Memory: Hurts, Helps, Doesn't Matter?

I wanted to briefly check with you before I potentially screw up the computer for the company I work for. We're getting a RAID and HD I/O cards and all sorts of new equipment. (Any recommendations on good, fast, cheap I/O cards?)

Memory Question:
I'm on a Power PC G5 (3.0) dual G5.
2.5 GB Ram
Slot 0: 256MB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
Slot 1: 256MB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
Slot 2: 512MB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
Slot 3: 512MB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
Slot 4: 512MB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
Slot 5: 512MB PC3200U-30330 DDR SDRAM
Slot 6: Empty
Slot 7: Empty

My thought is to buy 2x2GB sticks and replace them with the 256mb's, while leaving the 512's intact (6GB of RAM total). Is it okay to fill all the slots with RAM, or should I buy a few high volume (2GB) sticks and take out the little ones? What will be the most efficient and fast solution? Does it matter? The arrangement as long as they're installed in pairs?

Thanks
Jordan in KC

It really doesn't matter to a G5 what types of RAM sticks are used as long as they match pair in certain slots. That's a lot of used RAM slots for 2.5 GB RAM, though.

RAM prices today are such that you could easily afford 4 or 6 GB of RAM and FCP 5 and 6 can use up to 4 GB with lots of long timeline contents.

As for HD I/O cards. what formats are you going to be using? Generally I/O cards are for analog to digital conversion tasks. it's easy to throw around the term High Def but trying to nail down what it means to you is not easy.

More information about your workflow would help.

We're in the process of shopping RAIDs so I'll try to be as specific as possible for the other areas...

We're working with Varicam HDV for a project in the very near future (I understand due to their compression they aren't much of a problem). We're likely going to be using a tapeless camera (SonyXDcamEX) for all future projects. DVCProHD 1080i is likely the strategy at this point. We're buying Final Cut Studio 2 shortly, we're still on FCP 5.

Thanks!

Varicam HDV

HuH? Varicam is a Panasonic trademarked name and it does not do HDV?????

SonyXDcamEX

Now that IS HDV at a higher data rate but no less HDV is only 4:2:0 color space.

Either way you don't really need a capture card. Even utilizing the Varicam SD camera??? requires a tape deck that is Firewire connected.

A RAID is a good thing to have when you are doing several tracks of video in one project.

wow - youre getting a lot of incorrect information.

varicam and HDV. there couldnt be two more opposite (and unrelated) terms. like john says, varicam is panasonic's trademarked variable framerate HD camera. kind of like sonys cinealta.

sonys XDcamEX is just a much better iteration of their HDV camera - search "HDV" here on the forum to get a WIDE range of opinions of the format as a whole.

dvcproHD (to my knowledge) is only used by panasonic cameras.

as afar as RAIDS go, there are tons of variables there as well. im a big fan of CalDigit products.
i use a few of their SVR DUOs and edit P2 dvcproHD footage all the time with ZERO problems.