Hi, just bought a Mac pro, 8 core (2009), from B&H. Loving it so far. Want to upgrade the memory. Would I be better off going with 24gigs (6x4 gig) or 32 (8x4 gig)? I read someplace with 3 sticks (per processor) of memory, the computer will be in tri channel mode, and run better. But 4 sticks (per processor) would put it into dual channel mode. I'm just wondering, with regards to Final Cut Studio, and Adobe CS5, does this matter, or is the amount all that makes the difference?

Any thoughts or advice on the subject?

Thanks,
Jeff

If all you are running is FCP then 24GB of RAM is about 3X more than you actually need as FCP cannot even use 4GB let alone 32GB. FCP really isn't a memory hog. If there are other applications that you will be using simultaneously then more memory may be worthwhile.

My suspicion is that running in tri-channel mode would enable you to achieve slightly higher performance figures with synthetic benchmarks but will make little or no difference with real life applications.

Actually with large photos in quantity, its easy to fill up the 4 gig in FCS. For HD video though i can edit that on my 2gig 1st gen macbook pro. Normally, I run FCS and CS5 suite on a 16gig machine. FCS can't access more than 4gig so as mentioned, the only benefit of more ram is running more of the suite apps at one time which is handy. CS5 however, can access as much as you can afford and AE on my machine is set to hog 14gig which really helps on the previews. Also come render time, it'll chew up the whole chunk which does speed things up. If Apple does release a 64 bit FCS as rumored, the hope is to lift the 4 gig limit!

The amount of RAM used might be changed when the new Final Cut Studio is released. I have 32 gigs and use multiple programs at once. i won't have to buy ram ever again.