Best Memory setup with Premiere.

Amadou

Amadou

Carbonite Member
I use Premiere CS5.

I have a P6X58D-E motherboard with tripple channel memory (I7 920). Right now I have 3 X 4G installed on the blue slots. This leaves 3 slots open on the black slots.

I have the following memory sticks remaining in inventory:

2 X 2G
1 X 4G

Is it worth it to go beyond my current 12G?

Should I add the 4G in one of the black slots or will that slow down the machine?

Will mixing the 2G and 4G on the same channel slow down the machine?

Follow up question, does it matter what graphic card I get as long as it is not on the Adove recommended CUDA cards or will any card provide some sort of cuda acceleration? Right now I have a Raedon HD 5750. Thank you.

Thank you.
 
Triple channel is designed for best performance using identical sticks on the same channel. While people haven't detected major differences as far as I know it would still be advisable to keep that configuration if you can. But that's more from a general computing standpoint. As far as Premiere goes I find that quantity beats quality when it comes to RAM, at least to some extent.

The graphics card you get does matter. I have the same one you do and it works fine, but if you want to take full advantage of the Mercury playback engine you need a compatible device. You'll have to test and read about the specific advantages before you know if that actually matter for the work you're doing and how much of an improvement you can fit into your budget.
 
I have the same CPU. I added 3x8Gb of RAM for $179. I have a total of 27GB (3x1Gb in the other channels.)

Looking at a performance database (PPBM5), machines with 12GB to 16GB seem to do well in teh benchmarks. You could add 3x4GB for around $90 if you wanted.

CUDA cores are on Nvidia cards ONLY. On most cards, you will need to do a small software hack to enable the cores (on non-Adobe certified cards.) I have a very cheap GT 430 with 96 CUDA cores. Enabling the cores for Mercury GPU Hardware Acceleration brought my benchmark times down by 3 orders of magnitude for some functions. In CS6 even more functions are Mercury ASccelerated, so even more important.

This site has all the details on CUDA cores and relative speeds. It also links back to the PPBM5 database web site.

http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm


Read it a few times to think through all of the details. Notice that the export on a cheaper card might be 11 seconds, and on a high end card 7 (for the test projects.) So be smart in finding a cost/benefit balance.

I plan on buying a GTX 460 or 560 card for around $160 after rebate.

Note that CS6 can also make use of Open CL acceleration for thw fisrt time. I don't know how effecient/fast it is compared to CUDA.

Good luck! Let us know what you decide, and the results.
Michael
 
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