RAM = Overrated

Pyle · Post by **Pyle** » Sun May 22, 2005 3:22 pm

I had 512 RAM previeously, and when I was exporting finished videos I it would just stop halfway through, saying it had an error. I was able to restart my computer and finish it, but I was getting sick of the intense load time I had to wait for whenever I did a single edit. I bought a 512 RAM stick off of Ebay and put it into my computer.

Waste of money and time. My computer runs exactly the same as it did before. It fact I think it might even be worse. Bottom line = you don't need RAM.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Sun May 22, 2005 4:24 pm

...and where's your numbers to support that obviously-unfounded claim?

Kai Stromler · Post by **Kai Stromler** » Sun May 22, 2005 11:57 pm

Pyle wrote:I bought a 512 RAM stick off of Ebay and put it into my computer.

Note that this does not say "I checked to clean up whatever bogus processes were clogging my system, then looked at the manual to see what specs my motherboard would support, and bought a compliant DIMM from NewEgg that had the balance I wanted between low price and positive reviews". You may have done due diligence, but it sure doesn't give that impression.

Pyle wrote:Bottom line = you don't need RAM.

More like "buying random stuff from eBay as opposed to established vendors is a crapshoot". Sometimes you get the part you need, and sometimes you get junk with very little means of redress. It may not be technically dead, but there are some damn dodgy parts out there.

--K

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Mon May 23, 2005 12:05 am

Good points.

Actually, while we're on the subject, does anyone have some hard numbers or at least ideas on how much RAM affects rendering speed? I haven't yet tried editing on my recently-increased RAM, myself, but I find the 1GB a minimum requirement for most other things right now.

bum · Post by **bum** » Mon May 23, 2005 5:56 am

Depends on the source footage. vob's will eat ram like hugh hefner ate his wife on their honeymoon. Editing with low quality divx files however woent take more than their fair share of ram. I've never edited with lossles or avs, so I've got no idea how much ram they eat up.

Coffee 54 · Post by **Coffee 54** » Mon May 23, 2005 6:50 am

I've found that with my system's 256k rendering times range from two to five minutes for every thirty seconds, depending how many fades or other tricks I've thrown in to the project file. I can work with lossless codecs no problem, but I do run into memory errors trying to run final encodes off uncommpressed RGB's. All that said, the main reason I want to upgrade memory, you try playing Half-Life 2 with only 256k of RAM.

mckeed · Post by **mckeed** » Mon May 23, 2005 5:18 pm

RAM doesn't help rendering that much unless you have really complicated scene which means you have to process many different video layers. RAM will help the performance of your system while editing. Frameserving vobs and filtering them you only need a certain amount of ram and them any more is fluff. The only thing that will help render time is a faster processor and fast hard drives. Unless you are using AE which renders to RAM cause its way faster than rendering to disk. When you are rendering you are essentially encoding. Encoding is a process using mathmatics. RAM only gets you so far, the rest is CPU cycles. Faster memory will help you CPU work better, not more of it. Video is pretty basic stuff really. What takes time is calculating opacity, transitions, overlays, masks, etc. RAM doesn't help you here, but processors will. If you are multitasking between AE and premiere and have them open at the same time while using virtualdub to find clips, then you need ram cause the programs use RAM when they are open.

Moral of the story, FAST RAM and FAST CPU coupled with a hard drive in a raid 0 array will help render times, not more RAM.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Mon May 23, 2005 5:29 pm

Aha, good points then. I didn't really notice a difference between 256 and 512 back in the day, either....

But as Coffee 54 mentioned - at least there's other reasons to have good RAM. With my other hobbies, I can't imagine getting by on less than a gig nowadays

bum · Post by **bum** » Mon May 23, 2005 10:47 pm

Coffee 54 wrote: you try playing Half-Life 2 with only 256k of RAM.

NeoQuixotic · Post by **NeoQuixotic** » Tue May 24, 2005 7:33 pm

Well I just bought two more 256 mb sticks of PC800 RDRAM today to bring my system up to 1 gig. The main reason I'm upgrading is to increase my editing performance, but mainly for Photoshop and games. If you are looking to increase rendering speed get a badass processor, superfast harddrives, and render to a harddrive that doesn't contain the source files or the system pagefile.

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RAM = Overrated

RAM = Overrated

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