Ram Question

nataq wrote on 2/23/2006, 2:01 AM
Hi, I have a question regarding system speed.

I have now upgraded my system from 1024MB Ram to 3072MB Ram. But unfortunately there is no change at all in rendering speed, and also no change in editing. When I use my HDV movies from my FX1 and set the video preview to "preview (full)", there is no fluent movement - in fact nothing has changed at all.

The system seems to detect the memory (during setup as well as windows).

My hardware is as follows:
Tyan Thunder 7525i with 2x 3,4 Intel Xeon processors. The RAM are from Kingston, the type that they suggest on their website for use with my motherboard.

The RAMs cost quite some money, but if I don´t see any difference, they are of no use at all.

Is this what I have to expect, or is there something wrong here?

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Wolfgang

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 2/23/2006, 7:29 AM
I think it depends on what you are rendering. My understanding is that photos on the timeline will use up a lot of RAM during a render. Just editing your video footage may not really eat into RAM all that much.

Open up your task manager and watch the memory usage and page file size as you work. If your page file doesn't grow then you're getting good use of that RAM. Using the PF slows everything down.

With the extra memory you can set Vegas' preview RAM setting fairly high. That can make your editing experience a little better but probably wouldn't affect render times.

Be aware that Windows would normally limit any application to about 2 GB. That's okay, there are more processes running than Vegas and they can now use the 3rd GB. I hear it's possible the set a registry key that will allow Vegas to use 3 GB, but maybe that's not needed since the rest of the system needs memory too.

I wouldn't bother installing more than the 3 GB you have. Your computer is probably already using most of the address space that the 4th GB would need so the 4thGB would go largely unused.

The main key to faster renders is in CPU power.

Rob Mack
johnmeyer wrote on 2/23/2006, 9:29 AM
Upgrading RAM, given that you had plenty to begin with, will not do a thing for rendering speed. The one thing that it helps is the length of RAM pre-render you can create, if you use that specific feature.

If you want to reduce render times, the only thing that will help is faster processor, dual processor, dual-core processor, etc. The processor is the only issue that matters, once you get to "enough" RAM (which is probably only about 512 MB).
Former user wrote on 2/23/2006, 9:39 AM
The system will detect the memory but practically no app with be able to take advantage of anything over 2GB due to Windows 32 bit architecture. RAM is not what you need for faster rendering...you need CPU power....like an AMD dual core etc

I have cut my render times in some cases by more than half by upgrading my P4 3.2GHZ Intel to an AMD x64 4400+ Dual core.....

Cheers,

VP
riredale wrote on 2/23/2006, 9:52 AM
You won't believe how little ram is really necessary for many tasks. Download a freeware utility called "RamPage." It puts a little box in your System Tray and displays contually just how much memory is being used by your system. Oftentimes, Vegas will eat up 100MB, tops.
Peter Burn wrote on 2/23/2006, 4:38 PM
All the previous posts are spot on regarding RAM vis-a-vis rendering speed. We acquired two new AVID Adrenalines in January and the one we unpacked is being used to finish some Vegas projects. It is a dual core Xeon with the fastest processor AVID supplied in December. 2 gigs of RAM. Render speeds are incredible. We also have a dual processor 1.7 in the Canopus RES 100 box that renders very quickly. The third computer is a 3.? SINGLE processor with a gig of RAM and is painfully slow. My point? Just what the others told you: render speed is entirely processor dependent

Peter.
JJKizak wrote on 2/23/2006, 5:04 PM
Ram has no effect on render speed, but if you have a large project with stills, blurs, credit rolls, etc vegas will choke at a certain point either during the render or at the end of the day while you are editing. The more ram you have the more you can load it up before it chokes. This is a fact of life. I wish I had 16 gig of ram then I could do HDV track motions, blurs, composites on a 2 hour project and not worry about a lock up due to insufficient memory. I have 4 gig (3,2 usable) and most of the time have no trouble. Toward the end of the day certain wierd things happen like the main file menu dissappears so I reboot and everything is kool. When I had 2 gig of ram their were all kinds of memory problems editing and rendering such as getting 98% through a render than Vegas stops because low on memory.

AMD 4600+ Dual Core
Gigabyte
4 Gig Kingston ram
SATA raid 150 500 gig
SATA raid 300 500 gig
SCSI 100 gig
USB external Maxtor 600gigs
IDE 336 gig
JJK
rmack350 wrote on 2/23/2006, 6:05 PM
Oh, I don't know. 3 GB also counts as "Enough" ;-) I know I'd sure use it.

The surest way to increase performace is to get a faster CPU. The other way is to put less of a load on it. For instance, the first time we ever did render tests, Spot pretty well demonstrated that SCSI drives make the render go a tad faster because they put less overhead on the CPU.

Then it becomes a cost issue.

Rob Mack
nataq wrote on 2/23/2006, 11:08 PM
Dear All,
thank you very much for your answers. That puts a lot of light on the RAM Question for me.

Since I allready have a dual processor with 2x 3,4GHZ Xeon, which isn´t that old yet, I won´t be in the position of being able to upgrade within the next year.

But as far as the preview is concerned I didn´t see any improvement here either.

Thanks again,
Wolfgang