Bumping my RAM from 1GB to 3GB a few weeks ago boosted my rendering time considerably. It was $45 well spent.

I noticed a significant speed in rendering once upgrading from 1 to 3 gigs on my XP system (an Intel based dual-core processor, 2.9 Mhz).

I have since upgraded to 4 gigs, and redone my system with a clean install of Vista Home Premium. Vista can use all 4 gigs, rather than XP Pro only using 3.2 gigs. I've only done a few short renderings with Vegas 7, but it certainly seems much quicker than Windows XP ... but that might be because of the totally clean "reinstall" (which gets rid of a bunch of garbage resource hogging background apps).

Unless you're running Vista64, vista cannot use all 4GB. MS may report it differently but nothing has changed. It's an architectural limit, not really an OS limit.

The reason a 64-bit OS can use that last bit of your 4GB is that it remaps the memory to new addresses above the 4GB point. Those addresses just aren't available to a 32-bit OS, even Vista.

Even so, memory is cheap enough that you may as well buy 4GB instead of 3. Just about any new computer can run a 64bit OS these days so having the 4 GB sets you up to convert, or dual boot your system.

Tony, since you've already got 2 GB, a faster processor is the better way to go. Depending on the way you work, adding more memory might help, but the processor WILL help.

Basically, if Windows is growing the page file as you work then more memory would help.

Rob Mack

It will make zero difference, unless your computer gets into a thrashing situation.

But, if you have a thrashing problem, it can make a BIG difference.

I did a network render on a remote laptop a few days ago and it was speeding along until someone came along and started using it. They opened several programs. The laptop only has 500 megs of RAM. When I came into the room, the disk light was on 100% of the time. I opened task manager and saw that the paging file was being hit continuously. The render had pretty much stalled out.

So, if you have this problem, then up to the limits allowed by your operating system, extra RAM could make a HUGE difference.

However, if you are regularly getting into a thrashing situation, you may very well have some other serious software configuration issues that should be addressed and solved before you go spending the money on RAM. Otherwise, you will likely still have problems: they'll just happened at a different point in the render.

John Meyer said "if you are regularly getting into a thrashing situation, you may very well have some other serious software configuration issues".

Or it could be that you just have too many programs open (as I must given my particular workflow), or you could be working in a format that sucks down a lot of memory (yes, AVC is small while it's compressed but must get fairly fat when you decompress it into RAM)

Rob Mack

If your computer runs out of RAM as johnmeyer points out, then it has to use the hard drive which is significantly (dramatically) slower. If you have enough RAM then adding more won't help.

2- Memory configuration will make a small difference in performance. It depends on what your motherboard's chipset (or the memory controller on the CPU) is capable of, but most systems will by a few percent faster if you run pairs of identical RAM. Other configurations won't be as fast.

But it's only a few percent and won't make a noticeable difference.