I just added an extra 4GB RAM and my computer is slower....8GB!

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Paunch

Well-known member
Really, I thought RAM was supposed to speed up the process, my motherboard supports up to 32 GB RAM and i upgraded to 8GB from 4GB....what is going on?!
 
What kind of operating system are you running? 32-bit operating systems usually max out at 4 GB of ram. They will accept more but it's pointless. A 64 Bit OS is better for larger amounts of ram.
 
of course, i have 7 ultimate, it might be a dual channel/tri channel issue and the configuration might be off, i have 8 slots and am using 4x1gb and 2x2gb RAM sticks....playback is better but rendering seems to have taken a serious drop in performance. My serverboard supports up to 32gb as well.

all i ask for in life is to have real time playback and lighting fast rendering on hd footage with as many layers as i can stack onto my timeline...is that too much to ask? :)
 
hahaha. good answer. but serioulsy what can a mac do that a pc can't? or is this program just not up to par with FCP?
 
Paunch said:
all i ask for in life is to have real time playback and lighting fast rendering on hd footage with as many layers as i can stack onto my timeline...is that too much to ask? :)
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Well, CS4 is not a 64-bit program. Even though it will use the 64 bit architecture to increase rendering time, it still doesn't use more than 4GB of RAM so adding more is useless. If you want fast playback, a faster graphics card would help you more than more RAM, if you want faster rendering, get a better CPU.

I'm assuming you're talking about AVCHD here and not any other HD format. In which case fast rendering and RT playback isn't going to happen. Not on Premiere or any other NLE. Not without transcoding into something else.
 
nice, Huy Vu you are the guy with the answers, can i hire you as a consultant?

But yes, AVCHD is what were working with and I thought cs4 would use more ram....guess i'll have to wait until cs5 comes out with the adobe mercury engine.

here's a question, if i put in more than 4GB RAM is that going to do more harm than good while using premiere? and what about adding another processor, i have 1-dual core xeon 3ghz processor and have room for another..
 
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Actually Huy Vu, Adobe has made premier open up instances in the background which each will be able to use 4gb of ram. so it can benefit fro 8gb, but it would slow down the render due to the instances opened up in the background. consequently, a faster cpu would benifit much more than ram.
 
You should see the speed boost with CS5 considering I believe that whole suite will be 64bit. However, I think the additional RAM would mostly benefit After Effects with RAM preview. As Smifis said, Premiere would benefit more from a faster CPU.
 
what a about adding an extra processor? i have a dual core, and can add another if i so please....but will it make a difference?
 
If you mix different kinds of RAM they should be as similar as possible. I recently upgraded my RAM from 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair XMS2 4-4-4-12 @2.1V RAM to 6GB with another 2x2GB Corsair XMS2 4-4-4-12@2.1V. I was lucky they still made the XMS2 with the same timings and voltage, because otherwise I think I would have had to ditch the old RAM and get all new modules.

An extra processor will make a difference in Premiere. We have dual quad-core workstations at work with CS4 and the processor usage is up to 85-90% when rendering. I think you will have to install windows again when you add or change cpus (not sure if this is still the case with Win7)
 
Luis_ said:
I second that....
I hate Premiere more every day as much as I hate PCs more every day...:badputer:
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..yes, very helpful. thank you.


anyway , in response to the original poster adding more ram should not slow your machine down with premiere. it should give slight speed increase at minimum. and big increase at best. yes ...64 bit, and CS5 but thats not a current solution, although it will help when it is. for right now avchd is processor intensive so if your just switching to that your going to notice a slowdown from a processing standpoint, but its not slower from a ram standpoint. so to see if we cant fix this ..one of the things that you should really look at any time you change the amount of physical ram in your machine is to change the system page file to reflect that amount of ram. for optimal performance while editing and other ram intensive tasks you should have your page file set on a fast drive with 3 to 4 times the amount of space that your physical ram is. by default windows only gives your machine less than 1 GB (not sure about win7 although im on it.. i didnt pay attention to default when i just increased to what i wanted it to be )which sucks and will slow your machine down like a stake to the heart. especially if you have MORE physical ram. i know alot about pcs but im not really sure why this is this way. just never wanted to learn because personally i dont really care either. i just want to know how to fix it and the given solution is to give your machine a big ol page file. again 3 to 4 times the size of your physical ram. so if youve got 8 GB of ram your page file should be minimum setting of 24 GB and even better @ 32 GB . (you can set the max setting to the same size. )

ive heard people complain about using 32 Gb of HDD space for the page file like its some sort of inconvenience. ..to that i say ..seriously? when we should all be running terrabyte and larger raid arrays to begin with 32 GB should not be an issue.

..anyway , give it a shot. youd be amazed at how much faster a machine can edit and transcode and open and do all sorts of post related tasks when you get the simple page file setting right. this goes for ANY editor while using a PC on ANY windows OS. hope this helps.
 
hi neil, I will give it a shot. it's the HD thats causing the headache, it was like the added ram didn't even make a difference which is more than frustrating. i've adjusted the pagefile and will report back when i have some more hd footage to play with.
 
yeah, for avchd right now the best things to do are use more or faster processors, or check into a higher end video card that supports hardware avchd decode/encode. but if you flip back to editing a common codec like DV or DVCPRO HD you should see a pretty nice improovement in performance with the added ram and pagefile settings. perhaps transcoding to a different codec would speed workflow. i know alot of people do that for GH1 and similar workflows.
 
i'd love to add another processor, i've already invested like 3200 into my tower, another processor would be 800-1000 so i might see how the work goes this year before investing. my main priority was to have a computer that is built for the long run, instead of buying new every 2 years. i see that nvidia has a pretty solid video card that is specific to CS5's mercury playback engine, that is probably the direction I'm going to go...as of right now im using a ATI saphire 2600xt (pretty sure that's the model) and it has been ok. i'm only at 250gb raid array, and have been editing projects that are entirely on externals. i know this slows things down too, but lack the hard drive space on my raid setup.
 
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