Playback in Motion

I'm starting to get into more complex motion graphics. I upgraded my RAM from 2 to 6 gigs but haven't noticed a difference in real time playback in Motion. Shouldn't I be able to see the actual timing of my effects sequence playback in Motion? The additional 4 gigs of RAM has been installed properly and shows up in the system profiler. I double-checked to make sure the RAM was installed according to the optimal performance configuration chart posted on this forum. I performed a hardware test on the new RAM so I've ruled out faulty RAM.

The more layers I have, the slower it plays back. I have to bring it into FC then render it to see actual timing. This is a real pain. My graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT that shipped with the 1st generation MacPro 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon.

Two questions:

1) Do I need to upgrade my graphics card to see real time playback?
2) Shouldn't I have noticed some difference with the RAM upgrade? I don't even notice a difference in Final Cut.

Shelley
MacBoo Pro 2015
16 GB Ram
OS X 10.13
Premiere Pro CC

First, you don't have to bring your project into Final Cut Pro to render, you can render right in Motion: Mark > Ram Preview > Play Range, or same as FCP, Command-R.

Second, the amount of RAM you have determines the duration of video that will play back in real time - the more RAM, the more video can be cached.

For playback performance, the graphics card is what matters. It's the card that more important than your CPU or amount of RAM. Your stock card is the biggest problem.