Okay, so here is a question. I have a 1st generation Mac Pro. It has 2 x 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors and 5GB 667 MHz Ram. I also have the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT graphics card. I use it primarily for heavy video editing and graphic editing (Final Cut Pro, Motion - and rest of Final Cut Studio, After Effects, Cinema 4D, etc). I'm trying to figure out if I need more Ram to help speed up my computer a bit more or do I need to upgrade entirely to one of the new Mac Pros? I guess bottom line is - I've noticed some lag time when working with a few pro apps at the same time and trying to figure out if I'll be okay with upgrading the Ram to handle the heavy loads or is the 1st Generation Mac Pros now so outdated that I need to upgrade entirely?
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Is more Ram enough or do I need an entire upgrade?
- Thread starter erik450
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well do what you normally do and see what the ratio is
also, it may be your hdd. upgrading to a faster hdd would give a noticable boost in performance or maybe your hdd is slowing crapping out on you
also, it may be your hdd. upgrading to a faster hdd would give a noticable boost in performance or maybe your hdd is slowing crapping out on you
Okay, so I've just pulled up a couple jobs I've done. One in Final Cut Pro that I've sent to compressor and started rendering. The other in After Effects to just do a Ram Preview and now I'm at Page Ins: 174,307 and page outs: 98,263 (and climbing fast); memory is showing Wired: 668mb, Active: 2.81GB, Inactive: 844mb, Free: 463Mb (which a second ago showed free about 12mb), Swap: 456/1.0gb. By the way, now my page ins are at 188,079 and page outs are 176,122 and that's just since I've started typing this.
If by "main system" you mean "hard drive", then yes. If your pageout count is climbing quickly, more ram will help a lot. I'm amazed you're going through 5GB that fast though.
Me too! I can't believe it's eating that much ram either. That's why I'm trying to figure out if I need to upgrade and go full 32gb ram (much cheaper than buying a whole new Mac... found 32gb ram on ebay for about 800.00); or if I would be waisting my money on buying more ram and should put that money towards a new Mac Pro. I'm noticing a lot of lagging just opening different windows now while working in Final Cut Pro, etc. I didn't really experience this until just recently (after installing Snow Leopard... might just be a coincidence).
If you're getting a lot of pageouts (which you are), more ram is definitely going to be the most effective way to upgrade.
get more ram
if you can, get higher speced ram than 667mhz. if you do that, you will have to get rid of your existing 5gigs and upgrade it all
if you can, get higher speced ram than 667mhz. if you do that, you will have to get rid of your existing 5gigs and upgrade it all
I wouldnt do that personally
I doubt you will be experincing much page out at that point
if you do, the only upgrade you can do would be to upgrade your hdd to say 10k disks or ssd
you would see an improvement if you had slowdowsns
in the mean time, id probably get 8 or 12 GB and see how it is. Why pay for more ram than you potentially need? id upgrade as you need it though it is always cool maxing it out if you can afford it !
oh yea, get your ram from newegg. avoid apple at all costs. they rape you on ram prices
heres a link to hep you out
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0551 1327923908 1328037460&name=8GB (2 x 4GB)
just check the compatibility. its listed for each macpro under the ram summary
I guess I'm just kind of getting frustrated and desperate to getting rid of this lag time I'm experiencing. So far, I'm only finding 667MHz Ram chips for the 1st gen Mac Pro. Should it be able to handle at a faster rate than that do you think?
seems your machine is limited to 667
http://store.apple.com/us/memoryfamily/ME_MACPRO_PREV
so just get more of the same type you have
Just to second what's already been said - yes get more RAM. That's a bad page-out ratio. Few people that I've heard of consume more than 12-16GB in real-life scenarios (not just opening every app they have just to use all the memory).
I have the same Mac Pro, and I'm considering upgrading the processors from 2x dual-core to 2x quad-core. Hoping Snow Leopard will make better use of more cores (probably after 9-12 months I'd guess, once more programs are written to take advantage of Grand Central). You can also consider running some disk tests (XBench is a good free benchmarker for this) and seeing how your hard drives are performing. Compare your I/O performance to others who have SSDs or RAID HDD setups and see if that's a bottle neck you can also upgrade past.
I'm hopeful that my 1,1 Mac Pro will last me for several more years by upgrading the processors, eventually getting more memory if I need it (great to have that capacity!) and faster SSDs slowly replacing my HDDs.
Oh and you can probably put faster memory in your Mac Pro, but it'll only run at 667mhz - might as well buy that.
I have the same Mac Pro, and I'm considering upgrading the processors from 2x dual-core to 2x quad-core. Hoping Snow Leopard will make better use of more cores (probably after 9-12 months I'd guess, once more programs are written to take advantage of Grand Central). You can also consider running some disk tests (XBench is a good free benchmarker for this) and seeing how your hard drives are performing. Compare your I/O performance to others who have SSDs or RAID HDD setups and see if that's a bottle neck you can also upgrade past.
I'm hopeful that my 1,1 Mac Pro will last me for several more years by upgrading the processors, eventually getting more memory if I need it (great to have that capacity!) and faster SSDs slowly replacing my HDDs.
Oh and you can probably put faster memory in your Mac Pro, but it'll only run at 667mhz - might as well buy that.
Great suggestions! Thanks! Is it very difficult replacing the processors? I've been researching that option as well and found it's compatible with the Clovertown x5365, etc. I've also read though that it's easy to fry the logic board if they aren't replaced properly (which kind of frightens me). Are there any professionals that will do this?
Yea
I would do the following in order
1) upgrade ram
if you still have slow downs, keep upgrading till you max out your ram
2) if that doesnt work, then updrage you hdd
the processor is not the bottle neck at the moment i would guess so i wouldnt really worry about that now