[badgerbadger]

I'm looking at a Quad. Although I've seen and heard a lot of bad things about Nvidia GeForce cards.
Does anyone have a card they would recommend? What about ATI?
I'm really quite clueless, so any input would be terrific.

[scratt]

So far in my experience I have always been very happy with ATI... However, since I have started developing for the Mac I have found that the horrible truth is that ATI seem to have dropped the ball when it comes to supporting their cards, and making sure their drivers are properly OpenGL compliant...

For day to day use they are both great manufacturers, and I love my Radeon Pro 9800 in my Dual G5..

But do be aware that ATI are getting a bad rep. at the moment for the amount of bugs in their drivers, and lack of updates...

[badgerbadger]

So, what would you suggest - a slower G5 with a better video card, or a faster G5 (Quad) with a decent video card? What do you think would be best in the long run?

How does Processor vs Video card work out?

[v.noir]

I think the Quad would be better in the long run. You can always upgrade the video card, but not the processors!

[Luca]

For many people, a more powerful video card won't actually make any difference past a certain point. It depends on what you're using the computer for. Gaming, as well as using applications that use the video card (such as Motion), will benefit from a faster one, but if you're just doing photo, video, or audio work, you won't need a faster video card.

And v.noir is right. You can always upgrade the video card, but upgrading the processors could prove difficult. Even though the G5s have processor sockets, meaning they could theoretically be upgraded, there are no processor upgrades on the market that are compatible with any G5s.

[badgerbadger]

Thank you for your replies - it's all very helpful to me.
What do you think is the best value for money out of the pro G5's?
I have been working on a dual 2.5Ghz which seems fine, but a little sluggish in Motion at times.
Is there really a huge, significant difference in performance for video apps, or would it be hard to tell?

[Luca]

What video card do you have? Motion is one of the few apps where having a powerful video card will help a lot, so if you have a Radeon 9600 or something, you might want to upgrade to, say, a Radeon X800. It would sure be cheaper than replacing your dual 2.5 with a quad, and I bet it would improve your performance more.

[scratt]

I have to say I am not convinced that going to an X800 would improve it that much... There is a lot of processing in the machine itself and not just on the video card where Motion is concerned.

Also, Motion does have a few issues not related to the hardware it is on, even in the latest version (as good as it is).

Also the difference between a Quad right now, and the Dual 2.5 is not that much to be honest... I think apart from a few minor speed increases for individual rendering tasks the difference between a Dual 2.5 and a Quad with any video card, short of something really pants, is going to be negligible (I'll qualify that by saying in terms of the fact that you are frustrated with the speed already, so you will be frustrated with the speed in any case).

It would be far more fruitfull if you looked at using the App (Motion) and your machine more efficiently. More so with Motion. You can set up some scenes on it quite inefficiently. It's very easy to reply on the apps features and make it do far more work than it should, where a little judicious project planning and resource management will get you slicker and faster results at render time... Just my 2c. But then I use Motion a fair bit..