Powermac G5 and Final Cut?

[elvis valentine]

Howdy folks,

 

This is my first post here so thanks all in advance.

I recently bought a powermac g5 dual core 2.0ghz 4gb ram from ebay, now i basically got it for free as i was buying a Digidesign 002 unit but it came as part of the package that i happened to win for the price i was willing to pay for the 002 alone:-) so i was pretty happy.

Its pretty ideal for my audio production requirements as it came with 3 uad cards installed too so i doubt i will ever be able to max out the cpu even if i tried, well for audio work anyway.

My questions are...

I am at uni just now studying film and really need to run Final Cut, I dont need to be running the latest version. Studio 2 i think should be more than adequate for my needs just now.

I do need to work with HD but i can capture stuff in Uni but i will want to edit at home. Will my powermac be able to deal with that no problem? Should i upgrade the video card and if so to what? or should i get more RAM? can it even use more than 4GB RAM anyway?

Thanks again for any help.

 

Elvis Valentine x

[flakmonkey]

That dual core 2.0 is going to be appreciably faster than the dual processor model it replaced, you'll be surprised at what your 5-ish year old Mac can do. Go for the latest UB version of Final Cut you can get your hands on and it should be fine, rendering times will be slower than the equivalent Intel Mac but still acceptable. HD editing should be do-able, it can be done a 2.3 dual so you will probably be ok on a 2.0 DC. It won't feel as instantly snappy as it does on a later Mactel but it will still be very useable.

 

You probably have a GeForce 6600 in there with 256MB VRAM, worst case a 6600LE with 128MB, and if you lucked out there will be 512MB 7800GT. Either way you have a PCIe graphics bus that will take just about anything supported under OS X. You can use PC graphics cards and avoid paying the Mac tax but you need to flash them with a Mac ROM first. Check out the EliteMac website for lots of information on flashing PC cards to run in Macs. Something like a flashed 1GB 9800GT would be a good balance between cost and performance.

 

Memory wise you can fit up to 16GB as pairs of 2GB PC2-4200 DIMMS. I cant remember off hand which slots are paired with which but a quick google search should turn that up easily enough. G5s are very picky about memory, the best results are usually had with Kingston or Crucial memory. Don't discount going for the software RAID option either, it's not as fast as a hardware solution but most people claim a noticeable speed hike with HDD operations running that way.

[dothacker]

Welcome. FCS is more processor and memory hog. Also, dont forget to increase your HDD space or get a separate 2nd, or 3rd HDD as your scratch disk on FCS

[elvis valentine]

Thanks very much Flakmonkey.

Im not really sure about the whole RAID thing and definately dont know what the difference is between doing it via hardware or by software. i though it was a way of setting up multiple hdd to speed things up and save data in case one disk gets corrupted is that correct?

anyways thanks very much for your answers.

 

E.V.

 

And thank you dothacker.

I will probably be using a external fw hdd will that be fast enough?

I will probably get a 2nd hdd anyways though.

cheers again.

 

 

e.v.

[flakmonkey]

There are different levels of RAID, the one you might want to look at is RAID 0, or striped RAID. When you have a striped array, writes are shared between the disks so that each disk has less to do. This gives you much faster write to disk times, and as you would expect read times are faster too. OS X can do this in software by creating a RAID set in disk utility, it's a very simple drag and drop operation. So the upsides are that you don't have to buy a controller card, and you get better disk performance. The downsides are that you really need to reinstall OS X to set this up (probably not a big deal if you've just bought your G5) and that software RAID does carry a slight processor overhead. In practice this is negligible but it's still there.

 

A separate scratch disk is also a very good idea but unfortunately you're pretty stuck for HD space in a G5 so unless you can find somewhere to squeeze another drive in it's a straight choice between RAID or a scratch disk.

[dothacker]

1TB External HDD is a good scratch disk... just like what i'm using... either connected as USB or FireWire.

[elvis valentine]

Cheers guys.

So is there really only enough room for one hdd in my powermac?

The thing is that already installed on the Mac is the pro tools factory pack (loads of plug ins) but i dont have the original software discs so would be reluctant to re install the os.

Which actually raises another question i have.

I will have the ILOK with all the relevant licenses just no software discs. If i was able to source the discs would i be able to use the ILOK to verify/register or whatever again?

Thanks a bunch for your help thus far.

(in a Columbo style)

Oh and one more thing, i am running osx tiger 10.4.11. Is that going to be a problem for my Final Cut stuff bearing in mind that i really do not think im going to do anything more to the mac in terms of updates etc. It wont be used for anything other than music/audio production, Video editing and photoshop (probably cs4) no internet or software upgrades etc (probably).

By that i mean, if everything runs fine on it just now i will be able to use it for all me immediate needs over the next 2/3 years (bearing in mind that i practically got it for free) then after Uni i can upgrade to a new intel mac or whatever new amazing minority report esque system is out then.

Right?

Cheers Folks.

 

E.V.

[flakmonkey]

You have two drive bays in your G5, so you can (officially) get one additional drive in there. You might be able to think of a way to get another drive in there but be careful not to mess up the airflow in there. Those fans are going to run full blast during renders so try not to put anything in their way. You're also going to need a PCIe SATA controller if you do that as you only have two SATA channels.

 

My preference on the later/ more powerful G5s is for 10.5.8 Leopard, but if you're happy with Tiger and it runs everything you need to be running then there's no real reason not to stick with it. Leopard's big deal is Time Machine which is great for people like myself who constantly forget to back up, but you can use a third party utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner on 10.4 and sidestep that issue neatly. Which brings us to reinstalling your OS. If you went with a RAID set up, there's no reason you shouldnt be able to put a clean install of OS X on your new RAID set then do a restore from your back-up to get everything to exactly where it was before. Time Machine would be most suitable for this and for that reason alone I would be thinking of upgrading to Leopard.

 

My interpretation of the EULA is that you dont need the physical disks for it to be valid, but I wouldn't want to be without them for a critical application.That's just my interpretation though.

[elvis valentine]

Thanks again flak...

 

yeah, i would ideally like to have the discs for everything but alas i dont

I was thinking i could try and source the discs on the internet or maybe i could even download from the digi/avid site if they do that and if i have the licenses on my ILOK does that sound like something that would work to anyone?

So if i had Leopard discs would the Mac simply upgrade the os or would it rewrite the whole system disc (ie overwrite everything?) And how easy is it to do this? I have heard terrible stories from folk who have tried to install new os on their macs who said it was nothing but trouble.

Thanks a lot everyone.

 

E.V.

[dothacker]

from 10.4 to 10.5, it's a complete re-install. The only thing your mac won't support is 10.6

[elvis valentine]

Cheers dothacker,

 

does anyone reckon then that by upgrading to leopard that Final Cut Studio 2 would see an improvement? i will literally only be using Final Cut, Pro Tools and Photoshop.

How much of a difference would i see if i maxed out the RAM? Do any of the afore mentioned programmes even operate on 64bit level?

 

Dual and Quad cores can have a lot of RAM right? but a lot of programmes can only use a max of 4GB right? because of the 32bit nature of the architecture. So will any of the 3 programmes mentioned benefit from more than 4GB? (ie in my understanding work on 64 bit architectur?)

 

Forgive me if this is an ill informed assessment of how this all works.

Muchos Gracias.

 

e.v.

[flakmonkey]

I only really know Photoshop on a nuts and bolts level, and unfortunately CS4 will only run 32 bit on a Mac - even on a 64 bit platform such as the G5. The Windoze version has a 64 bit executable but the Mac version shipped without this as Apple stopped work on a 64 bit version of Carbon to concentrate their efforts on Cocoa. What this means is that CS4 will only be able to directly address 4GB of memory, but Photoshop is more memory than CPU intensive so it's always a good idea to have as much memory as you can in your Mac so that you PS can use its 4GB and leave plenty for everything else.

 

Don't worry about not seeing much of a difference with the RAM maxed out. G5s respond very well to memory upgrades. You will definitely notice a big difference. Just dont be tempted by the cheap stuff for a G5 unless you like kernel panics.