Is more RAM always better?

LaPoule

Newbie Joined: Jun 15, 2012 17:28 Messages: 11 Offline

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Jun 17, 2012 15:44

I was watching a Cyberlink tutorial yesterday discussing the advantages of 64-bit processing vs 32-bit processing for what had been the latest release of PowerDirector at the time the tutorial was produced (might have been for PD9, don't recall).

The video made the point that if you had 8GB RAM but were running a 32-bit processor (or a program limited to operating within a 32-bit environment), only 2GB of your RAM could be utilized at once, as opposed to 8GB being utilized if you were running a program capable of full 64-bit processing.

Does this also mean that RAM sizes greater than 8GB won't offer any particular efficiency advantage for PD10 processing?

Has anyone tested PD9 or PD10 rendering speeds with 8GB vs 12GB vs 16GB RAM?
Did 12GB or higher make a difference?

(I'm asking this question out of simple curiosity.
But, incidentally, I'm running W7 Home Premium with 8GB RAM, and would consider upgrading RAM if it would really bump processing speeds. Problem is that my current motherboard can't hold more RAM, so an upgrade would entail a motherboard upgrade as well, and I'm just not too enthusiastic about dealing with all that that would entail at the moment.)

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Jun 17, 2012 15:59

If you have a 64 bit computer and 64 Bit Operation System (Windows 7 64 Bit).
And Powerdirector 9 or 10 Ultra 64.

Then Powerdirector will use the maximum amount of RAM your Motherboard can support.

If you have a 32 bit OS, then the Maximum amount of RAM allocated to a program is somewhere between 2 GB and just a little over 3 GB (about 3.25 GB).

That is a limit of the a 32 bit address. The limit of a 32 bit address is 4,294,967,295 Bytes or about 4 GB.

Of that 4 GB, some RAM is allocated to the OS processes.

And if you have integrated Graphics, some of the RAM is for Video. Video and Programs share the Motherboard RAM.

Rendering speed is a function of speed of CPU, the type of GPU (video card) you have and RAM on board.

If you have hardware acceleration and it works, you get some speed boost from the video card.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jun 17. 2012 16:02

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Jun 17, 2012 16:02

I may be in error, but I believe that the RAM will only add functionality to the operation of edit/preview. In other words, modules will open and close faster, mouse response would be faster, the preview would keep up better, just an overall more-betterer experience. I'm sure to be corrected... HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
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vn800rider

Senior Contributor Location: Darwen, UK Joined: May 15, 2008 04:32 Messages: 1949 Offline

Jun 17, 2012 16:54

I tend to agree with Barry, I upped the RAM on my Asus i5 laptop from 4 to 8Gb (not because of any issues just to feel safer, so to speak) but even running 10 tracks of 1080p 60fps plus some effects, titles etc doesn't get me more than 4.1GB RAM used with either the Intel QS or the GT520M as the default GPU during rendering.
20 tracks gets me to 4.7GB.

Don't know how it works for others, but I guess there are other parts of the system that have a greater impact in making PD "run" or render quicker.

Cheers
Adrian
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

LaPoule

Newbie Joined: Jun 15, 2012 17:28 Messages: 11 Offline

Jun 17, 2012 17:05

Thanks for the replies. Based on what I'm hearing, I think I may just stick with my current RAM for the time being.

jerrys

Senior Contributor Location: New Britain, CT, USA (between New York and Boston) Joined: Feb 10, 2010 21:36 Messages: 1038 Offline

Jun 17, 2012 18:02

The rule of thumb is "Too much memory can't hurt." Ideally you want to buy enough memory so that it holds everything without having to use your page file, but not waste money on more than that.

There's actually a fairly easy way to tell if you need more memory: if your system gets slug slow, so that you can't even play solitaire, and your hard drive is beating itself to death, there's a good likelihood that you need more memory. Jerry Schwartz

bolda

Member Location: Liberec, Czech Republic Joined: Feb 02, 2011 15:10 Messages: 96 Offline

Jun 17, 2012 19:27

Another owl to Athens: Yes, the more RAM capacity, the better, generally speaking. Not always will, however, PowerDirector need so much. I'm using a 32-bit machine with 4GB RAM, and it's okay.

Don't fail to understand the basics: a 32-bit bus can address up to 4GB of memory space directly, or 2 to the power of 32 bits, while a 64-bit bus can address up to 16EB (EB = Exabyte; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix), or 2 to the power of 64 bits. Thus a 64-bit system can use virtually unlimited memory space directly.

To amuse you: I remember using computers with a few tens or hundreds of kilobytes of RAM and a few megabytes of hard disk capacity back in the 1980s. My first own computer was an Atari 800 XL then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jun 17. 2012 19:28