three Questions:

1.) If I get 2-1 gig sticks will 3.5 GB be enough ram for motion?


2.) If my ram pairs (2-256mb, 2-512mb, 2-1 gb) are all different sizes could that be a problem? If not, is there any order I'd want to place them (i.e. the 1gb sticks first)?

3.) My graphics card says ATY,R350 in the system profiler with 128 mb of VRAM. I have no idea what model this card is and/or if it can handle Motion. Can anyone tell me?

I work mostly with DV footage and occasionally betacam (No HD yet). My system has been stable with FCP 4.5 and Panther 10.3.7. I'm trying to make this upgrade go smoothly and continue to have a stable system.

Any help and/or additional suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Rich
 
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Although I use a PC most upgrades are common to PC/Mac so here's a just a few suggestion:

Don't upgrade everything at once, I'd start with the RAM - I think installing two 1GB sticks should work fine.

Motion is both a GPU and memory pig, so if its possible I'd upgrade your graphics card to the Radeon XT1800. It's one of the standard cards available for the Mac Pro, however, I believe it's a PCIe card so it depends on if the G5 has PCIe slots. If not I'm sure the Apple site would give you a list of acceptable cards. Get one that has 256MB cache.

Motion should work fine for SD with 3.5GB of Ram.

Once you have everything up and running with your old operating system, the next thing to do is upgrade to Tiger. By doing the operating system after the hardware upgrades all of the latest drivers should be installed with the operating system.

Once that's working I'd upgrade the FCP suite.
 
1- That'll be plenty of RAM.
2- No problems at all, you'll be fine.
3- Should be fine.

Install the RAM first. It won't matter if you upgrade the OS or the applications first, it's a UNIX system, it's a totally different animal from Windows. Just be sure to run Disk Utility to "Repair Permissions" on your system drive after every software update for good measure.

When upgrading Final Cut, be sure to let it run the whole upgrade, media and all, don't do anything custom with the upgrade.


The standard graphics card with the G5 2.0 Ghz model should be fine. If you do plan to use Motion a LOT, eventually a newer graphics card would increase your performace. I just upgraded the same machine, no problems.
 
Thanks. You guys are great.

Just to be clear, I have the original dual 2 gb g5 with PCI-X, not PCI-E. Am I still good with my graphics card? I read what Apple recommends for the graphics card but I have no idea what one I have in my computer.

Thanks again.

Rich
 
Go to the Apple menu, then to About This Mac, then click on More Info, then highlight Graphics/Displays. It should give the actual name of the card.
 
I'm thinking of the same thing for my G5 1.8DP. With enough RAM, will time-intensive tasks (like rendering and exporting) run faster, slower, or about the same when upgrading from 4.5 HD/Panther to 5/Tiger? Thanks.
 
More RAM will always help, especially on older Macs. I suggest a min of 1Gig, but don't worry about going too much over 2 or 3. You'll find the greatest improvements in that range. Although, if you can easily afford bumping up to 4Gigs, go for it.

FCP will use up to 4Gigs of RAM on it's own. I have 4.5 in my Quad Core G5. I see no reason to go over that. I doubt I'd see any increase in performance.

Also, upgrading to FCP 5.1 and OS X 10.4.8 will also help with performance, since both are much more efficient and faster versions of software.

The APTS book, Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System book is fantastic. Great troubleshooting section in the back, great techincal info on hardware setups, software configs, video formats, everything. Apple took three years and a dozen authors to complete it. It's a "must have" for all FCP users.
 
Ben, I agree about the FCP book. I haven't bought it yet, but I have admired it in the store.

I have 1.5Gigs now. Should I just try it with that much and see what happens?

Thanks for the guidance.
 
I"d personally prefer 2, but it should run fine with 1.5. More RAM contributes to more real time playback for some filters and functions, also.
 
I did the same upgrade - first to Tiger OS, then to 5.1.2 FCP. Here is my only advice: Be sure to unplug any firewire DV decks and/or firewire external drives before you upgrade the OS to Tiger. If you leave them plugged in when you do the install of Tiger for some reason the decks and drives may no longer be recognized. (It happened to me with a DVCam deck I had plugged into the system. After the upgrade, FCP would not see the deck anymore.)
 
Yup...I think it was the same with Panther upgrades. Thanks.

To those who are using a G5 with Tiger & FCP5, do you think you're missing much? Unless you've got lots of $$ to upgrade all the time, how do you tell when there's a compelling reason to go Intel.
 
Here's what I think, this is how it worked when I was doing IT work and designing enterprise level networks. The large corporations we worked for would buy tons of units at a time. They figured out a "life span" for them. It figured ROI, depreciation, etc. But it also figured in how long these computers would last before mandatory software updates forced them to get newer hardware. I was usually about 5-6 years. These are folks running very specialized, expensive, custom software, so the software maker can demand whatever hardware they want.

When I buy my own computer, I get the fastest CPU set-up I can afford at the time. It'll last me longer than a slower CPU, i.e, more hours of use per dollar. I hold on to that machine until the software I'm using has evolved so far that I can't run the latest version on my machine any longer. Then I upgrade.

Just cause you have an old 2.0Ghz G5 Mac, just cause Apple doesn't make that model anymore, it's not obsolete. I have one that runs the latest versions of everything just fine. It doesn't have as much RT as my Quad Core has, but, it still edits really well. I just sold it, and the dude who bought it from me is very talented, but on a budget. He's getting tons of use out of it and is very grateful to have such a nice set-up to produce with. I upgraded to a Quad Core G5 because I got a very large project that paid for it. I took advantage of a rare opportunity.

When will I go Intel? Sometime in 2007. Why, if my Quad Core G5 runs just fine? Cause I also teach and more and more students are on Intel Macs, and I will have to keep up. Otherwise, if I wasn't a trainer, I would be waiting much longer to upgrade my G5 Quad Core. I like to squeeze as much usage out of my stuff as I can. Cause, hey, this s**t ain't cheap, and I ain't rich... yet...

Ok, I'm ranted out...
 
BenB said:
When I buy my own computer, I get the fastest CPU set-up I can afford at the time. It'll last me longer than a slower CPU, i.e, more hours of use per dollar. I hold on to that machine until the software I'm using has evolved so far that I can't run the latest version on my machine any longer. Then I upgrade.
Click to expand...


I couldn't agree more. I'm trying to squeeze what I can out of my G5 dual 2.0 gig (fastest machine at the time). It has paid for itself tenfold, is still returning on that investment, and is still relevant. I'm upgrading FCP and the ram to squeeze more life out of it before the inevitable.

Rich
 
Hey, a side question:

I have the crossgrade discs right in front of me, waiting to be installed (4.5 to 5.1, just like you), but I wanted to do a system restore on my computer before I did so. Seeing as how I turned in my 4.5 discs to get the crossgrade, I won't be able to install 4.5 before performing the upgrade. I guess my question is, can the crossgrade discs be used for a fresh install, or does the system need to have a previous version installed?

I'll be calling Apple sometime soon to figure it out, but I wanted to know if anyone had any experience with this so far.
 
Yes, you can do a fresh install with the new discs. I just did this 3 weeks ago and had no problems, it also never asked for my old discs. Basically it behaved like a normal install, no special hoops to go through etc.
 
I never did system restores, I don't see a reason to, FCP upgrades usually go pretty well. I've done dozens of them, just run the upgrade, no problems. Doing a system restore seems pretty drastic for an upgrade. My my two cents.
 
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