I will soon be updating to a new MacPro 8 core with 16GB RAM and I'm wondering about the value of selecting the graphics card upgrade from the 5770 to the 5870.

Given the way I have the rest of the Mac configured would my experience using FCS or CS4 be improved by way of faster realtime rendering of effects in Motion or AE by going with the 5870 or would it be a waste of money?

I'm not very knowledgable about hardware so I'm not certain about the relationship of processor, RAM, and graphics card when determining where the bottleneck is, but I can't really afford more than 8 cores or 16GB RAM.

Any advice is appreciated.

The 5870 is rated as up to 70% better performance than the 5770 but whether that really equates to higher performance in FCP or CS5 I don't know but for just $200 extra for the 5870 on a system that costs at least $3500 I would pay the extra.

It's a good point Nigel, I had the same thought. But then I also thought it may just be a "sucker" upgrade for my usage especially when $200 towards the monitor instead would also be very useful.

Does anyone else have an understanding as to the role the graphics card plays in the realtime rendering process, or is it mainly processors and RAM?

I'd like to know this too...