Dual g4's or (maybe) G5 for Final Cut Pro?

[FF_productions]

I've been searching around ebay and such for some powermac dual g4's, and most have come up for the sub-1000 dollar area, which is right in my alley..At the moment, I can't push past 1000 dollars and get a low-end g5 (money is tight)...Just wondering, all you dual g4 owners, how smooth is final cut pro on those machines? I've been looking at getting a dual 867, dual 1 ghz, whats the difference in speed? I know the g5 will beat the g4 on any day, but as I said before, the money is tight...I'm not into the all-in-one systems, so a imac g5 is not of my interest..I will try to load up the computer with ram if i get one, but I wouldn't have enough money to load up the g5 with ram, because I won't have any money in the first place..so the g4's would have over a gig of ram...Any help would be great and I hope you aren't confused by my questions...

Thanks

P.S. My powermac g3 is way too slow for anything!!

 

[FF_productions]

anybody?

 

[evil_santa]

get as much ram as you can & a second drive for the media. I ran FCP4.5 on a G4 733 ok with 1gb ram & 2 x120gb HD

 

[R.Youden]

See sig, my Dual G4 is one fantastic machine. The only issue is the heat and noise. I can resolve that with new fans but I think it will invalidate my warrenty.

Go for the G4, get as much RAM as possible, try and get an SATA PCI card and get a Raptor drive, that will cut through FCP better than most G5's.

 

[FF_productions]

dual g4's sounds like a good idea to me!

 

[R.Youden]

I dont know if it would affect yourself, but for me the big advantage is that it has two optical drive bays so you can add an extra CD / DVD drive. I cant quite understand why they only put in one drive in the G5

 

[codycartoon]

Do not waste money on RAM, it's the most overrated upgrade ever. I have a powermac G4 867 with 256 MB ram and I run FCP 3 and photoshop all the time, sometimes with itunes and ichat... It's a little slow, but not slow enough to really make a difference.

What really makes mine blaze is a SATA card and a 250 GB hard drive that I use as a scratch disk for FCP.

but seriously get a dual g4, they are solid computers built to last, and if you are going to be editing put as much storage as you can on it.

-cody

 

[LethalWolfe]

Do not waste money on RAM, it's the most overrated upgrade ever. I have a powermac G4 867 with 256 MB ram and I run FCP 3 and photoshop all the time, sometimes with itunes and ichat... It's a little slow, but not slow enough to really make a difference.

You've got to be kidding. Bump that up to a gig+ of RAM and you'll realize how slow "a little slow" really is. 256 is the minimum spec for FCP 3.

What really makes mine blaze is a SATA card and a 250 GB hard drive that I use as a scratch disk for FCP.

Honestly, that doesn't make a big difference when it comes to DV. DV only goes so fast and giving it more than what it needs isn't going to make it go any faster. Any relatively new 7200 RPM ATA HDD is more than enough for DV. Heck, I have some 5 year old 7200 RPM drives that have yet to give me problems. Double heck, modern 5400 RPM drives are good enough for light DV editing.


FF_productions,
I wouldn't go any lower than a dual gig G4 as that machine is quickly becoming the low man on the totem pole for Apple's pro apps.


Lethal

 

[evil_santa]

Do not waste money on RAM, it's the most overrated upgrade ever. I have a powermac G4 867 with 256 MB ram and I run FCP 3 and photoshop all the time, sometimes with itunes and ichat... It's a little slow, but not slow enough to really make a difference.

is that running osX ?

 

[Mechcozmo]

Do not waste money on RAM, it's the most overrated upgrade ever. I have a powermac G4 867 with 256 MB ram and I run FCP 3 and photoshop all the time, sometimes with itunes and ichat... It's a little slow, but not slow enough to really make a difference.

What really makes mine blaze is a SATA card and a 250 GB hard drive that I use as a scratch disk for FCP.

but seriously get a dual g4, they are solid computers built to last, and if you are going to be editing put as much storage as you can on it.

Uh.

Wow.

Do you jab hot needles in your eyeballs too, or is this just a side hobby?


Seriously, get an extra 512MB. It is cheap now, and you will be amazed at the speed.

The reason why you're going so fast is your hard drive is being paged to a lot. But with extra drives, you don't notice as much.

If you're running OS X open the Terminal and type "top"
Look at the line that is right before the numbers that change a lot. Should list pageout and pagein and stuff. Tell us your pageouts.

If you are running OS 9... it does all of that without crashing?

 

[FF_productions]

for what i've seen on ebay, almost all the dual g4's have 512 mb's-1.5 gb's of ram...I'm going to need more storage space, one for OS, one for videos (final cut pro)...I'll see how long the dual g4's last, and maybe next year, i'll get a g5...