RAM Upgrade Worth It

jbgt wrote on 5/29/2004, 12:39 PM
A local store has RAM on sale tomorrow and I am trying to determine if it is worth it. I am currently running 1.0 GB DDR 2700. of RAM on a AMD 2500+ under windows XP Pro. The RAM upgrade would take me to 1.5 GB.

Much of what I do is basic with cross fades, etc but have been getting more into layers, masks and am starting to work with BORIS RED.

Any opinions and/or facts would be greatly appreciated.
-Jeff

Comments

kameronj wrote on 5/29/2004, 12:49 PM
If you have the money and the space for it on your system...get the RAM.

If you don't have the money or the space...don't get the RAM.
FuTz wrote on 5/29/2004, 2:20 PM

The main reason why I'd go for it is DynamicRAM PReviews: the more memory, the longer the previews... and I sURe use it a LOT !
BillyBoy wrote on 5/29/2004, 3:18 PM
If you don't do lots of RAM previews or use your computer to multitask heavy you would be probably throwing the money away. 1 GB is more than plenty for most people. I have 1 GB and often run multiple applications while Vegas is rendering and I rarely come close to even using half the RAM being in use.

Use Task Manager to see how much you use for the things you do.

Do the three finger salute: Ctrl/Alt and Delete all at once. Click on the Performance tab. Watch Available and Total under Physical memory as you do stuff The little winodw normally floats on top of all others unless you change it..

Also look at Total verses Limit and Peak under Commit. This is your RAM plus the paging file (SWAP file) Again, if you're not getting near the max more RAM isn't going to do much for you expect cause more heat inside your computer case. For 99% of people 1 GB is plenty. Even for computer nuts like me.
musman wrote on 5/29/2004, 4:16 PM
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but the RAM previews haven't helped me much. It's set to use 895 of the 1 gig and when I use it it's slow and the preview is still choppy.
I've actually stopped using the RAM previews and just selectively prerender the clips I want to check out. A lot of times it's actually faster for me.
Part of the problem is I've often done some color correction or done something else fairly intensive that RAM seems to have a hard time with. I know the workflow that experts advise, doing the cuts and transitions first then doing the color correction and fancy fx, but that doesn't really work for me. I need to see the clip as it will eventually be seen (ie with all the fx) in order to get a sense for what will work and what won't. Now, this does take a long time to preview each clip, but it's what works for me. Perhaps a fater computer than my 1 gig p4 2.4 gig would help.
Does anyone else find RAM previews limited? I guess it's b/c of the way I work that I might be interested in hardware for better previews. Oh well.
DataMeister wrote on 5/29/2004, 6:26 PM
Another benefit with large amounts of RAM is when you are working with large still pictures. As best I can tell, the pictures try to stay loaded in RAM (unlike a video/audio file which streams off the disk). When you have 50 or so 1600x1280 images to get detailed zooms it starts to make an impact on performance.

JBJones
riredale wrote on 5/29/2004, 11:29 PM
You can keep an eye on just how much ram your PC REALLY needs by downloading a slick little freeware program called RAMpage. It puts a tiny window in your System Tray with a number showing how much of your ram is currently sitting doing nothing at the moment. For example, with my desktop PC that I'm typing this on right now, even with 50 processes running in the background, the RAMpage window says "331." Since I have 512MB installed, that means that I'm only using 181MB.

Even during a fairly sophisticated render, I never max out my 512MB ram, so I would have to seriously question why I would need more ram. Of course, everyone's situation is different, but I think people sometimes get carried away with all this.

Whatever.
Caruso wrote on 5/30/2004, 2:14 AM
Musman, my experience with RAM Preview is similar to yours. I don't have a powerful system - .9Ghz CPU - 384 MB RAM. If 1GB would triple my RAM Preview capability, I still doubt I would use it much.

As far as being able to work on a project with FX already applied, I've started applying FX like color correction to the unedited clip, rendering it, then using the corrected clip in place of the source clip in my project. I suppose I'm adding a layer of rendering (and some miniscule loss of quality), but find that I prefer working with the corrected file. Furhtermore, I don't have to go back and apply that sort of FX on an event by event basis after having split the clip up and interspersed other media on the timeline.

Perhaps there is a better way to go about this, and I'd certainly welcome additional thoughts from the helpful folks here.

As far as additional RAM goes, I don't think my system will allow more than another couple hundred MB - and, although memory is a bargain these days, my system is running well - it's stable - and I'd rather put that money into hard drive space - seems I never have enough of that (even though I have a lot).

It's really a personal choice, I guess. I don't crave the fastest machine - the time consuming stuff (like rendering, capturing) I just set up to run when I'm doing something away from the computer (like sleeping or, well . . . ).

Caruso