more ram or graphics card

R

ReIs

Well-known member
hi guys,
Im thinking of upgrading my octo mac, i have six 1 gig sticks currently in it, im considering getting 16 more gigs, or buying a really nice graphics card, which way should i go? MORE RAM or GRAPHICS CARD ON STERIODS?
I do alot of Motion graphics work along with everything FCP , and photoshop , also thinking about learning MAYA in the near future. THANKS FOR YOUR OPINON :badputer:
 
Depends on what programs you want to work with. Maya and photoshop will benefit from a good quadro FX card for rendering, but video editors won't typically utilize graphics cards quite as much. More ram is great for a lot of applications, but in many cases the full 16gb will not be utilized (some 32-bit applications won't even be able to work with that much). You can't go wrong with either of them, but if you can get a good deal on a pro graphics card for motion graphics, go for it! Remember, however, pro graphics card does not equal gaming graphics card.
 
what would be a bad ass card for fcp and motion? i dont want to mess up and buy a video game card
 
ReIs said:
what would be a bad ass card for fcp and motion? i dont want to mess up and buy a video game card
Click to expand...

if you got the stock card with your 8 core then a cheap but reasonable improvement would be the ATI 4870 which is less than $200. you didnt state how much you would be willing to spend so this is a good upgrade from the stock card at a modest price. there are of course others and but you can pay a lot to get them also.

you might want to consider getting a better card than what you have and adding some ram as well. apple's Motion will suck down RAM and eat up all the graphics power you can supply. i dont see FCP as being RAM hungry.

david
www.davidprobst.com
 
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ReIs, quick question/s. Whats your editing set up look like as far as hardware?

Certainly for motion a new GPU is going to be the best option. BUT, depending on how you answer the above you may want to look at something like the Decklink HD extreme.
 
I use afcp 7 editing suite ,
octo core mac pro
6 gigs of ram
stock video card
cal digit vr raid in 0
52" samsung lcd@60mhz

thanks for your opinon
 
Ram is only needed for certain stuff same as GPU

Buy a SSD Drive and put your system files on drive
will have a real increase in performance much more speed
 
the OP mentioned motion graphics so i assume that apple's Motion might be used. he also mentioned Maya which i no nothing about. Motion though would benefit greatly from more ram and a better graphics card .

a SSD on the other hand would be a useful upgrade as well. it just really depends on the programs he is needed a boost in.

david
www.davidprobst.com
 
thanks david p for the great info, i see the author likes owc, they seem to be the best bang for the buck. i had planned on going with them, my only concerns was the heat issue.i purchased a 320 gig fw 800 external drive and it was getting really hot, I sent it back to them and they mailed it back and said they had fixed it, but it still got really hot.I went out and got an omega 500 gig for alittle more and it stays cool for hours and hours of use.I will be checking the activity monitor utility for consumption next time im roundtripping in fcp.Im starting to understand through the grat advice on this thread that a gpu upgrade will definetly be in the cards and also possibly some more ram.
 
Im currentlyt using a mini dv to hdmi adapter on the back of my mac pro and can see there is a bottle neck so im going to try to solve all these issues with as little new gear as possible and still doing my reseach.
 
ive bought a lot of stuff from OWC from ram to external HD's and internals. so far out of about 25 or so HD's ive only sent one of the cheaper "Neptune" externals back. after they recieved it from me they had it back to me in the speed of light. unfortunately it went bad again. that was about 6 months ago. i also had a brand new Mercury Elite Quad interface go belly up after one day of use...5 months ago. needless to say (me being lazy) i havent been in any hurry to get them back for repair but plan to do it soon. they have a lifetime warranty and im pretty confident from my experience they will make good but i will request this time that they give me a new replacement on the Neptune rather than just fix it again. i have bought almost all Mercury Elite Quad's and the rest 1-1.5gb internals.

im not pushing OWC to you, it just happened to be what that article promoted. i suggest that you pick what you feel comfortable with. i just thought the article gave comprehensive info as to dropping more ram into an 8 core machine.

by the way ive bought ram for a G5 plus 2 different 8 core Intel machines from them. 12gigs on one of the 8 cores and 16 gigs on my current 2.93ghz machine and have no problems with it. considering how finicky some of this ram seems to be im happy to say that i got good stuff from them so far. they have always been very cool on the phone with me and never high pressured.

good luck
david
www.davidprobst.com
 
Robert M Wright said:
GPUs are great for 3D rendering, but don't do squat for 2D.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I may be misunderstanding your post, but the GPU on a Mac in Motion greatly accelerates Motion rendering. And of course Maya is a modeling and animation package.

check barefeats.com for some comparisons.
 
what kinds of drives do you work off of? i found that moving from fw800 to eSATA gave more of a performance jump than either ram or graphics card
 
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