imac 20" 2400XT limitations?

What are the limitations of the lowest priced current imac?

I noticed people were suggesting the pricier ATI 2600 Pro video card in previous threads about the current line of imacs, but from what I hear, neither of these cards are all that great. I've checked out Bare Feats, and all that, but hoped there might be some real life experience some of you could share.

My budget is $1600, but I'd like enough to add memory, and a second monitor.

I'm currently cutting a feature in DV using a G4 400mhz, believe it or not, and aside from overnight renders when making a quicktime movie, and some beachballs when working with large 20mb+ stills in the timeline, which I probably shouldn't be doing anyway.... no problems.
Considering that, I'm leaning towards the low end machine, but don't want to get stuck where I can't use Color or something I need in a pinch.

You were humming along just fine, until you mentioned Color. Color is the most processor & graphics processor hungry app of the suite. And where it starts to limp is in realtime playback, unless you have a robust enough graphics card. Having a lesser card (I believe that the current iMacs will run it) will only hamper how fast a frame rate you can play back your media in Color.

You should think about practicality first. The more and more I delve into Color, I am finding it's not really an app you use in a pinch.

Sorry, not really the 'real life' experience you were looking for. It's just another 2¢ opinion.

- Jackson

That's okay, any cents is good sense.

So I gather, it will run Color, but I should expect lots of hanging, and beach balls then?

From what I gather, you have to really know what you're doing to get much use out of Color.
My interest is more as an indication of where FCP may go with system requirement in the near future.

A low frame rate is what you will get. But FCP color correction is pretty robust, and should not be discounted just because there is a massive piece of software looming next to it the dock.

I wouldn't worry about what the future requirements of FCP will be. A large portion of FCP users like and use FCP because it will run on their laptops. (I know I do!) I doubt that Apple would want that demographic to go away. You will also notice the shift from a single FCP app to a suite of apps that work in conjunction. True, Color will not be a great app for a laptop but why in the heck would you want it to be. The major upgrades with FCP from 5 to 6 was mostly in features (and additional apps), not big system overhauls.

Another considerations is the rate at which technology obsolesces. A money sucking game of leap frog of "I gotta upgrade my hardware to run the latest software" to "I can't wait until this software can fully utilize all this expensive hardware." If your iMac lasts 5 years (average life expectancy) you can predict that it will see 2 cycles of FCP development, and unless you are planning to run 4K on your machine, you'll have more than enough to get the job done. Even DVCPro HD can run off a firewire drive!

Jackson

Thanks again.

I'm still really having a difficult time with this 2400XT vs 2600XT choice....