Memory - Do we need more than 6 gig?

sygnus21 said:

With that said, I created this thread as not to hijack the "Show Us Your Rig" thread and would like to keep this thread on the topic of whether we need more than 6gig of RAM.

Thanks.

In that spirit, I do believe it is nice to have more than 4 GB. My board is dual channel, so I usually run with 8 GB. There is no "real" benefit from using more than 4 GB for me, as almost nothing I run uses that much, but I find that my system is a little snappier with 8 GB because of Win 7's prefetching feature.

If you can easily afford more than 6 GB, then by all means do it, but it should be the last system component that you buy. Get all of the nice important goodies first, then add those extra GB of RAM.

pparks1 said:

... Even when fabulously wealthy if you don't need X amount of RAM...it doesn't make great sense to simply buy it.

I was right. You do not understand what it means to be fabulously wealthy. Or even moderately rich.

People spend what 12GB of RAM costs on a lousy wallet:

Burberry Wallets & Small Leather Goods

Let me put it another way. Some people have lots of dough and never part with a penny. They live on macaroni and cheese and die with millions of dollars in the bank. Some people are really into spending money and always get the best, even if they don't need it.

Since this is a tech forum and there are lots of serious computer enthusiasts here, I would be willing to bet that if we had the money a lot of us would build a far better rig than we need. I would also bet that a lot of us have already spent the money for a rig which greatly exceeds our needs. If some rich old geek died and left us all ten million bucks a lot of us would probably get something like this:

Dream Machine 2010 | Maximum PC

The original point I made was that if you have the money, why not go for it. I remember going down to the store and buying four 16MB sticks of RAM in the day when 8MB was standard and 16MB was considered great. It cost me $400. 4GB seems enough for most people these days, but the next "big deal" game or app may require much more.

Finally, try as I might, I can't see Bill Gates looking over his checkbook balance and saying to himself "Well, it's either the RAM or the racing fuel. Decisions, decisions..."

profdlp said:

pparks1 said:

... Even when fabulously wealthy if you don't need X amount of RAM...it doesn't make great sense to simply buy it.

I was right. You do not understand what it means to be fabulously wealthy. Or even moderately rich.

That's right as neither of those terms describe me today....nor are they likely to ever be accurate in the future.

pparks1 said:

profdlp said:

pparks1 said:

... Even when fabulously wealthy if you don't need X amount of RAM...it doesn't make great sense to simply buy it.

I was right. You do not understand what it means to be fabulously wealthy. Or even moderately rich.

That's right as neither of those terms describe me today....nor are they likely to ever be accurate in the future.

Then we have something in common. :)

Aphelion said:

whs said:

Although RAM can be an important factor for certain applications, I think that the average user is still well served with 4GBs (even 3GBs for a 32bit OS). I have both (4GB for 64bit and 3GB for 32bit) and I hardly ever notice a page fault. That leads me to believe that there is enough RAM for what I am doing (which is bread and butter stuff). Even during heavy video editing which keeps all my 4 cores running at about 75%, there are no page faults.

While the following concerns very few users it's an interesting side note as to how memory is being used in the music recording/sequencing world these days.

Over the past decade there's been a development called "virtual instruments", these range from software recreations of Classic synthesizers to full sampled orchestras and grand pianos. Multi-sampling takes each note of a grand piano and samples it played at different velocities, that's each note on a grand piano...each multi-sampled note averages 30 or 35MB, to get maximum real time response the whole instrument is loaded into RAM. Full orchestra sampled instruments can be loaded individually. I have one of the older sampled orchestra libraries and it's folder reads 14.2GB. I can load any part of the orchestra needed.

Anyway... If you have a 32-bit system with 12GB memory... each virtual instrument can load into it's own 3GB memory space, the instruments are played from the main recording program by virtual MIDI ports. The recording program, (Cubase, Sonar, Pro Tools...etc) resides along with the OS in the base 3GB memory.

Virtual instruments are being ported to 64-bit and and will soon be able to run within the recording program and not need the virtual MIDI ports.

In the near future 32GB memory will be standard on machines being used for studio use.

Here's some virtual instruments.

Native Instruments Classic recreation of the Prophet 5 synth.




Addictive Drums, full studio set with adjustable mics, 24-bit samples.




Native Instruments Kontakt, a virtual instruments rack.
It has three instruments from the East-West Gold symphonic library loaded.




Ap

finally someone that has the answer to my original questions (https://www.sevenforums.com/overclock...tml#post891559 and https://www.sevenforums.com/overclock...tml#post892959).

and yet everyone said that 12GB would be a waste of money...

i`m glad you replied, so now i know i`m not buying unnassecary RAM i (according to most here) dont need.

so i`m now definitely going for the 12GB, just like i originaly planned...

Thanx!

Aphelion said:

whs said:

Although RAM can be an important factor for certain applications, I think that the average user is still well served with 4GBs (even 3GBs for a 32bit OS). I have both (4GB for 64bit and 3GB for 32bit) and I hardly ever notice a page fault. That leads me to believe that there is enough RAM for what I am doing (which is bread and butter stuff). Even during heavy video editing which keeps all my 4 cores running at about 75%, there are no page faults.

While the following concerns very few users it's an interesting side note as to how memory is being used in the music recording/sequencing world these days.

Over the past decade there's been a development called "virtual instruments", these range from software recreations of Classic synthesizers to full sampled orchestras and grand pianos. Multi-sampling takes each note of a grand piano and samples it played at different velocities, that's each note on a grand piano...each multi-sampled note averages 30 or 35MB, to get maximum real time response the whole instrument is loaded into RAM. Full orchestra sampled instruments can be loaded individually. I have one of the older sampled orchestra libraries and it's folder reads 14.2GB. I can load any part of the orchestra needed.

Anyway... If you have a 32-bit system with 12GB memory... each virtual instrument can load into it's own 3GB memory space, the instruments are played from the main recording program by virtual MIDI ports. The recording program, (Cubase, Sonar, Pro Tools...etc) resides along with the OS in the base 3GB memory.

Virtual instruments are being ported to 64-bit and and will soon be able to run within the recording program and not need the virtual MIDI ports.

In the near future 32GB memory will be standard on machines being used for studio use.

Here's some virtual instruments.

Native Instruments Classic recreation of the Prophet 5 synth.




Addictive Drums, full studio set with adjustable mics, 24-bit samples.




Native Instruments Kontakt, a virtual instruments rack.
It has three instruments from the East-West Gold symphonic library loaded.




Ap

could you explain to me how i can put each VST in its own Ram module?

Thnx!

the 12 GB Corsair Dominator GT (1866Mhz) still sounds great, but someone told me (i think it was Sygnus) that this speeds are not reached by the MoBO, and therefor not neccesary.[/QUOTE]

Your Core I7 930 uses the Intel Quickpath Interconnect at 4.8 GT/s which is Quad pumped and has a bandwidth of 19200 MB per second or 19.2 GB per second. It is listed under computer buses and QPI in the link below.

Even DDR3-1066 MHz triple channel RAM has a bandwidth of 25.6 GB per second so their is no benefit with going any higher.

All the bandwidths are listed here.

List of device bit rates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/QUOTE]


i`m now going for 12GB of 1600Mhz, with a 7 cache.

this should be sufficient...