Thank you Andy and Neils,
now another question:
Have you heard of and if so about the Nividia 285? I have read different opinions as for how it compares with its competitor the ATA Radeon HD480. My purchase, for economical reasons will be the 8core 2.26, usingnFCP2/HDV to ProRes/Compressor to M2v/DVD Studio 2 workflow, videos of 1 to 2hr avarage.
Glad to hear about the non-Apple monitors Andy, and congratulations on your site as well.
Erick

12GB ideal RAM?
 

Hi guys,

Having read the info in the below link I'm a bit confused. For the Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.66Ghz Nehalem (8 Core) is the optimum RAM level 12GB Ram (6 x 2GB)? It looks that way - at least the processing times appear shorter for 12GB than for 16GB :o/

Am on the verge of buying a Apple Mac Pro 2 x 2.66Ghz Nehalem (8 Core) and just want to be sure I have the ideal amount of RAM installed to ensure that Final Cut Studio, and in particular, Motion 3, run like a dream.

Surely the best bet would be to install 16-32GB of RAM?

Here is the link (previously kindly posted in this thread by Andy):

Pro Apps on Nehalem Mac Pro - Cores? Memory?

All suggestions really appreciated.

Peter

Erick, I haven't heard about the Nividia 285, so I can't help you with that.

Peter, the max RAM is 32GB for the 8-core and 12 (or 16) for the quad-core. Only thing is that the 4 GB is still very expensive, so a total of 16 (8x2) is max. for me at the moment.

Thanks anyway Neils,
so far, the video card 285 looks promissing, but no test drives from real people I have heard of yet.

8 Core Raid Setup Newbie
 

Hi Guys

Am close to pulling the trigger, but am trying to finalise my Raid / backup. Any suggestions on my below setup would be really appreciated:

- Mac Pro 8 Core 2.66GHZ 6GB 1TB Radeon HD 4870 512MB

- 12 GB RAM

- 1 * WD caviar green 1TB SATAII 3.5" 32MB cache internal hard drive (Just one additional internal drive to backup the system boot drive with Time Machine - is this sensible?)

- As regards an affordable Raid 5 solution I've been quoted the below item from a supplier. However, my amateur Raid research has led me to believe that software Raid's (consume CPU) aren't as good as hardware Raids. For the below item, will I also need to purchase the "G-Technology PCI express RAID controller" to complement it?

Here's the quote from the supplier in response to me requesting an affordable Raid 5 solution:

"Just keep the one disk in the mac pro ( or maybe 2, so you can have a backup of your system)

Forget the raid card and internal disks - use one of these instead - G-Technology G-SPEED eS 4TB eSATA External Hard Drive

Its external, so if your mac breaks then you can still get to your storage. You can also transfer it to use on a different machine. Its fast enough to cope with 3 streams of video at prores format. Costs about the same as the mac pro with internal raid and disks"

- If this Raid 5 setup looks okay, and actually can perform a Raid 5 setup, would I be able to expand to include additional hard drives in the Raid if I needed more space in a year or two?

Any suggestions whatsoever would be really appreciated. Thanks Andy and Niels for your valuable feedback.