How will Aperature run on an Imac G5? I have a 2GHz G5 with 2gb RAM and an ATI 128Mb graphics card? I believe the system hard drive is a 7200rpm SATA. My main image file archive is on a 750GB RAID Buffalo NAS, however I also have a RAID setup on a PC running Windows/linux. I have installed the trial version but have not run the app yet! I want to leave my library on the NAS drive which is access via gigabit ethernet.

I have read that Aperature is hardware intensive so I am also going to test out Adobe Lightroom.

In a few months I will probably get a Macbook Pro with a 512Mb graphics card, if my budget can allow it!

It will run fair. The Graphics card on the iMac G5 is no standout so it will be okay, but not blazingly fast. The MacBook Pro with the upgraded graphics card and 2 GB of RAM will be much faster.

Thanks, I will just to the make do for now, until I get the Macbook Pro. How will Aperture cope with my original image files residing on a NAS disk array? The access times to the NAS drive are not fast when compared to a fast local disk. I will probably just have to test it out! I have over 1TB of image files from JPEGS, RAW, derivative PSD, to high res TIFF scans of 4x5 and 8x10 film.

The decision for me seems to be down to Lightroom or Aperture for image catalogue and workflow.

While a speedy graphics card is certainly a bonus for running Aperture, I have found that having gobs of RAM available combined with the fastest possible disk access you can lay your hands on will go much further in terms of providing a pleasant experience.

For example, at work, I run Aperture on a Quad 3GHz Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM and a 256MB nVidia 7300GT. All images are stored on the internal, stock hard drive. Performance is just fine on this machine (and I should bloody hope so, as well! )

At home, however, I am running it on a Dual 2.5GHz G5 with 8GB of RAM, but only a 128MB ATI 9600(XT?) for graphics. That machine, however, has two 10,000 RPM SATA drives in it running in RAID 0, and performance in Aperture is noticeably snappier. This, in spite of the fact that the Mac Pro utterly demolishes my home machine in virtually any benchmark I have run on it.

I haven't done any formal testing of Aperture, mind you.. but based on daily usage in both locations, I certainly prefer working at home when I can. I'd imagine the iMac will be acceptable, and if you can get faster I/O going somehow, I'd imagine it would be very usable indeed.

I was hoping to keep my archive on the NAS raid but it is not that fast, despite the gigbit LAN. For cataloging I am not sure how fast Aperture will be.

This looks like an upgrade from the out-of-the-box G5 towers. Can you explain what one has to do to achieve this performance?

I am thinking of upgrading my iMacg5 2.1ghz, but reading this I could as well try to get a G5 tower, and load it with RAM.

Thanks.