How much performance difference 1 gig ram vs 4 gig ram?

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James

Just scored a computer with a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Dragon 2 V1.0 mobo, which
holds up to 4 gigs of DDR 400 ram. Primarily play to use it for video
capture/DVD rendering. How much of a performance difference am I going to
see with say 1 gig ram vs the full 4 gigs? I imagine where the main point
of concern would be in rendering.

Any thoughts/opinions on this mobo?

Thanks.
 
James said:
Just scored a computer with a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Dragon 2 V1.0 mobo,
which holds up to 4 gigs of DDR 400 ram. Primarily play to use it
for video capture/DVD rendering. How much of a performance
difference am I going to see with say 1 gig ram vs the full 4
gigs? I imagine where the main point of concern would be in
rendering.
Click to expand...

That's correct, it just depends on the applications. Have you tried
looking in Windows Task Manager to see how much memory your
applications use? You can also run System Monitor. If you use System
Monitor, notice that your saved MSC file will work with a new
Windows installation only if the Computer Name is the same.

If I wanted to know about specific applications memory requirements,
I would go to discussion groups dedicated to those applications and
ask there. I think there are some active DVD groups.

Good luck.
 
James said:
Just scored a computer with a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Dragon 2 V1.0 mobo,
which holds up to 4 gigs of DDR 400 ram. Primarily play to use it for
video capture/DVD rendering. How much of a performance difference am
I going to see with say 1 gig ram vs the full 4 gigs?
Click to expand...

None. As long as you don't get into swapping to disc, and you won't just for
capturing and rendering, there won't be one iota difference in performance
going to 4 GB from 1 GB. Not to mention going over 2 GB on a WindowXP
machine is a bitch to setup, so save your money to get the fastest CPU you
can for that mobo.
 
James said:
Just scored a computer with a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Dragon 2 V1.0 mobo, which
holds up to 4 gigs of DDR 400 ram. Primarily play to use it for video
capture/DVD rendering. How much of a performance difference am I going to
see with say 1 gig ram vs the full 4 gigs? I imagine where the main point
of concern would be in rendering.

Any thoughts/opinions on this mobo?
Click to expand...


I do not personally work with Windows much so I'm not as familiar with
how memory is allocated and whether you would need to go as high as
4GB; that being said, rendering is generally very processor and RAM
intensive and with the cost of RAM today, unless you are on a tight
budget I would think that going to at least 2GB would make a
substantial difference and looking forward, more might be better still.
I can't quantify that but I wouldn't try to run anything video related
with less than a gig and a half.

Craig

http://www.pro-tape.com
 
James said:
Just scored a computer with a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Dragon 2 V1.0 mobo, which
holds up to 4 gigs of DDR 400 ram. Primarily play to use it for video
capture/DVD rendering. How much of a performance difference am I going to
see with say 1 gig ram vs the full 4 gigs? I imagine where the main point
of concern would be in rendering.

Any thoughts/opinions on this mobo?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Get at least 2 gigs RAM. Must get more than 1 gig, but from 2 to 4
benefits are diminishing. Also make sure your Virtual Memory or Page
File is optimized. Google to do this. This is very important. Then,
if you have the $$, go to 4 gigs. However, better to add another hard
drive and be at 2 gigs, and optimize Virtual Memory. I have 5 hard
drives, 2 gigs RAM and AMD dual core 2800, and I can edit, render, and
multi-task at the same time. I also work in Hi Def, but with Ulead
which creates a Proxy File in SD, so when I'm editing it's working
Standard Def, then renders final in HD. Last night I finished a 54
minute HD project, which I rendered to SD mpg, took 4.5 hours, so I let
it run overnight. Then this am I burned a DVD from the mpg file. The
54 minute DVD only took 9 minutes to burn with menu creation, etc.
Smart Render is a wonderful thing!

Jim McGauhey
Washington State
 
bullshark said:
None. As long as you don't get into swapping to disc, and you won't just for
capturing and rendering, there won't be one iota difference in performance
going to 4 GB from 1 GB.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Seems to be a lack of concensus here. Perhaps the thing to do is set up
a rendering project and time it with different amounts of ram. If I don't
see any difference, I can always eBay some ram.
Not to mention going over 2 GB on a WindowXP
machine is a bitch to setup,
Click to expand...

There's more to it than simply plugging it in? This is all I've done with
any computer I've used to date, though the most ram my current machine holds
is 512.
 
James said:
Hmm. Seems to be a lack of concensus here. Perhaps the thing to do is
set up a rendering project and time it with different amounts of ram.
If I don't see any difference, I can always eBay some ram.
Click to expand...

No need to time anything, just open the task manager before pressing the
render button and watch ram useage. I just rendered a project to mpeg2, ram
use never went above 410 MB on my 2 GB equipped machine. More ram is usefull
if your editing software can do dynamic ram previewing or if, like me, you
make music using large samples libraries, but it won't speed your rendering
time by one second.
There's more to it than simply plugging it in?
Click to expand...

if you go above 2 GB, like installing 4 GB, yes; Window will divide that 4
GB into two 2 GB space, with 2 GB for the kernel and 2 GB for application
which is of very limited benefit; if you want it otherwise, that's where it
gets complicated.
 
bullshark said:
No need to time anything, just open the task manager before pressing the
render button and watch ram useage. I just rendered a project to mpeg2, ram
use never went above 410 MB on my 2 GB equipped machine. More ram is usefull
if your editing software can do dynamic ram previewing or if, like me, you
make music using large samples libraries, but it won't speed your rendering
time by one second.




if you go above 2 GB, like installing 4 GB, yes; Window will divide that 4
GB into two 2 GB space, with 2 GB for the kernel and 2 GB for application
which is of very limited benefit; if you want it otherwise, that's where it
gets complicated.
Click to expand...

Not counting the 'tricks', processes are always divided up in (up to) 2GB
kernel and 2GB program virtual memory space. That's the per process memory
model.

Physical memory is then allocated to the various processes based on what
they need out of the 'up to' 2gb they could use.

So it is a misimpression that 4GB of physical memory gets divided up into 2
GB for the kernel and 2 GB for application, unless you have only one
process (a rare thing).
 
All other things being equal, not much.

BUT - it can depend greatly on how you configure the 1GB vs the 4GB. e.g.,
a single 1GB stick may give worse performance than 2 x 512MB or 4 x 256MB
sticks. Check the mobo technical specs and read up on DDR configurations.

FWIW, I have never needed more than the 1GB I have in my machines. That's a
lot of RAM.

I remember being amazed at having 8MB of RAM on a 486DX120 running Windows
3.1. Even had Adobe Premiere 1.0 and a video capture card (a behemoth of an
ISA card with another half-size card attached).

Ah yes...those were the days. Hard drives that would decide to thermally
calibrate when pumping video out to tape. Having a whopping 100MB hard
drive to store your videos on....

Of course, the Sinclair ZX80/1 top the lot with a magnificent 1KB of RAM
which includes the display memory!

John.
 
John Miller said:
All other things being equal, not much.

BUT - it can depend greatly on how you configure the 1GB vs the 4GB.
e.g., a single 1GB stick may give worse performance than 2 x 512MB or 4 x
256MB sticks. Check the mobo technical specs and read up on DDR
configurations.

FWIW, I have never needed more than the 1GB I have in my machines. That's
a lot of RAM.

I remember being amazed at having 8MB of RAM on a 486DX120 running Windows
3.1. Even had Adobe Premiere 1.0 and a video capture card (a behemoth of
an ISA card with another half-size card attached).

Ah yes...those were the days. Hard drives that would decide to thermally
calibrate when pumping video out to tape. Having a whopping 100MB hard
drive to store your videos on....

Of course, the Sinclair ZX80/1 top the lot with a magnificent 1KB of RAM
which includes the display memory!

John.
Click to expand...
Ah the Sinclair ZX80. You want one?? I think I still have it somewhere :-()

My favorite was the Cosmac Elph (RCA 1802 chip)
It came as a board and parts. It had 256 bytes on the motherboard,
but I bought the 2K board later, but I don't think I ever populated it past
1K.

David
 
David McCall said:
Ah the Sinclair ZX80. You want one?? I think I still have it somewhere
:-()

My favorite was the Cosmac Elph (RCA 1802 chip)
It came as a board and parts. It had 256 bytes on the motherboard,
but I bought the 2K board later, but I don't think I ever populated it
past 1K.

David
Click to expand...
Mine's still around somewhere.

At school, we had a computer with ferrite core store for memory. We also
had a TTY link to the local polytechnic via a real modem (complete with
rubber cups for the telephone handset) - even a pink punched tape reader.
We were very jealous of a nearby school that had a VDU! Oh, we had a
Commodore PET, as well. I remember being told PEEK makes the aliens move up
and down, POKE moves them left and right. Hmm.

I recall discussing with a friend about how great it would be to have
graphics with the same resolution as TV. We estimated it would cost about
GBP3,000 just to hold one frame's worth. It will never happen, we said....

I wonder what we'll be using in another 25 years or so?
 
David said:
Ah the Sinclair ZX80. You want one?? I think I still have it somewhere :-()
Click to expand...

I've got one too, plus the 16K expansion module.

And it's still as useful today as it was back then, as a cute paper weight.
 
Just scored a computer with a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Dragon 2 V1.0 mobo, which
holds up to 4 gigs of DDR 400 ram. Primarily play to use it for video
capture/DVD rendering. How much of a performance difference am I going to
see with say 1 gig ram vs the full 4 gigs? I imagine where the main point
of concern would be in rendering.
Click to expand...

I thought I would upgrade from 1 gb to 2, but the more I read, the
less enthusiastic I get. You might boost benchmark scores, but for
everyday workhorsing on a 32-bit system, going over 1 gb seems to
invite problems. These I believe you can get around with ECC ram, but
it's more expensive and not as fast.

I'm doing ok with 1 gb and plan to stay there until I go beyond win2k,
which won't be soon.

Charlie
 
David Maynard wrote:
I've got one too, plus the 16K expansion module.

And it's still as useful today as it was back then, as a cute paper weight.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, You think that's a "cute" paper weight? Well I still have a
fully configured TI99-4A. So I have a combination paper weight *and*
door stop. It was *always* the more versatile machine. :-)
 
I'm doing ok with 1 gb and plan to stay there until I go beyond win2k,
which won't be soon.
Click to expand...

You bring up a point, which is I didn't clarify I'll be using XP Mediacenter
when this other computer arrives. Don't know if it makes a difference.
 
H. Seldon said:
David Maynard wrote:


Oh yeah, You think that's a "cute" paper weight? Well I still have a
fully configured TI99-4A. So I have a combination paper weight *and*
door stop. It was *always* the more versatile machine. :-)
Click to expand...

Hehe

Did you also get the Milton Bradley speech synthesis/recognition add on?

My 'useful' computer was the Atari 800.
 
David said:
Hehe

Did you also get the Milton Bradley speech synthesis/recognition add on?

My 'useful' computer was the Atari 800.
Click to expand...

Yes indeed. The speech unit was quite impressive for its time.

I didn't have either useful computer. Texas Instruments locked the
system up so tight it was virtually useless. great potential, lousy
implementation.
 
H. Seldon said:
Yes indeed. The speech unit was quite impressive for its time.

I didn't have either useful computer. Texas Instruments locked the
system up so tight it was virtually useless. great potential, lousy
implementation.
Click to expand...

I agree.

It was an interesting time because microprocessors were cheap enough to
make some form of 'home computer' feasible but folks were still trying to
answer the question of what the heck could you use one for? As well as the
question of how to make the 'mystery box' usable by the average Jack and Jill.
 
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