RAM Question

[Jim Brennan]

I think this was answered here recently, but I can't find it, so I apologize for clogging up the boards.

I ordered my new 8-core with only 2GB of RAM, so now I will upgrade.

1) Any recommendations on vendors?

2) How much can I expect say 8 Gigs to speed up output from RedCine?

Thanks.

 

[ckilaru]

Well, I don't know about how much it will speed it up by... But its a good bit when I compared my 2gig on MBP to 4gig on MBP.

As for vendors, I always go to http://www.macmall.com/. Cheap and good. If you are in LA, you can pick it up.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I recommend OWC for Mac RAM. Crucial is good too, but us being in Colorado, we'll have to pay sales tax unless you buy from some other vendor like Newegg. If you do a search here, there's a thread explaining how the quad-channel memory works for best performance. But long story short, you get the best overall performance when all slots are filled with modules of the same capacity and specs.

REDCINE is a 32bit application. So without all the nerd-speak, REDCINE will only be able to use 2.0GB to 3.2GB of RAM for itself, depending on how it's written. I haven't profiled it to see how much RAM it's taking up. RAM doesn't seem to be a bottleneck with REDCINE -- a nice fast RAID will definitely help though as it keeps the drive system from being a bottleneck. It doesn't have to be anything amazing, I've got a 3TB (3x1GB) RAID-0 array that's more than fast enough to keep ahead of REDCINE.

If you run REDCINE with 2GB on your system, it will be a dog. OSX itself can eat up quite a bit on its own, plus other apps you may have running. 8GB is a good amount for your 8-core system, lets you run a few applications, email, web browser, iTunes, etc.. without swapping out to disk. Obviously more is better, but I think any more than 16GB is overkill until we have more 64bit applications that can actually take advantage of it.

 

[amrrahmy]

they are making a new osx snow leopard with multi-threading and a new fcs core, that would use all the available ram. so u would be able to use more ram, but i think if u don't use anything other than fcs, u dont need to have more than 4GB most of the time, at least for now.

 

[amrrahmy]

since u cant mix rams(u can physically but it won't run smooth), u can either add more of the same ram (so if u had 2x1GB), u can make it (4x1 or 8x1).

or remove the existing ram, and add whatever u want.

it's was said that some rams don't go well with each other(if some don't exactly have the same capabilities), so dont mix brands to be on the safe side.

 

[Jim Brennan]

Yeah, this particular system is only used for editing. I was looking at the prices at OWC on the 2Gig modules. 8 gigs is only 350. I think I'll order it tonight.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[Thomas Koch]

I just ordered 8 gigs from crucial for my mac pro and 4 gigs for my mac book. With the Mac Pro, I should remove the base 2 Gigs and just use the new 8 gigs?

 

[Jim Brennan]

If you ordered matched 1 gig pairs you will have to because there are only 8 slots. If you ordered matched 2 gig pairs you probably should from what I've heard about mixing one and two gig modules

 

[Bruce Ingram]

I've been using Redcine on a 8-core with 8gigs and can report that it runs pretty well, not super smooth but more than smooth enough to work in and work quickly.

 

[Johann Schulz]

You guys support my 4-gig iMac thread idea for basics quite nicely, thanks.

Jeff Kilgroe, you raise the basic and most important point that all RAM should match, so all, think about your slots and what you're buying for fill. Don't mix RAM, even though the motto is, 'the more the better!'

 

[Johann Schulz]

Boy I sound like a preacher in that last post; name dropping, the works! It'd be almost funny if it wasn't so annoying.... I'll refrain from such posts, best I can in the future. Drink und surf - NEIN!

RAM's comparatively cheap out here, though; Taiwan companies make a variety of options. They also assemble the Macs, but the prices on them seem to be about the same worldwide. Oh well, I do enjoy this quote I recently came upon: "The fastest Macs are not sold by Apple."