More RAM?

Glenn Chan · July 9th, 2004, 09:58 PM

I don't own a Powerbook.

What I can tell you is that RAM is many times faster than hard drives- roughly 60X faster. Hard drives are decently fast, but RAM is much, much faster. The difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm drive is not great compared to any hard drive versus RAM.

Jeff Donald · July 9th, 2004, 10:15 PM

External drives have a place in editing and vastly improve the performance when editing with FCP on a PowerBook. I've had three PowerBooks over the years, 400Ti, 800Ti and now a 1.25 Al like the original poster. All have benefited from increasing the ram to at least 1Gb and using an external FW drive for capture and as a scratch disk. I'm not trying to debate the speed between ram and an HD. But external drives add speed, convenience and safety to your projects.

Joe Calalang · July 10th, 2004, 08:25 AM

Anyone tried using that RAM Disk program from Apples' website yet?

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ramdiskcreator.html

RAM is almost 100x faster than 5400 rpm HD. Too bad I have only 512 megs of RAM.

Josh Brusin · July 10th, 2004, 10:36 AM

Joe, In addition to my desktop system I edit remotely from time to time and used to do so on a 550mhz tibook with 256mb of ram. It worked. I'm currently on a 1ghz with 512mb. If you do end up getting 2gb of ram I'll possibly take your spare 512...

as far as multiple undo's go as a measurement of ram usage- never heard that one before. I always assumed the machine 'remembered' steps and repeated them unless it was render based.

In photoshop if you're working on a 100mb file and you create 5 more adjustment layers- guess what? 500mb of ram would be a good place to start... video ediitng is a snap next to photo imaging or video compositing. Unless you do lots of that I'd focus on faster storage or more storage... then ram (actually then cards (just not on the lappy) than ram)...
good luck

Cannon Pearson · July 10th, 2004, 12:23 PM

Adjustment layers in 8 bit Photoshop files don't increase the file size significantly. In 16 bit the change is pretty dramatic(more than double).

I have heard that for Photoshop usage you should have three to five times the amount of ram as the file size you are working on.

Glenn Chan · July 10th, 2004, 12:57 PM

Hmm I never really tried things out. But I did notice that on large complicated projects (where the project size gets up to 11-30MB), more RAM does improve performance. From 256MB to 512MB is a night and day difference. From 512MB to 768MB seems to be an improvement, but I might have been imagining it.

July 9th, 2004, 10:15 PM	#17
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	External drives have a place in editing and vastly improve the performance when editing with FCP on a PowerBook. I've had three PowerBooks over the years, 400Ti, 800Ti and now a 1.25 Al like the original poster. All have benefited from increasing the ram to at least 1Gb and using an external FW drive for capture and as a scratch disk. I'm not trying to debate the speed between ram and an HD. But external drives add speed, convenience and safety to your projects. __________________ Jeff Donald Carpe Diem Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Where to Buy? From the best in the business: DVinfo.net sponsors

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July 9th, 2004, 09:58 PM	#16
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	I don't own a Powerbook. What I can tell you is that RAM is many times faster than hard drives- roughly 60X faster. Hard drives are decently fast, but RAM is much, much faster. The difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm drive is not great compared to any hard drive versus RAM.

July 10th, 2004, 08:25 AM	#18
Joe Calalang Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: Mid-Atlantic Posts: 84	Anyone tried using that RAM Disk program from Apples' website yet? http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ramdiskcreator.html RAM is almost 100x faster than 5400 rpm HD. Too bad I have only 512 megs of RAM.

July 10th, 2004, 10:36 AM	#19
Josh Brusin Major Player Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 439	Joe, In addition to my desktop system I edit remotely from time to time and used to do so on a 550mhz tibook with 256mb of ram. It worked. I'm currently on a 1ghz with 512mb. If you do end up getting 2gb of ram I'll possibly take your spare 512... as far as multiple undo's go as a measurement of ram usage- never heard that one before. I always assumed the machine 'remembered' steps and repeated them unless it was render based. In photoshop if you're working on a 100mb file and you create 5 more adjustment layers- guess what? 500mb of ram would be a good place to start... video ediitng is a snap next to photo imaging or video compositing. Unless you do lots of that I'd focus on faster storage or more storage... then ram (actually then cards (just not on the lappy) than ram)... good luck

July 10th, 2004, 12:23 PM	#20
Cannon Pearson Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Atlanta, GA Posts: 123	Adjustment layers in 8 bit Photoshop files don't increase the file size significantly. In 16 bit the change is pretty dramatic(more than double). I have heard that for Photoshop usage you should have three to five times the amount of ram as the file size you are working on.

July 10th, 2004, 12:57 PM	#21
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Hmm I never really tried things out. But I did notice that on large complicated projects (where the project size gets up to 11-30MB), more RAM does improve performance. From 256MB to 512MB is a night and day difference. From 512MB to 768MB seems to be an improvement, but I might have been imagining it.