equipment question

I am replacing my Power Mac G4 867/1.5.
I came across this Power Mac G5:
Apple Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5
2.25 GB DDR SDRAM
80 GB Hard Drive
Superdrive
Firewire 400, 800

After selling my G4 I'll have to put out $300.
1) Is this machine worth it or should I save a little more and get more than 1.8ghz and mostly a bigger HD?
2) Isn't a 80Gb HD a pb?

I'd apreciate for your inputs.

The size of the internal HD is no big deal as you will be throwing more HDs into it and out of it as you need. The 80GB drive is only for your OS and applications. What maybe problematic down the line and soon is that this G5 does not use the Intel chips and you maybe faced with software that only run on Intel Macs.

Michael Horton
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the thing is, and tell me if you disagree, is that machines running intel chips are the MacPros, right? And they are extremely expensive.

As for the 80Gb question. I mentioned this because it is the problem i am having right now with my G4. I stored the media on en external HD but the playback in the TL is very choppy. The main reason for this seems to be that FCP had difficulties accessing the media. I upgraded my RAM but it's not perfect yet.
May be I am not using the best external HD for the task...

If FCP is choking it is usually because your HD is filled up beyond what it should be. Or there is something wrong with your Mac or HD. Hard to tell from here. Throwing more ram at it wont do anything.

Yeah, Mac Pros and Macbook Pros are expensive so buy what you can afford today and worry about upgrading later. But solve your issues before you upgrade. Buying a new Mac may not make your problems go away.

Michael Horton
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Michael Horton Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But solve your issues before you
> upgrade. Buying a new Mac may not make your
> problems go away.

I don't follow here...What do you mean by that?
If I get a new computer and get rid of the old one I would hope the problem goes away.
Unless the problem is in the software...
... or in the room somewhere? spirits...
:-)

Doesn't work that way. You seem to have a problem with choppy playback and/or sluggish performance. What type media are you editing? What size and what brand hard drive do you have your media on? What version FCP? What version OS? Exactly what is the problem and what have you done so far to try and solve it?

Michael Horton
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I am using FCP 5.1.4
Themy external HD is a Western Digital, 160GB.
OSX 10.4 Tiger.

I see what you're saying, it makes sense to me now.
I tried a few things and noticed that one specific project is choppy. The other ones seem to be fine.
So now, I see two things that might cause the problem:
. even though my WD HD isn't full (more that 10% of freespace), the partition on which the media for this specific project resides, is almost full.
. the specs on this project are 'weird'.... I am using avi files from a camera, not a camcorder (these little movies you shoot on a still camera). Therefore I am not sure if my Sequence settings or Project settings are correct.

Apreciate your help!

Ok, found something interesting.
In fact, the choppy factor happens when playing jpeg files with Motion fx....
The clips play fine.
I am going through these fx...

found some answers in the FAQ.
will try!

what type of connection does your WD drive have? FCP and macs dont like USB or even USB 2.0 for editing. you need to have at least firewire400 for success with fcp.

also, as you near 90% full on a hard drive your performance will decline. its not a matter of as soon as it hits 90% things go wonky.

BTW, personally, i think upgrading from a single 867 G4 to a dual 1.8 G5 for only $300 out of pocket would be a wise investment.

My WD HD is connected via Firewiere. Not 800 for sure. 400 maybe? It's the 'old' firewire connection that originally came on the PM G4.
I made room on my HD and it works better indeed.
And thanks for your opinion on upgrading.