How will the 2400XT cope with HD editing?

[Gibson88]

Hey guys i have a ton of bother with my iMac bought of Friday. I'm on to my 3rd unit as they have all had dead pixels. This one is totally fine though but i noticed the man in the shop gave me it, it was the lower spec model by mistake. He said he would refund the difference though so i'm happy to keep it as long if i know the graphics card (128mb 2400XT) will come in fine for HD editing.

I edit BMX and Skate videos so i don't do this professionally but i do have a few years of experience. So i'm just wondering how it will fair with say no more than 45minute HD videos on FCP.

Also is it worth putting 4GB ram in with this graphics card or would it be a bottleneck?

Thanks guys.

 

[AlexisV]

No problem. Whilst the 2400 isn't ideal for 3D games, it's more than capable for everything else. HD editing is more a job for the processor and memory, rather than the graphics card anyway.

I'd stick in a 2 gig stick to go with the 1 gig in there. If more is needed (not very likely IMO), you can then replace the 1 with another 2 gig.

 

[Gibson88]

Cheers mate, you think the ram on the graphics will be fine then with it just being 128mb?

 

[Eidorian]

Video rendering is a much more processor intensive task then a video card bound one. You'd benefit more from a faster processor then a video card.

Still, Apple professional video software like Motion will benefit from a faster video card since it does rely on Core Image to handle rendering in real time on the GPU.

A graphical processing unit (GPU, video card, etc.) is designed to handle a lot of nifty graphical transformations many times faster then your CPU. Apple leverages this to make OS X and its applications fly on screen.