will a new graphics card help my G4/4000?

[Dopamine]

I have a g4/400 AGP with stock ATI 16mb graphics card. Has anyone upgraded this card? I am specifically interested in actual noticable improvements in PT.

Any opinions on the new Radion 8500 card?

Also, will increasing my ram from 512 to 1 gig help at all?

Please no speculations, just feedback from people that have tried it. Thanks!

[Dopamine]

anyone?

[kris whitten]

dopeamine,

I have the 8500, works perfectly, and I never have heard the noise some people are complaining about.

The screen redraws/scrolls seem faster, but the single biggest improvement has been the 1ghz upgrade....

[jpoprock]

PTLE is all about Ram bro. Go for as much as you can afford. 1gig over 512mb will for sure help. I personally don't think the vid card upgrade will make a huge differnce. What is happening that makes you think you need to update the vid card? I'd max out the ram at 1.5gig before I'd buy a new vid card. My G4/466 is nearly maxed at 1.2gig, and i use the 16mb vid card, and I have no problems. I've never actually tested my machine to see how many plug-in's/tracks I can get going at once though because I don't care. It never comes up for me.

I AM however going to be buying a DP867 soon, w/ a gig of DDR ram. THAT should be a huge improvement!

Jason

[Dopamine]

Originally posted by jpoprock:
[QBWhat is happening that makes you think you need to update the vid card? I'd max out the ram at 1.5gig before I'd buy a new vid card. My G4/466 is nearly maxed at 1.2gig, and i use the 16mb vid card, and I have no problems.[/QB]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I just heard that a better graphics card would give yield a noticable improvement w/ PT. Thanks for the feedback regarding ram. I guess I'll get another 512mb! I heard that nothing over 512 makes a difference, but you guys say otherwise. Anyone else confirm this? Also, what are the optimal ram amounts to assign to PT and DAE when you have a surplus?

[endlesscoda]

From looking through the results of the performance thread, it doesn't look like anything north of 512mb (or even 256 really) will have a significant impact
on your output in PT. But that could just be my interpretation.

See for yourself:

http://duc.digidesign.com/cgi-bin/ub...;f=24;t=011421

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally posted by jpoprock:
PTLE is all about Ram bro. Go for as much as you can afford. 1gig over 512mb will for sure help.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">This is THE biggest misunderstanding regarding PT performance.
If it has enough, more ram won’t make any difference. Depending on your type of work, this could be around 100 MB each. I’ve seen Digi recommend 150.

Dont believe everything you read on these pages!

[Dopamine]

Interesting.....thanks, Ben!

[CCash]

I'm curious about this too. You know how your computer bogs down when you're maxed-out on DSP. Will a faster graphics card make screen redraws happen faster, and will the curser and meters be more fluid? Or are these side-effects strictly the result of CPU overhead?

[jpoprock]

[quote]Originally posted by Ben Jenssen:

Originally posted by jpoprock:
[qb]
If it has enough, more ram won’t make any difference. Depending on your type of work, this could be around 100 MB each. I’ve seen Digi recommend 150.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Ben.... what are you referring to when talking about the 100 or 150 above??

I can't believe what I'm reading here. You're telling me that all this track count crap eveyone is talking about has nothing to w/ memory? I can't belive it. What about when working w/ FX? I always thought that memory is what yer FX pull from. If I have 1.2mb of ram JUST to run PT, than thank god it was cheap. HA! I

I also can't believe that a better vid card wil make PTLE run better, over Ram. But if I'm wrong, I'm uneducated.

Thanks,

Jason