Hope you've got all this Grazie and that it helps you to make up your mind :)

The only other point I would make is that, if you are going to have to spend on an upgrade, you should probably spend on the best or most sophisticated you can afford. So many things (video is but one) are becoming ever more resource hungry (we're moving from SD to HD and on to 3D for example) that it pays to try to future proof your hardware as much as possible to save further expense down the line.

Happy hunting as you look to take the next step.

Richard

I'll post another thumbs up for Win 7 64 bit. Recommended minimum RAM with 64 bit is 8Gb. The 64 bit OS uses more RAM to load the OS and buffers. While vegas isn't my primary NLE, I still have both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions installed. I much prefer the 64 bit version for routine uses, however, I occasionally use the 32 bit version when an FX is unavailable in 64 bit.

As time goes by, more and more apps are porting to 64 bit. Neatvideo, one of my fave's, is now ported to 64 bit in Vegas. Photoshop, Aftereffects, and Lightroom are all written for 64 bit in CS5. Because of the 32 bit emulation, I haven't found a 32 bit app that won't run very well on Win 7 64 bit.

I gave up on a dual boot system. Win7 64 bit works so well and so flawlessly, I never used win 7 32 bit anymore. Having 12 Mb of RAM really makes many many applications run so much more smoothly.

>[I] [B]Hope you've got all this Grazie and that it helps you to make up your mind :)  [/b]  [/I]

Yeah… right… What do you think?

Grazie

Based on the entire thread, my "feeling" is that Kelly's pragmatic approach makes the most sense for me--personally.

Other's, obviously, have different opinions.

I suspect you might be getting well intentioned but out of context replies.
My understanding is that your question relates to you simply fitting more RAM to your existing Q4 mobo. At some latter stage you will upgrade the CPU and mobo. What you're asking is, is there any value is fitting 8 GB of RAM to the existing board and being able to dual boot WinXP and Win7/64.
On top of that at some time in the near future you will be investing in a HD camera of some form.

I think the timing of those steps will have some bearing on your decision. As some of us have pointed out HD loves more RAM, epecially if you're using a number of tracks composited together and like doing RAM previews.

One thing I don't think any of us have explained is your current mobo requires you to fit RAM in multiples of two sticks. Your next generation of mobo will most likely require you to use multiples of three. Not that RAM is expensive these days but be aware that if you buy 8GB as 2x 4GB or 4x 2GB you're going to need more of it so you can use all that you already have in the new mobo. Problem you can hit is all of it should be identical and over time it can become hard to buy more of the same. It may pay dividends to buy 12GB of RAM now.

Bob.

>[I] [B]Problem you can hit is all of it should be identical and over time it can become hard to buy more of the same.  [/b]  [/I]

Yes. I have been realising that there is a need to invest in matched ram. However, I have 4 slots. Do I forego buying the 4x2=8, and rather now buy the 3x ram sets? Thus ensuring I have the requisite 3x4=12. Now, can I use 2 of these 3x in my existing MOBO? But that will only provide 6gb. Installing 64bit still would only be able to access the 6gb? Yes?

And yes ALL of the feedback has been well intentioned, I know that. I didn't see it any other way? 

Grazie 

It is not possible to buy 6 or 12 GB of tri-channel ram and use part of it now and all of it later... because ... you, no doubt, have DDR2 ram, now, and the Intel i7 boards use DDR3.

If you currently have 2GB in your motherboard, I would consider buying something like this:

http://www.frys.com/product/6011558?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

and add it to what you have. That would give you 6GB. 6GB would allow you to run Windows 7 64 bit OS even if you stayed with the 32 bit Vegas (because of plug-ins). I would consider the memory as a "throw-away" since you are likely to buy another hardware system "soon".

P.S. I've "thrown away" $45 in bars and never agonized over it.

"Now, can I use 2 of these 3x in my existing MOBO? But that will only provide 6gb. Installing 64bit still would only be able to access the 6gb? Yes?"

Yes, you can only install 2 of the 3 as far as I know.
Yes yo access more than 4GB you still need a 64 bit OS and that's all youll get.
My suggestion though was to buy say 6 sticks, I know you can only use 4 in this machine. It just means when you do come to upgrade your mobo you have the RAM already. All depends on your timing really. If you're not upgrading the mobo for six months probably ignore my suggestion.

"And yes ALL of the feedback has been well intentioned, I know that. I didn't see it any other way? "

I know you know that but the people trying to be helpful may have felt I was being critical.

Bob.

What you say is possibly true however almost all the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad mobos used DDR3 RAM and Grazie has a Core 2 Quad mobo and is very, very likely already using DDR3 RAM.

I'm in exactly the same boat, DDR3 RAM running in a dual channel mobo with a LGA 775 CPU.

Bob.

Quite a few chipsets prior to the P35 used DDR2 only. The more recent chipsets could go either way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#Core_2_chipsets

It's easy enough to find out. Hope you both have DDR3.

For what it's worth, my MB is running 8gb of DDR2 on a quad core and one of the fastest set ups in the render test for a not i series processor, if not the fastest and it's running Win7 64 bit. It's not the fastest clock speed Quad processor either. Can't say the memory helps it or it doesn't but it is high speed RAM, not 800 chips but 1150. with 5-5-5 15 timing.

As far as advantages of more than 4 gb of ram here's the ones I can think of

1. Longer ram renders (shift B) for events where you are using lots of effects and want to see smooth playback. 8GB will give twice the render time compared to 4GB if you allocate most of it to the RAM Preview.

2. Multi tasking while rendering. (set ram preivew lower for multi tasking) I can up multiple versions of Vegas without hitting virtual memory usage speed slow downs, and still have plenty for other tasks. Of course speed is dependent on cores and processor speed as well as type of chip.

Is it worth the price of upgrading to 64 bit and adding RAM, that's really dependent on what value a person sees for the 2 points above. I can also say I have yet to get a crash from not having enough RAM available while rendering, and I see occasional posts about that still. Required - not, nice to have if you are going to use it, definitely.

As far as 32 vs 64 bit OS's, it's only a matter of time and 32 bit Windows systems will be gone from the new computer Market, probably within a couple years if not sooner. If you are upgrading to Win7 from a previous version now, I can't think of any reason to consider 32 unless you have some odd hardware conflict, which would probably only be in some fairly old equipment today.

Steve

" Hope you both have DDR3"

Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 mobo here, only supports DDR3. At the time DDR3 RAM was expensive and I was tempted to go for a mobo that used DDR2 as there wasn't much if any speed advantage to DDR3 but I did bust open the piggy bank and went for DDR3.

One trap that's not so apparent is trying to run the very fast unregistered DDR3 RAM . One or two sets of it seem to be OK but three sets of it and it may well not even appear in the BIOS unless you ease off the RAM timing.

Bob.

"One or two sets of it seem to be OK but three sets of it and it may well not even appear in the BIOS unless you ease off the RAM timing."

Such has been true for three decades that I remember. Syncing memory timings in frames feet apart used to be a problem. Now, syncing DIMMS a few mm apart is a problem. In the trade, that's called progress since we've gone from feet to mm. But the problem is the same, getting all of the bits to show up at the right time.

In general, in the long run, a 64 bit system has the potential to do everything faster than a 32 bit system simply because it has the ability to process twice as many bits per cycle. However, the practical side is that almost all video and audio data is 16, 24, or 32 bits.

Sort of. But reality is a bit more complex.

The 64-bit model adds instructions that operate on 64-bit integers, true. But it also refined things -- added more registers, improved the FPU instruction set, etc. So things can get a little bit faster in 64-bit mode, just based on the fact you have a more modern ISA (instruction set architecture) than you have on a 32-bit x86.

Data in media can be handled atomically, but there's absolutely no reason it has to be. In point of fact, anything that's CPU dependent in a big way is probably using SSE these days. There are various levels; you'll only find the most recent SSE instruction sets on 64-bit processors. SSE is a set of vector instructions. It's based on 128-bit registers, and it's what they call a SIMD architecture: single instruction, multiple data. In fact, SSE instructions can operate on up to sixteen 8-bit, eight 16-bit, four 32-bit, or two 64-bit words at once. And while the older processors did some of this, if you want the more modern version of these instructions (which you do, if you're doing any media processing), you will have a 64-bit CPU, even if it's running in 32-bit mode.

Early next year, the Intel "Sandy Bridge" and AMD "Bulldozer" architectures debut. Both of these will add 256-bit SSE instructions, both are of course 64-bit processors.

In hardware, CPUs have been 64-bit for a long time. Back in the original Pentium days, the CPU started using a 64-bit bus for data, and grabbing most of the time 256-bits per cycle. These days, many x86 chips can run two separate 64-bit burst cycles in paralell; the i7 family can run three. Again, most of these just happen to be 64-bit CPUs.

The bottom line is simple: unless you buy something very low-end, like an Intel Atom, or an ARM-based smartphone, you're going to have a 64-bit processor. The additional register space was not that big of a deal, really... 64-bit itself adds nothing measurable to the cost of a CPU these days. Low-end chips go 32-bit-only mainly to justify their lower price, possibly to save power (but something like the Atom is a very different design; it's only about half the performance per clock of a mainstream x86 these days).

Most of the transistors on a CPU these days are used for caches, anyway -- that, and clock speed, are where most of the cost is. And most of the microarchitecture from both Intel and AMD were 64-bit in everything else before AMD's 64-bit instruction enhancements. The 64-bit CPU is just the last piece that moved to 64-bit. Complex, but a pretty small part of the design.

Whether you want to run a 64-bit OS or not is up to you. I switched a year ago, it was completely seamless. For one, unless you have some very ancient stuff to run, it'll Just Work in Windows 7. Nothing I used was much of a problem; most programs none at all. Keep in mind, you do actually have a full fledged 32-bit CPU in every 64-bit x86 chip. You can boot a 32-bit OS, or run 32-bit programs within a 64-bit OS.

The big limits in 32-bit land are memory: you have a total physical memory space of 4GBs... that's DRAM and I/O. Notice how most GPUs have 1GB DRAM on them these days... you kind of want some room for that, too. Motherboards vary in physical support (mine has 8GB, supports 16GB... I paid under $60 for that 8GB of DDR3 DRAM), but most modern ones handle at least 8GB, which you can't use in 32-bit mode.

In software, each 32-bit program usually gets only 2GB of memory. This is a precaution, actually... it's due to the fact that some programs are not "4GB Clean"... they could be using signed arithmetic on memory pointers... causing big errors if the program gets more than 2GB of memory. A 32-bit program that is 4GB clean gets a special flag set in the binary, which allows it up to 3GB on a 32-bit system, or a full 4GB on a 64-bit system.

Why do you need more memory? Well, if your main use is shooting and editing simple SD video, you simply don't. You also don't need 4-6 CPU cores, GPUs, and other modern stuff. Which is a shame, because that's all really cool, and it's nice to have an excuse to get it. For HD, you absolutely can use more memory. And keep in mind, too, that when you have a system like Vegas that can devote 4 or 6 CPU cores to finishing that AVC render fast, you actually need more memory -- each working CPU is going to have a different thing to work on. The standard rule of thumb -- it's good to have 2GB per core. Not a hard law, but you may find your system struggling with less.

"...install Windows 7 64Bit with a minimum of 4GB of RAM and then continue to use 32apps and 32bit plug-ins."

A 64-bit OS like Windows 7 runs all of the 32-bit apps as 32-bit apps. The OS itself is 64-bit, but it allows both 32-bit and 64-bit user space models.

The advantage here is memory. The 32-bit OS is limited to 4GB total, including all I/O. So you generally have something like 3.2GB available for real on a 32-bit system, for all cores and processes.

When you go to a 64-bit system, you'll have all 4GB. Or 8GB. Memory is cheap, and it's often the cheapest thing you can buy to speed things up.

Sure, on an 8GB system, you only get (usually) 2GB per process (though a 4GB-safe program can get 4GB). But do you only ever run one program at a time? Even in 32-bit mode, you're going faster if you have multiple programs running... or if your "single" program actually breaks itself up into multiple processes, rather than just multiple threads (each process gets its 2/4GB in the 32-bit model, all threads share the same 2/4GB space).

Vegas definitely forks off some processes when rendering. Not sure about how many, or how they're organized, but working in HD, I would never go back to a 32-bit OS, even if I didn't have 64-bit Vegas available. And while you may not see any advantage to the 64-bit version, and some disadvantages (you need 64-bit CODECs and plug-ins), it's not either/or -- you still get to install 32-bit Vegas and 64-bit Vegas on the same system, just as you can have Vegas 9 and Vegas 10 together. I'll admit... I have yet to worry about 32-bit Vegas 10, but I still have 9 around if I need it for some reason.

Only thing to add to all this great info, is that when I pull up my 8 GB W7 64 bit machine, and start rendering my HD footage, all cores are using all available memory. And no crashes. I'm still experiencing choppy preview (Sony, please get your act in order!) But I would not even consider going back to x32 at this point.

Not going to read everything, just put in my experience. I installed new parts on my machine and they were running with 2 of the 3 2GB sticks showing up, so as I was testing and working around for a couple days and then I opened the case back up and re-seated the 3rd dimm of RAM and started the machine back up again. I was quite amazed at the general performance increase that 4-6GB increase made, I plan to wait for DDR3 to get a bit cheaper, and as it's reaching it's lowest points, get another 6 to run with 12GB because you can't have too much and for sub $100 now ( and hopefully even lower in the future ), I think that the added RAM will definately be worth it, while 12, might be a bit excessive, triple Channel Ram performs best in sets of 3, so I'm going to do it that way.

Dave

OK. This is brilliant.

Now could we do a simple, yes simple, Pros and Cons for the options singled-out here? I have read the info and the experiences, trying to get my head around the options is just leaving me in a spin.

And yes, this HAS been a great exercise, if for nothing less than to re-inform, double underline, SONY, again, to get some part of their program that can access more of this cheap, universally fast RAM, as part of the Previewing to achieve smoother fps.

So, Pros and Cons please. Could I add triple channel to my existing MOBO? See? My head is spinning.

Grazie

"Could I add triple channel to my existing MOBO?"

It's probably already fitted with triple channel capable RAM (DDR3) but the only way any of us can say for certain is if you tell us the make and model of your mother board. Sorry if you've already mentioned this but I've read everyone of your posts in this thread and your systems specs and still cannot find it.

Bob.

Is this what you need to know?

Intel DG33FB motherboard

with: 2GB DDR2-800 memory (2 x 1GB)

Grazie

It appears you are in the DDR2 camp. There is no migration path that allows you to bridge the memory from this motherboard to the one you'll likely get in the future. You could possibly still buy two to four GB of DDR2 as a short term plan to allow a 64 bit OS and the benefits of more memory to each of the applications running at once. The benefits would be noticable. You would probably notice it if you only added memory when you run multiple applications. I was in a similar situation last year and I went to 6 GB, Windows 7 64 bit and the results were "worth it" for a year. It mostly depends on how close you are to the fork-lift upgrade.

Thanks John. This makes my UG path more straightforward, in as much I can justify gains at a small price. What it could mean is a useful piece of glass for a potential Panasonic AG AF101 that produces AVCHD.

So 8gbs is max for this mobo - yes? Having Win7 64bit would allow for some purposeful work to be executed. I do do multiple instances of Vegas and use Graphics editor and something like IsoRX working simultaneously. I guess I could hit a home run with this setup? Yes?

Grazie