Memory (RAM) & Graphic Card Upgrade

[Kiggy23]

Hi guys,
I'm getting a new iMac 27' and will be upgrading from 8gb to 32gb through a third party. Could you give me any advice on brand or type of memory. Also what difference will a 2gb or 4gb graphic card make, I'lll be using after effects, Photoshop and premier mostly. Thanks in advance.
Kingsley.

 

[pigoo3]

Get ram from Crucial or OWC:

- Crucial Home Page | United States (USD)
- Other World Computing (OWC) - Performance Upgrades For Your Mac

* Nick

 

[Kiggy23]

Thanks Nick, do you think this system will be good enough for 3D animation and modellinglike MAYA or CINEMA 4D?
27' Imac with 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
Thanks,
Kingsley.

 

[Kiggy23]

Hi guys,
I was wondering if you think this system will be good enough for 3D animation and modelling applications such as MAYA or CINEMA 4D?
27' Imac with 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5
Thanks,
Kingsley.

 

[lclev]

Premiere will use what ever your system has and the more the merrier as will MAYA and Cinema 4D. The GTX 780M with 4GB is a very nice card but it was developed for the laptop and you might check out the specs. I am concerned with all the heavy rendering you will be doing with the programs you are looking at. They will definitely push your system.

I originally was looking at a maxed out iMac for video work. I use Premiere and After Effects on a daily basis. I decided to opt for an older Mac Pro that was maxed out. I am very pleased with it. I have the GTX 780 with 3GB in it and 32GB of memory and a 500 SSD with a 1TB HDD for storage. I plan to expand it further by adding another SSD for program caching files.

I understand your dilemma. I have a Windows editor that has been a steady work horse for 8 years now. I built her on a server board with dual quad core Xeons/24GB memory/GTX 770 with 4GB/ 500 GB SSD plus 3 other internal hard drives . Over the years I have changed and added and upgraded.

Changing to the Mac Pro has been a slow steady move I decided to make due to the limits I was seeing with my older system. Those limits were all in ram rendering and multi-camera mixing. The video card is one big component of all that.

If you are doing smaller projects you should be fine. If you are going to be doing larger projects with a lot of complexity you may see some drag. I would be interested to know how your system does - if you go with the iMac.

I would suggest considering for your main drive an SSD if that is possible. The increase in speed is worth it.

Lisa

 

[lclev]

Asked and answered:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ot...s/322946-memory-ram-graphic-card-upgrade.html

Cross posting doesn't tend to get you more or different answers. And it makes the admins cranky.

Lisa

 

[chscag]

Lisa is correct about cross posting making the staff get cranky. Please do not cross post and remember to keep your same subject questions confined to one thread. Threads have been combined together here.

 

[Kiggy23]

Thanks guys, I trul appreciate your help and also thanks for the advice on cross posting. I got confused somehow and cross posted, I didn't purposely do it.
Thanks so much,
Kingsley.

 

[Kiggy23]

Lisa your advice is well taken, I like the thorough explanation and the possibilities.
I think most of the system will be okay except perhaps the video card for the applications mentioned.
It sad I won be able to upgrade it in the future.