How much difference does RAM make?

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Dawn S
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Joined: May 14 2009

If I were to add another 4Gb of RAM to my iMac raising the RAM from 4Gb - 8Gb would this significantly reduce render times? I see Crucial sell an 8Gb kit for around ?200. Please advise.

iMac 3.06 Dual Core, 24" LCD, 4Gb RAM, 512Mb Graphics, 1TB HDD, 2TB FW-800 RAID,
Final Cut Studio, Dual Boot OSX Snow Leopard, Windows XP Pro

tilski
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Joined: Sep 5 2000

Hello

Now I'm sure someone else will no more on the latest state of play but the last time I checked certain OS and their Applications could only access a certain amount of RAM. For example Final Cut used to only be able to use 3gb max.......even through you had 12gb!!!!

Of course this might be total rubbish. But never the less a ram upgrade is never a bad thing but don't expect it to be rocket propelled.

What's to become of us.... What is to become of us?

foxvideo
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Joined: Sep 9 1999

Until the next version of FCS is released, increasing RAM will not make much difference - only processor power will really decrease render times. I just doubled the 4Gb to 8Gb on my G5 Quad with very little noticeable increase in speed (AE now works faster though and having more applications open doesn't slow the machine down).

If you have a multi processor machine, setting up a QMaster local machine cluster can dramatically reduce Compressor tasks and times.

Dave Farrants Fox Video Editing

Dawn S
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Joined: May 14 2009

That sounds good, but being very new to compressor, how do I find out how to do that?

PaulD
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Joined: Aug 31 2002

Hi
The optimum seems to be to use half the maximum number of cores that QMaster offers.
As you only have a dual-core iMac that means its not going to improve your encoding times.

http://podcasts.creativecow.net/final-cut-studio-podcast/final-cut-pro-qmaster-basic

foxvideo
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Joined: Sep 9 1999

Take your pick ;)

Paul beat me to it ;) FWIT, I happily use all 4 cores of a Quad with no problems - I get better than realtime encoding speed and watching iStat menus shows all 4 cores working at 100%.

Dave Farrants Fox Video Editing

PaulD
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Joined: Aug 31 2002

Hi
Maybe the 'half' factor applies to HT-enabled 2009/2010 Mac Pros.

foxvideo
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Joined: Sep 9 1999

Setting up only takes a minute or two and is then available as an option when you send to batch.

Wouldn't do any harm to do a timed test with an encode both, with and without the cluster.....

Dave Farrants Fox Video Editing

dominicwitherow
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Joined: Apr 2 2006

I have QMaster working very well on my dual core MBP (pre-unibody version), but it just refuses to play on my dual processor Powermac. I once managed to get both computers working together, but they clearly had an argument, 'cos they ain't playin' no more! D