FCP 3, lack of high spec graphics card, Upgrade RAM to get around it?

[testrachan]

Hi folks,

I've been searching the pages for a while and couldn't find anything that answered this so hope I'm not creating a duplicate thread.

I'm running a iMac 3.06Ghz, the October '09 model. The graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of shared DDR3 memory, I know that Final Cut Studio 3 prefers 128MB of dedicated graphics but also know that you can work around this, but Colour and Motion may run a bit slower.

My main question is, if I upgrade the internal RAM from 4GB to 8GB (or even 16GB) will this get around it?

I've worked in Final Cut Studio 1 for 3 years now (hung on till the old MacBook Pro couldn't take anymore), and I'm very familiar with the editing side of things but I don't really understand what effect the graphics card will have or what the RAM will effect. Obviously I know the greater the better but if someone could answer this whilst explaining that I'd be greatly appreciated.

 

[jtopp]

256MB of Ram and 8 Gigs of Ram should be fine.

 

[Richardthe4th]

You could get an error message from the installer, because you have integrated video ram. But that only matters for motion and color, they are gpu intensive. So FCP, soundtrack en dvd sp should work fine and can be installed with the below tip (mind you, I haven't tested it).

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcs_3_on_mb.html

Also check out the other great Kenstone tips

Good luck

 

[testrachan]

Cheers guys, hopefully should be up and going in a couple of days,

any chance someone could explain which parts are the heavy on graphics card an which are heavy on the RAM?