general PT 9 upgrade question

[OneMadSon]

I upgraded from an 002 to an 003 a few years ago. I got the Music Production Toolkit as part of the upgrade but I believe the only thing i used consistently was the TL Space Reverb which I definitely can't do without.

I haven't changed my system since I set it up and it was stable.

PT LE 7 ver 7.3

My Mac seems to be on the lower limit of what PT9 needs.

OSX 10.4.1
2x2.66 dual core
Mem 1 GB 667 MHZ

It all came with the ilok so I believe i'm good there.

It seems like I'll need to upgrade my memory, obviously update the OS, do an update for my 003 and then get PT9? Am I missing something? Any advice on the memory upgrades? Is my system going to have trouble with 9 even with the added memory? I could never even get it to breath hard on PT7 even when I used a crapload of reverb plugins that would've shut me down in my 002 days.

thanks.

[GTBannah]

Everything should be fine, with the increased RAM and the latest OS.

[agypsy]

PT 9 will only run on OS 10.6 (snow leopard).
if your computer is a powerPC (non-intel chip) then you can only go up to OS 10.5 (leopard) which can only run PT 8. only the intel based macs can run the OS 10.6...bummer!

this is my dilemma right now...:(

[CME]

I think that would be a pretty good system. I am assuming by the specs it's a mac pro and not a G5 PowerMac. As mentioned the G5's aren't compatible with PT9. However you will get a noticeable increase in performance by upping your ram. Check OWC and Crucial for good prices on quality ram. As to how much, it depends on your workflow. I'm assuming you don't use very many VI's, as you only have 1 GB of Ram. If that's the case, I'd up to to more than 4GB.

How much more than 4 is up to you. But Pro Tools itself can access 4GB, and you need some extra for your OS so it doesn't use any of the 4GB Pro Tools could be using. I had 6.5GB in my PowerMac and it worked great. I had moved up from 512MB to 2.5GB, and then finally 6.5GB. I even tried 4.5GB and it ran pretty much the same as 6.5. So it doesn't have to be a lot more than 4GB. In fact I'm guessing you have 2x512MB sticks in there now. So maybe add 2x2GB sticks and see what that does. It would give you 5GB, and I think you would be just fine with that. If not you could add more later but I'm betting you be pleasantly surprised by the improvement in performance.

If you are using VI's. Especially 3rd party ones, I'd say put in as much as you can. Some VI's have memory servers that can access memory outside of the 4GB limit Pro Tools has. Hope that helps.