RAM theories

[Chris B]

Bob - These (and other related) questions seem to come up a lot. Perhaps an article correlating the various threads together might be an idea?

Could cover Memory, Dual/Quad core, XP/Vista, Internal/External drives AMD/Intel from a video perspective.

Do you think it would be a good idea - or would it be out of date as soon as it's written?

[hpharley90]

Bob said

Sorry, I'll try to remember to speak English next time.

Bob you spoke great English but in my house I'm the only one who doesn't speak Russian and I don't have a clue as to what their saying until I hear Papa and then I know their talking about me.

Thanks for the easy to understand explanation.
It seems that my mother board will work with 400 533 and 667 MHz DDR2.

I'm having no problem with my 533 and I added another 1 gig 8 months ago.

If I'd have known then that I could have upgraded to 667 I would have.

[Chuck Engels]

If I'd have known then that I could have upgraded to 667 I would have.

The problem is you would have had to throw your 533 RAM away and replaced it with 667 RAM or it wouldn't have done you any good anyway. The slower RAM always prevails, so even though you would have put in the 667 RAM it would only run at 533 anyway.

[hpharley90]

Chuck I would have thrown both 512mb in my parts box and bought 4 512's at 667 MHz but since I've added 1 more gig of 533 it makes no sense to change now.

I ask my self now also "Would I even notice a change with faster memory?"
Or is it something that can only be measured by some kind of test equipment.

[Chris B]

I ask my self now also "Would I even notice a change with faster memory?"
Or is it something that can only be measured by some kind of test equipment.

It depends.

It depends on what was slowing you down before.... And to actually determine that is quite hard.

It is probable that you would have seen some improvement - however this might only have been a few percent faster. The absolute best case you would get is 25% faster anyhow (assuming you were totally ram limited - which is very unlikely).

[Ken Jarstad]

The reason I posted earlier was because the best time to optimize your RAM is when you first place the PC/motherboard into service. Once you have purchased RAM that is not optimum for your motherboard, it is not usually cost-effective to upgrade. My MB has 1066 MHz bus but I bought 800 MHz RAM.

So, check the claimed speed of your front side bus. You see some very fast speeds now. Some MB mfrs claim faster than 1066 MHz available. For video work, the RAM bandwidth seems to be as important as CPU speed. What is the use of having lots of CPU when it is choked by lack of front side bus bandwidth? And since there always tradeoffs to be made, I recommend two processors/cores and the fastest RAM you can get.

[Bob]

Bob, do you have a recommendation for the "sweet spot" RAM load for Premiere Elements? Is it different for Vista?

Steve,

It's not so much a sweet spot for Premiere Elements as there is a sweet spot for your system with your usage pattern.

Because Premiere sees Virtual memory and not physical RAM, it will always see the same amount of memory regardless of how much RAM you have installed. But, virtual memory has to be brought into physical RAM in order to be accessed. If you don't have enough physical RAM installed to meet the combined need of all the processes running on your system, virtual memory will be paged in and out of physical RAM slowing system performance.

You can get a feel for how much physical RAM is optimum by looking at the Windows Task Manager. Ctrl-Alt-Del will bring up the task manager. Click on the Performance tab and look at the section on the lower left titled "Commit Charge (K)". The "Peak" value is what you want to look at. This represents the combined peak amount of virtual memory your system has required. If your system has been running a while and you've been using your applications as you usually do, it should be representive of how much RAM you need to minimize paging. If you have less then that amount of RAM, the system will be paging more and you will have lower performance. If it is substantially greater than that, you aren't fully utilizing your installed RAM. The value is in thousands of bytes. Divide by 1024 to get Megabytes and divide by 1024 again to get Gigabytes. (it's a computer thing, 1K = 1024 bytes). As I look at my system, my peak committed value is currently 2205080KB which is 2.1GB. I have 2GB RAM installed so I am pretty close to the sweet spot for my system and mix of application usage. Your milage may vary as the saying goes.

Vista does have a larger footprint so the sweet spot will be larger.

In short, is more ALWAYS better, or is there a point where you get diminished returns and/or even malfunction?

If you have much more RAM than necessary to satisfy your peak commit value, you've got room to grow into but it isn't buying you any performance benefit.

It is possible to get malfunctions with more memory. Sometimes it can be due to borderline memory that has a bad spot that gets touched when the RAM usage increases. But, more often than not, it's bad coding in a 3rd party driver that either makes assumptions about how memory is divided up between system and user or just plain got the memory management wrong. An application capable of handling larger memory address spaces could also make bad assumptions that could cause problems. This is especially true if you have a version of the OS that allows use of the /3GB switch (XP Pro for example) or the /PAE switch (Vista). I typically wouldn't expect problems, but it's kind of a crap shoot depending on the specific mix of hardware, software, drivers, and update levels. I ran into a similar problem on a previous system and traced it down to one of the motherboard drivers. I was able to get an updated version and the problem went away.

I plan on increasing my RAM to 4GB when I migrate to Vista. But, I'm in no hurry. I'm still waiting for Vista drivers for my scanner and printers and I want the service patches to settle down some and let Vista stabilize first.

[William Tranter]

My head hurts trying to understand this lot!
I've got 2Gig of RAM using PE1 with no problems whatever, but when I upgraded to 2GB, I discarded the 1GB of RAM I had and got Crucial RAM sticks. I tried using the 1GB stick of RAM as well, but the sound went all 'funny', making an electronic noise which didn't sound good, so out it came again!
All the best,
Bill

[Chuck Engels]

I know that with many systems you have to add RAM in Matched Pairs. I understand that to mean not only size but brand. If you have 4 RAM slots and you add 2 x 1gb sticks in slots 1 and 3 (depending on your system it may be slots 1 and 2), than if I add 1gb in Slot 2 I have to add a 1gb in slot 4 before it will work correctly. This all has to do with dual channel RAM and how it works I believe, but you cant just add a stick of RAM to most machines without adding a second identical stick to the secondary slot as well.

I know that Bob will correct any errors/misinformation, I am as confused about some of this as others are, so please correct any errors you find

[Clayton]

Thanks Bob for both of your recent threads. Like Richard says, you speak perfect English. My problem is I was born in "East Texas", and if you are familar with Texas, you are aware of what language we speak. These threads gave me a little more understanding of memory chips, and what I am seeing in the task manager. Sometime I will include a screenshot of my task manager for a full explanation of all the boxes.

Chuck wrote:

I know that with many systems you have to add RAM in Matched Pairs. I understand that to mean not only size but brand. If you have 4 RAM slots and you add 2 x 1gb sticks in slots 1 and 3 (depending on your system it may be slots 1 and 2), than if I add 1gb in Slot 2 I have to add a 1gb in slot 4 before it will work correctly. This all has to do with dual channel RAM and how it works I believe, but you cant just add a stick of RAM to most machines without adding a second identical stick to the secondary slot as well.

The guy at Fry's who was helping me with selections told me that I would only need to fill one slot for starters. (4 slots with max. 8gb)

[jackfalbey]

When I upgraded from 2Gigs to 4, I didn't notice much improvement in PrEl3.0, but it did help out a lot with some games (Microsoft FlightSimX). I haven't had any errors or problems or conflicts from the extra RAM, though.

The single biggest performance boost for PrEl is to turn off as many background processes as possible. Before an editing session, I unplug the modem, stop all security software, use msconfig to stop all startup processes, reboot, and finally use Control Panel-Administrative Tools-Services to stop all but the most necessary processes before starting PrEl.

If I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and check the Processes tab, there's seriously like only 8-10 things running. This gives a massive boost to rendering and encoding. Just be sure you know what you're turning off or you could have big problems. And be sure to reactivate your security software before reconnecting to the internet.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Here's a free utility called 'Enditall' that I use to stop all unnecessary tasks when I want to use PrEl. I also disable my network.

As Jack says, don't forget to re-enable your security software and internet links when you are done.

http://docsdownloads.com/Tier1/enditall.htm

[Steve Grisetti]

I used to use EndItAll (in fact, I HAD to use it) back when I was editing on a 1.3 ghz Pentium -- but with most contemporary computers (2.6 ghz and faster, except maybe some laptops) I can't imagine you'd still have to. As you can see from my specs, I'm running a pretty average machine with only a gig of RAM and I not only don't shut down background processes but I can even leave my e-mail and web browser on, as well as Photoshop Elements, while I'm capturing and I never drop a frame.

There are a few things I'd definitely recommend be permanently turned off though, as detailed in this FAQ:
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc147e7

And Vista has its share of resource-wasters that can interrupt capture:
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc448a7

In both cases, you'll probably never miss what you turn off.

And certainly beware of anything Norton, but especially SystemWorks, which is constantly "maintaining" your system, interrupting intensive processes as it does. (This is also true of some optimizing programs, especially those that are constantly monitoring your system and running defrags in the background.)

[kodebuster]

There are a few things I'd definitely recommend be permanently turned off though, as detailed in this FAQ:
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc147e7

And Vista has its share of resource-wasters that can interrupt capture:
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc448a7

For some reason my browser will not access the above web links.

I'm using IE7, XPSP2, with pop-ups turned off.

I thought it might be that I needed the Adobe Flash plug-in, but my browser never gets that far.

Any ideas or suggestions are appreciated...

Thanx...

[RJ Johnston]

Links are working for me. Try again.