Hey everyone!
My girlfriend is a professional video editor at a university's communications dept, and her work rig is pretty nice, but her home editing stuff is getting pretty out of date which is making her freelance work harder. She wants to get a few more years of use out of this computer but I was hoping to help her make a few upgrades that would put some spring in its step.
She has basically the standard config early 2008 mac pro
In summary:
Early 2008 Mac Pro
Quad Core 2.8ghz Xeon
2gb RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600 video card (2x DVI)
1x 500 gb Serial ATA HDD
She's got both an Apple 20in Cinema display (1680x1050) and an Acer 20in H203H (1600x900) display.
She uses both Final Cut Pro 7, and After Effects.
Her birthday is coming up soon, and I was wondering what the most bang-for-the-buck upgrades I could get/help her with. So far I've come up with:
I'm leaning towards the RAM at this point, does anyone have any suggestions, or think any of these ideas is particularly better or more efficient than the others? I was hoping to stay in the $250ish range if possible.
Thanks!
My girlfriend is a professional video editor at a university's communications dept, and her work rig is pretty nice, but her home editing stuff is getting pretty out of date which is making her freelance work harder. She wants to get a few more years of use out of this computer but I was hoping to help her make a few upgrades that would put some spring in its step.
She has basically the standard config early 2008 mac pro
In summary:
Early 2008 Mac Pro
Quad Core 2.8ghz Xeon
2gb RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600 video card (2x DVI)
1x 500 gb Serial ATA HDD
She's got both an Apple 20in Cinema display (1680x1050) and an Acer 20in H203H (1600x900) display.
She uses both Final Cut Pro 7, and After Effects.
Her birthday is coming up soon, and I was wondering what the most bang-for-the-buck upgrades I could get/help her with. So far I've come up with:
- RAM - she has 8 slots supporting up to 32gb, unfortunately Mac Pro Ram (DDR2 w/ ECC) is kinda expensive, it's about $250 to go from 2x 1gb to 2x 4gb. I feel like this would make her editing work feel very different.
- Video Card - Apple and OWC both sell upgrade kits to the ATI 5770. Again, in the $200-250 range.
- Monitor - I think she'd really like a 1080p monitor, but I don't know if that would really help with the editing experience as much as other hardware upgrades.
- SSD - She has 3 open bays, so putting in an SSD to use as a final cut scratch disk seems like that would be helpful.
I'm leaning towards the RAM at this point, does anyone have any suggestions, or think any of these ideas is particularly better or more efficient than the others? I was hoping to stay in the $250ish range if possible.
Thanks!