Laptop Memory - 32 or 64?

[Mark George]

I'm getting close to purchasing a new (Windows) laptop and I have noticed that some of the higher-end gaming models have options for either 32GB RAM or 64GB. The processor is the i7-7820, which has 4 cores.

Is 64GB an advantage in this situation, where there are only 4 cores? Or, would I be wasting money? The primary use would be Adobe PPro, AE, and possibly Resolve.

Would love to hear the group's opinions on this matter. Thank you!

 

[PatrickFaith]

I'm getting close to purchasing a new (Windows) laptop and I have noticed that some of the higher-end gaming models have options for either 32GB RAM or 64GB. The processor is the i7-7820, which has 4 cores.

Is 64GB an advantage in this situation, where there are only 4 cores? Or, would I be wasting money? The primary use would be Adobe PPro, AE, and possibly Resolve.

Would love to hear the group's opinions on this matter. Thank you!

For 4k workflows with AE I like to have 2 gig per core, so 8 gig for AE. I run ae while I run premier, I like to have 8 gig for premiere, so that's 16g just for those two programs. Sometimes I have renders going in the background, i like to have another 4 to 8 gig while rendering, so that's 24G for me most of the time. When I run maya or something, that's about the only time i run up to the 64g. I do btw notice windows kind of autocaches files, that's the only real use i have for over 24g. I can't edit at 8k on any of my machines, and don't work directly on r3d files past the initial ingest .

 

[Mark George]

Thank you, Patrick! That's kind of where my head is going: 32GB is more than enough for a 4 core machine for my use cases.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

32GB should be enough, especially if your swap file is on an SSD. If it isn't, maybe consider 64GB if you're going to stress your machine. However, if you're only using it for one task (editing & coloring) then maybe 32GB is enough either way.

 

[L. Langer]

That's definitely not a CPU you'd want to stick with 64GB. If it was spec'd higher with more cores and larger cache, maybe. At this point, we still don't know the ramifications of running 64GB on a mobile setup as far as heat and wear/tear go, plus you'd have a huge swap file that would wear out your SSD and take up a huge chunk of space. You can also probably also get faster high-performance 32GB kits than 64GB kits at this point because of the density difference in the chips.

 

[Mark George]

Thanks, Karim. Yes, the swap file will be on a fast M.2 SSD.

And thanks, L. Langer. I had a feeling it would be a lot of extra heat, but I didn't realize the size of the swap file would increase with the amount of RAM. Very good to know.

At this point, I'm pretty locked in to 32GB.

 

[AndreasOberg]

Just some thoughts Mark. I always take the most memory I can.

We have 128GB on our main machine and I find it very useful in RedcineX for caching the videos for playback. Same benefit in After Effects. Its also good with more memory if you run multiple programs like Davinci, After Effects and Premiere at the same time since you may otherwise have to close them.
That said, the best way to find out if you need more memory is to analyze your memory when you use the computer. If you are only using about 20GB or similar when you use the programs you use then 64MB may be overkill, but if you often see it close to 30GB then 64GB may be the way to go.


Remember in most programs you can adjust how much memory they should use: Redcine, After Effects all have this. By default they often do not use that much memory so you should increase it.
What are you planning on doing with the computer? 4 cores is going to be a bit limiting with Red files. Also what graphics card are you looking at?

Hope that helps
/Andreas

 

[Mark George]

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for the response! I didn't notice this earlier.

I like to get away from the home office and spend part of my time editing in coffee shops, so this laptop will fulfill that purpose. I realize a laptop is not the ideal tool for editing 6K and 8K footage, but I'm willing to trade a little pain for the freedom of getting out of the office. The laptop is not meant to replace a desktop - I have a fairly robust 6-core desktop with 64GB of RAM and a GTX 1080 to do final renders and exports.