Is 8gb RAM worth it?

rawfa

rawfa

Veteran
Hi guys,

My pc is falling apart and I'm looking into buying a new one. I'm sure about it being a quad and I was about to buy one with 4gb ram when I saw another one with 8gb ram for 500$ more. I use premiere cs3 and after effects cs3...will they really benefit from all of this or will it be overkill?
 
obviously the more ram the better, however it still depends on what you're doing, my 2gb ram macbook pro is doing a pretty good job surviving afterFX cs3+Final cut Pro running together. my opinion would be to save that $500, since we film-makers are mostly poor, and invest in i don't know, tripod? jib? a new car? a girlfriend?
 
Maybe neither premiere of after effects will use the full 8gb, but even if they only use 4 or 3gb this would mean I could still be working with other applications while I'm exporting a project...which is good...I'm just not so sure if it's "500$ worth it good".
 
Pretty sure you have to run Vista to use the 8Gb, XP uses up to 3Gb I think (64 bit version different but less compatible with programs, once again - I think).
 
I'm fairly sure you can buy the one with 4 gigs and providing it has the slots and the case supports it, you can buy another 4 gigs for under $500. I guess it depends what kind of system you're purchasing, but that $500 can be spent elsewhere in my opinion.

As another poster said, my Macbook Pro with 2 gigs of RAM runs FCS2, PS CS3, Safari, Thunderbird, Lightroom all at the same time and works perfectly fine. I guess another gig or two couldn't hurt, but unless you're doing something ridiculous, you don't need 8 gigs...yet.

-Kegan
 
I think 4GB of ram is enough for your purposes and if you realize that you need more ram, you can upgrade anytime. BTW 500$ for 4 gigs of ram is way to expensive. Here in Germany (and i suppose it's the same in Spain) you can get 4 gigs (2x2GB) of DDR2-800 6400 CL5 for 120EUR (approx 170$). If you want faster ram it will be a little bit more expensive but 500$ is way too much I think.
 
I ended up getting a sweet quad with 4gb ram with 2 empty slots in case I ever want to bump it up to 8gb. I'll be configuring it this weekend and hopefully will regain my love for editing.
 
yes you have to run a 64 bit to reconize that much ram, plus when you run 64 adobe might not run with it. Xp non 64 bit reads only 3 gb, and abobe reads about 4 gb i believe. Therefore 500 hun bucks of ram is not work it. I just built a quad core pc with about $1,000, hence invest it in a new computer...
 
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