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Any point in installing more than 8GB ram on a Power PC?

I have a late '05 G5 Power PC that I've just upgraded with a 1 TB hard drive and 8 gb ram. It came with a 250 gb hard drive and 4 gb ram... so I'm hopeful that this will provide a significant boost in performance. The question is whether installing the maximum allowable 16 gb ram will provide any significant boost in performance?
I use this desktop exclusively for working on Aperture/Photoshop CS3 files that are then sent to my wide format printer. I think I've read that CS3 can only use up to 6 gb ram, so I'm wondering if anything more than 8gb would be overkill?
Hoping to get a few more years use out of this box until the new 64 bit processors are out and PS/Aperture will optimize their performance.
Thanks for any comments.
 

Eoin

Member
Don't really know to be honest, I used my old G5 with 6gb of ram and never found issues with Aperture using more than that.

Even with my new 8 core 2.66 Mac Pro with 12Gb of ram, Aperture never seems to use more than 4-5Gb of ram. and that's with Sony a900 35Mb files.

Aperture as I'm sure your aware, relies on the graphics card more than on any other aspect of the machine. I had a 7800Gt (i think) in the G5 and I'm using a 285GTX in the Mac Pro.

What's the difference in Aperture performance between the 2 machines I hear you ask!...:)

Despite not being a 64bit app and running it on the Mac Pro in 32bit Kernel, Aperture takes a huge stride in performance.
1. For once in my life I can see sliders having an effect in real time. No delay just smooth adjustment reflecting the position of the slider.
2. Plugins, such as Nik and portrature are a delight to use, it takes a few seconds to load but again everything works in real time and doesn't get bogged down.
3, Printing is slower, perhaps due to no native SL epson 3800 drivers.

Overall I'm very happy, I can't wait for Aperture X to see it take full advantage of the 8 cores. Going back to the G5 and trying to process anything resulted in me moving all old libraries to the new machine and my Son has taken it to his room where it is relegated to internet and warcraft gaming.

It still works with Aperture but frustrating to use with large files.
 
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