Mac upgrade cost-benefit ratio

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powerdog

Veteran
Preparing to dive into AE, and already an experienced FCP user. I have a G5 1.8DP, which I don't want to sink a lot of upgrade money into (it will be replaced eventually).

I now have 1.5GB ram and the stock video card -- GeForce FX5200. Should I just see how it goes, spend $100 on another gig of RAM, or contadict myself and get a new card? My biggest concern is crashes.
 
That setup should be ok for running AE. Do as you planned and bump it up to 2.5 gigs of ram and you should be in good shape.

You'll eventually want a faster system for rendering, but dualie 1.8's are fine for working in AE. A new video card won't make any difference in AE's performance.
 
I run a dual 2.0 G5 with 1.5 GB of ram and it runs fine for me. Most renders go by pretty fast, but I do a lot of 5-10 second opens so nothing too complex. On the bigger projects it would be nice to have some extra CPU crunching power to speed things up but no complaints overall.
 
I went ahead with the extra gig...can't hurt and not expensive.

Wrong forum, but what video-related apps would a better card make a difference in?
 
greeches said:
Kai, what are your system's specs?
Click to expand...

Main system is a 2ghz Quad with 6.5gigs ram, XRaid storage via fiber, Kona 3 card, dual 20" cinema displays, wacom tablet.

Then assorted other macs for file sharing, render farm, etc.
 
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