How much RAM/Memory do you have in your computer and...
 

How much memory do you have in your computer and does it really help to have 12GB or even 24GB?
I see them having 12, 18, 24 and even more now. I am going to go buy a new laptop tomorrow and it just seems bad ass.
I encode videos so if it helps that much I will get the most possible.
What more do you suggest?
?Intel® Core? i7-3630QM
?12GB DDR3 Memory
Any info would be great. Thanks

Encoding Videos it absolutely helps. If you already have 12 youre pretty well off, but more wouldnt hurt. Especially when it comes to HD. I doubt it will increase any quality but it will render in less time.

My older desktop (sorry, that's what I'm on now, to slog through old files in search of something I need, lol) has 12GB:

http://i.imgur.com/c9aCHj4.png

I don't think it runs any slower than my machines with more RAM, personally, but I don't do anything fancy on my desktops besides web-browse and run a programming IDE.

My Sager laptop has 24 GB of RAM. Maybe overkill, but it starts up quickly and even heavy apps like Photoshop open real smoothly!

My video editing rig...
Rampage Extreme IV motherboard
Proc: Intel Core i7-3970X Extreme Edition
Memory:64GB 2400mhz RAM
Boot drive: SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series 256GB SSD
6- 2TB hard drives for storage

Wow, I just checked that site out. Thanks for the info. I am buying a Sager asap. Going all out.

thanks for the info

encoding video on laptops is dumb :2 cents::2 cents::2 cents:

you should be using a desktop for encoding unless there is a great reason you need to be mobile to do it.

a $1000 computer will usually encode video better then a $2000 laptop.

Sandman is right! A good desktop machine is much faster than a laptop.

Yes....check out the specs to my desktop. I agree.

However, when I am out of state away from the office I need a super fast powerful machine to encode with.

2 gb and 1 gb in gpu

I had 8GB in my desktop until last year and upgraded to 24GB. It is much faster now, but no faster than my other machine with only 16GB. I don't know what apps you need to run but probably just upgrading to 16GB is more than enough for most.

My 8G works fine with me. No big programs installed.

First let's talk about the hard drive. Seek times and read times for the hard drive are important when doing everyday tasks. Your hard drive should run at 7200rpms minimum and 10,000 would be good.

When you first open Photoshop it is your hard drive that is doing all of the work.

Now on to memory. When your computer runs out of memory it pages portions of memory to your hard drive. So let's say you have 15 tabs of chrome open, Photoshop, dream weaver, 5 notepads, color cop, stats remote, 2 putty Windows, and 5 more apps you use. Also lets say you have 4 gigs of ram.

You will notice when you switch from chrome to Photoshop there is a huge lag. Particularly when you haven't used Photoshop for a while. That lag is your computer paging Photoshop back into memory. If you had 12 gigs of ram your computer would not have paged anything to the hard drive and your computer would zip along as you multitask through your apps.

As stated before, doing encoding on a laptop is not a good idea. Many reasons why.

1. A laptop uses more expensive equipment that is meant to last less time. So using it all of the time will cause a failure quicker than in a computer.

2. Laptops don't have cooling systems that work as well as a computer. So you are going to overheat the components and have a failure quicker.

3. Laptops graphics chips don't have all of the bells and whistles that a computer graphics card has. So you will encode a lot slower.

4. Laptop CPUs don't have as much cache or as many pipes as a CPU in a computer so they encode slower.

However, if you are going to encode on location in a hotel and send the results to a client you should check to see if your encoding software can use CUDA to encode faster and then find a laptop with graphics that also use it. Doing so can cut down on time to encode dramatically.

This is a good example of paging. When you had 8 gigs you were paging ram to the hard drive. At 16 gigs you weren't. 12 gigs was probably enough. 24 gigs probably leaves half your ram unused.

16GB and not having problems so far.

i cant afford to have ANY ram... :(

some great replies, thanks guys and I have 3 comps for encoding so will deff use it for what it is best for

What specs should one be looking for in ram for a new z87 build? Most of the terms are over my head. I dont want to overclock, so is it ok to just get 1600 mhz ram, or should I be going with a higher speed? Also, I have seen ram rated anywhere from pc12800 up to pc315000. Is this something to worry about? I have also read the most important figure might be the latency. Most of the ram I am looking at is cl9.

16gb at the moment

16gbs :) but ram its like boobs, you never have enough :)

That should have said pc3 12800 and pc3 15000. What I'm basically reading is most of this shit is pretty much meaningless for the average system, unless I want to look at slightly higher numbers in benchmark programs, or try to discern the difference 3 extra fps makes in Crysis, correct?

I have a [email protected] with 16GB 2133Mhz Ram, and 64Gb ssd that is going to be upgraded to a 128Gb samsung 840pro

Jim I don't travel anymore if your interested in purchasing my sager? 123 at 456 dot bz

you could buy my sager?

13" Mid 2011 MacBook Pro with Intel i7 proc, 500GB SSD/HDD hybrid, and 16GB RAM :thumbsup

i think the speed of the ram, speed of the hard drive and speed of processor are just as important to look at as the amount of ram.

for instance apps load faster with a faster hard drive then more ram.(given memory isnt maxed out). because they need to read so much data from the disk to load into the memory.

its like putting new intake on a car, without upgrading your exhaust. one might be awesome, but the other can bottleneck it and decrease your performance gains.

15 million gb

http://www.netbooknews.com/wp-conten...on-dollars.jpg

not enough :(

Intel Core i7-3820 CPU @ 3.8 ghz
16 GB RAM

I'm also running two amd radeon hd 7800 series graphics cards with three monitors.

for regular use 8gig is plenty enough.
for encoding videos the more you have the better, I would say a 16 is a minimum ....

4Gb is enough fro me :)

I just finished building a new work/gaming rig a few days ago...

Intel i7 4770K 3.5GHz @ 4.5GHz (stable at 1.20v) using a 212+ for cooling
Gigabyte Z87X UD4H Motherboard
16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2133MHz Mushkin Blackline
Sapphire Radeon 7950 3GB @ 1050/1500 (Using this card until my 290 comes in)

and I have a several 2TB Toshiba harddrives, a 256GB Corsair Neutron SSD, and some other odds and ends

I'm so glad I live next to a Microcenter, I got the 4770K and the motherboard for cheap in their bundle deals.

Encoding itself is processor intensive not memory intensive.
The CPU will be most critical in determining encoding speed.

If your software supports it coupling that with GPUs (nvidia cuda video cards) will give an additional boost.

Editing on the other hand might benefit from more RAM, I don't really have extensive experience there to recommend how much.

I have six computers including a high end Sager laptop and a few desktops that serve multiple purposes in different rooms. Sure don't need any more!

The speed of a computer is based on all thru put devices ala Tri channel Ram matched with tri channel proc.

Now the most important factor is the latency of the ram / memory the lower the number of latency the faster the commands and response will be. Research Cat latency

Cat Latency 7 is the fastest Tri or quad channel DDRAM available.

For example:
DDR3 RAM 1600mghz with caS latency of 7 is much faster than DDR3 2400mghz at 2400 with cat latency of 10 or 11.
Latency is the time from the point the user pushes the enter/command button sending instructions to your ram into the processor, ect.... CAS LATENCY

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233253

I read an article in a video mag a while ago and they tested things that affect speed for video editing. And besides the cpu, a faster hard drive made a mountain of difference where ram not much.
I have 12 gig in mine.

Got 3 desktops, one needs some work as kinda dated, another one just needs some updates, main one I use...

i3-3240 3.40 GHz
8GB DDR3
1TB Hard Drive

8GB works well for me as I don't use any intensive programs, can upgrade it to 16GB should I get bored someday but not really needed for what I do.

love that store, visit the Chicago one here and there :thumbsup

Things slow down when you read/write from HD. I am surprised no one there suggested to use the extra ram to mount ramdisk drives. Even if I have raid SSD, that's still slowing down my stuff, so what I do I mount an few gb X: ram disk drive with:

http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/

Then I have scripts which copy my stuff in ram disk, then I run the stuff from ram disk and I could do searches within gb of data (emails, images, whatever) in millisecond, that not even SSD could (not to mention normal disks I no more use since years).
You just have to remember to run the script to copy from ram disk to real disk before to close or you lose all :)

GPU makes the biggest difference, don't let anyone tell you otherwise :thumbsup