8 vs 16 gigs of ram in 2012

cabinfever1977

New Member
If you have the money and if its cheap,go for 16gb of memory,its better to have more than not enough,and certainly won't hurt nothing.
 
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tlarkin

VIP Member
but as I've stated already all of my software is 64 bit and I am not gaming on this pc. I am doing video editing and writing music.

sorry I did not read the whole thread, but historically on this forum it is gamers that want to max out their RAM thinking it will actually make a difference.

As for audio/video work it just depends on how much you do. 16gigs of RAM may never been needed for your work load, but having it won't hurt since RAM last I checked was relatively cheap.
 

Gary1

New Member
Or maybe they know how to make good software with great optimizations so that their RAM usage is like the RAM usage from notepad if not even lower.Those who have a LOT of RAM in their systems does not automatically increase their knowledge...

I know you were kidding about 512MB of RAM. Right? Your last post kinda concerns me. There is no way I could run AutoCAD 2012 on 512MB. Maybe if I switch to 1.4, is that what your talking about??

OP: You can also consider Professional Graphic cards as well, if its in your budget. Its not like gaming where you top out at a $800 GPU, these get pretty pricey and I would not consider anything under $1200 for what you do. I am not saying you need it though, Gaming GPU's will work in a pinch.
 

KevWestBeats

New Member
I know you were kidding about 512MB of RAM. Right? Your last post kinda concerns me. There is no way I could run AutoCAD 2012 on 512MB. Maybe if I switch to 1.4, is that what your talking about??

OP: You can also consider Professional Graphic cards as well, if its in your budget. Its not like gaming where you top out at a $800 GPU, these get pretty pricey and I would not consider anything under $1200 for what you do. I am not saying you need it though, Gaming GPU's will work in a pinch.

can I do that with a laptop? The laptop came with a Radeon GPU with 512mb of ram on board. I paid 1200 for it after tax.
 

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
There seems to be quite a lot of misconceptions around how video editing software differs from other software. Video editing benefits from as much RAM as possible (due to the way Win 7 handles ram differently = it will use as much as you give it and survive on very little also). Video editing is about the pipeline. Fast CPU, is pointless without fast storage and throughput. This can be achieved cheaply with RAM and an SSD.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
The only problem with that argument is that he does require the overhead, and RAM is cheap now. Try and buy 16Gb of DDR2 brand new now and see how you go. Expensive. So waiting a year or so may not be a good idea.
tlarkin said:
As for audio/video work it just depends on how much you do. 16gigs of RAM may never been needed for your work load, but having it won't hurt since RAM last I checked was relatively cheap.
Hadn't thought of that, RAM gets more expensive as it gets older. OK give it a few months or half a year and then 16GB of RAM will be even cheaper than it is today. I can get hold of 16GBs of 1333MHz DDR3 desktop RAM for just under £70 now these days. I doubt the OP needs 16GB right now, but as I just said above, perhaps consider upgrading in the near future. Is DDR3 going to be replaced soon? It's been around for about 3-4 years now.

Gary1 said:
OP: You can also consider Professional Graphic cards as well, if its in your budget. Its not like gaming where you top out at a $800 GPU, these get pretty pricey and I would not consider anything under $1200 for what you do. I am not saying you need it though, Gaming GPU's will work in a pinch.
The OP hasn't said what software he uses, but to be honest a GPU or a graphics card is only worthwhile if the software makes use of it whilst rendering. For example, I use Vegas Movie Studio and that doesn't make use of a GPU. The higher-end video editing programs (Premiere Pro, Avid Media Creator) probably make use of GPUs whilst rendering video.

KevWestBeats said:
can I do that with a laptop? The laptop came with a Radeon GPU with 512mb of ram on board. I paid 1200 for it after tax.
Upgrading laptop hardware such as GPUs and CPUs is very difficult, time consuming and expensive, so no you can't really. Sorry. You could always look into an External Graphics card for your laptop though if you need a better graphics card. I don't know how much these cost or how well they perform or how big they are, but it may be worth looking into.

KevWestBeats said:
I also do not see how Photoshop would take more processing power than video editing and nobody has answered this when I asked either
Generally Photoshop doesn't use as much CPU power as rendering HD video does, but when opening large 10MB+ photos in Photoshop that's where you need your RAM and your CPU. Then when you export the photo you need to render it again so you need your CPU then as well.

KevWestBeats said:
I am starting to think both routes (faster hard drive and getting more ram) are a good idea lol.
I can't remember how much RAM you said you had, but if you have 4GB then yes definitely get 8GB or 16GB. I'm just going to leave it up to you now on how much, because hopefully you've now read all the arguments for and against 16GB RAM. Yes I think a faster hard drive or maybe an SSD would be a good idea for you if you want your loading times to be quicker.
 
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Gary1

New Member
I forgot we were talking about a laptop. sorry, I am sure your not looking for new laptops.
 

KevWestBeats

New Member
I forgot we were talking about a laptop. sorry, I am sure your not looking for new laptops.
no not at all i bought this laptop a week ago lol.
I can't remember how much RAM you said you had, but if you have 4GB then yes definitely get 8GB or 16GB. I'm just going to leave it up to you now on how much, because hopefully you've now read all the arguments for and against 16GB RAM. Yes I think a faster hard drive or maybe an SSD would be a good idea for you if you want your loading times to be quicker.
I have 8 right now. I am using Reason 6 for my music but honestly Reason is very well optimized and will run on any pos computer on the market. I also have Sonar and a few choice plug ins for it but I have enough power to run those too. The main thing I am worried about is video. I am trying different programs and I am just making it a habit to not touch anything 32 bit which is why I say I everything I have is 64 bit because I do not see a reason to take a step backards like that. EIther way thank you for your help you have been very very helpful to me. I am thinking I will upgrade the ram for now because I do need the extra hard drive space and I do not want to use an external drive for anymore than back ups.
There seems to be quite a lot of misconceptions around how video editing software differs from other software. Video editing benefits from as much RAM as possible (due to the way Win 7 handles ram differently = it will use as much as you give it and survive on very little also). Video editing is about the pipeline. Fast CPU, is pointless without fast storage and throughput. This can be achieved cheaply with RAM and an SSD.

This was my understanding of how windows 7 worked as well. I am no expert I have a working knowledge of computer technology. Basically just enough to do my work after that its just web surfing.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
KevWestBeats said:
I have 8 right now. I am using Reason 6 for my music but honestly Reason is very well optimized and will run on any pos computer on the market. I also have Sonar and a few choice plug ins for it but I have enough power to run those too. The main thing I am worried about is video. I am trying different programs and I am just making it a habit to not touch anything 32 bit which is why I say I everything I have is 64 bit because I do not see a reason to take a step backards like that.
As you have 8GB and it's OK for you now, just stick with it for now... if 8GB isn't cutting it for you after say a month then upgrade to 16GB. You are quite right not to use any 32-bit editing programs these days because of the RAM.
 

tlarkin

VIP Member
disk I/O is always going to be your biggest bottle neck and like I said it really depends on what you are doing. I have a friend that works for a legit video production company (they actually do some Hollywood stuff too) and he uses a Macbook Pro with 8gigs of RAM in it to do almost everything. They do a lot of post effects for movies, the only one I know for sure is they did all the rain in the movie Sin City. The rest escape me.

If I recall, I think I read that the first transformers movie was edited on 3 Macbook Pros.

As Bigfella already stated modern OSes will cache things out to memory, all OSes do this. However, that doesn't mean it is going to make a real world applicable difference unless you utilize it. The OP must find the balance of price/performance that works for them. Suggesting 50gigs of RAM is futile and pointless because none of us can qualify the exact OP's needs.
 

cabinfever1977

New Member
If you have the money and if its cheap,go for 16gb of memory,its better to have more than not enough,and certainly won't hurt nothing.
 
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