[John Boettner]

What's the better configuration for mostly Final Cut Pro use?

1.8 GHz dua G5l w/1GB RAM (2x512)

or

2 GHz dual G5 w/512 MB RAM

[Luca Rescigno]

I'd go with the 1.8 with extra RAM. 512 MB is fine for everyday use, but for video editing it's a pretty light amount. Even 1 GB is just enough.

[rsgunther]

I disagree. Get the 2.0 dual & use the 512 for now. You can always add RAM later. You can never add the faster processors.

[Sealobo]

Originally posted by rsgunther:
You can never add the faster processors.

Are you sure?

[Cadaver]

Cheaper to add RAM than to replace processors.

[fizzlemynizzle]

when calculating this i hope you're not basing your budget on the cost of adding RAM from Apple. You can buy RAM from a place like Crucial for far less than Apple and it's just as good.

As for Final Cut Pro, the more RAM the better for editing DV. You might want to consider more like 2 gigs of RAM if you're going to be doing a lot of serious cutting.

[Graymalkin]

I say go with the faster processors as well. Memory is fairly cheap and much easier to upgrade later on than processors are. It has yet to be determined if G5s will ever be available from third parties. The extra 200MHz per processor is going to mean a little bit of saved time on every render for every project. Eventually the saved time is going to add up to be more than the initial cost difference between the 1.8GHz DP and 2GHz DP.

[Luca Rescigno]

Yeah, I'll have to change my mind and say go with the dual 2.0 with less RAM. The thing is, I'd rather end up with more RAM and a slower processor than the other way around, but it makes more sense to get the faster processor now and upgrade the RAM as you can afford it.

[Lateralus]

Dual 2.0, 512. More RAM later.

[Arkham_c]

With all that said, doing any serious work in Final Cut with 512M of RAM is suicide. Doing it with 1GB is probably not too smart either. Consider that 300MB or so will be eaten up by the system, and you've got nothing left to load previews, move data around, etc without thrashing the hell out of your disk.

[mfethers]

Get the Dual 1.8. Look at the benchmark differences between the Daul 2 and Dual 1.8. Unless you are doing hours and hours of video compression, you won't notice a difference. And if that's the case, you need more than 1GB of memory either way. Also, refurbished Dual 1.8s are going for $1999; that's a great price if you can live with the cheaper video card (no BTO for refurbs). That's what I'm going with if I can't wait for the new revisions.

[BZ]

There were a series of benchmarts (somewhere) that showed that the real sweet spot is 4GB of Ram.

So, in that case, get a refurbed 1.8 and add 3.5 GB of Ram ($500).

BZ