Will more RAM help me run more Reverbs / EQ's?

[Ben Logan]

Hi Folks,

I'm considering a RAM purchase. I currently have 256 mb running on a 1.7 ghz system. It's an older Dell computer. Will buying 512 mb of extra RAM help me to run more Reverbs / EQ's, or am I pretty much limited by the relatively slow processor in my machine?

Would I be better off spending the money on another plugin for my UAD-1 DSP card?

Thanks for your opinion.

 

[RezN8]

Maxing out your RAM is always a good idea. It should help you add a few more instances of plug-ins.

 

[e unum pluribus]

me personally i run 256 on a averatec but i m using an amd xp 1600 cp and i m still limited by my processor more then my ram...

btw im pretty sure that until recently dell used intel chips and if its a P4 is probably gonna be WAY too slow to run any more then a few plugins (a intel-R P4 3.0 would run about as fast as a athalon amd xp 1.6)...

to put it simply...

rule of thumb your CPU will limit your plugins and your RAM will limit your tracks

so yeah i personally wouldnt waste my time upgrading my ram in an old dell i would save the money to buy something with a Intel-M or a Intel-D or a Athalon XP

ps if you want to free up some performance on your machine turn every thing except what you need off (antivirus expecially when your not on the internet) go to google and research performance customizations for windows it will tell you what you can and cant turn off.

 

[RezN8]

Before I rebuilt my computer last year, we were getting at least 30+ tracks -- with effects and all -- using a 650 mHz PIII, 712Mb RAM (built in '99). How many tracks and reverbs do you need?

 

[e unum pluribus]

one more trick is if you control-alt-delete with your music recording software running and playing with your plugins then click on the performance tab on your task manager. Then you can tell the status of your cpu and your Ram to see where your performance is bottlenecking

 

[Ben Logan]

Thanks for your help guys.

I thought I had the answer when I read (e unum's) "a good rule of thumb is processor = plugins, RAM = tracks," but then I read that Rez was getting 30 tracks with effects on a PIII machine, but with triple the RAM I've got.

I'm only able to run a few Renaissance EQ's, and about 2 or 3 Elevayta ConvoBoy Reverbs (I know these are resource hungry, but I'm hooked on convo-verbs).

Still a bit confused, but the fog is lifting.

Any more thoughts on RAM vs. Processor speed with respect to their relative abilities to soup-up plugin performance?

Thanks btw for the control/alt/delete trick. Will try that when I get home...

 

[e unum pluribus]

it does matter which plugins your running some are way more taxing on your CPU ...

for instance i run ozone and it EATS my CPU like crazy on some presets but on some ... not so much...

really there are just too many things in the mix to just go by the numbers on your processor and ram... you know? some times some programs just run better on this hardware versus that hardware

it only real way to tell is monitor the cpu/ram usage to see where your bottlenecking like i said earlier

 

[Ben Logan]

Thanks e unum. I'll give it a look.

BTW - thanks for the advice on turning off all background services. I did that earlier, and it helped a ton.

 

[fraserhutch]

It's a combination of both. More RAM definitely helps with plugins - that's where they live and get to put their scratch buffers. If theings get need to get swapped out (which will happen often with 56 MB(, they'll be written to the pagefile on hard disk, which is of coursze several orders of magnitude slower to access than RAM.

But yes, you do need CPU to actually RUN them

I personally would not consider a serious DAW with less than a GB RAM for all the plugins I hear people around here using.

 

[Ben Logan]

It's a combination of both. More RAM definitely helps with plugins - that's where they live and get to put their scratch buffers. If theings get need to get swapped out (which will happen often with 56 MB(, they'll be written to the pagefile on hard disk, which is of coursze several orders of magnitude slower to access than RAM.

But yes, you do need CPU to actually RUN them

I personally would not consider a serious DAW with less than a GB RAM for all the plugins I hear people around here using.

If I open too many plugins, Logic sends me a message saying "Error: Not able to process audio in time." Are you suggesting that CPU is the limiting factor in how many plugins I can open, and RAM determines how glitch-free the ones already opened will run?

Of course, it'd be great if I could just afford a new computer. As a relatively poor educator, perhaps I've chosen too expensive a hobby!

 

[travelin travis]

can you control a missile with that phone there Ben Logan?

 

[Ben Logan]

can you control a missile with that phone there Ben Logan?

The only thing older than my phone is my DAW...

 

[fraserhutch]

If I open too many plugins, Logic sends me a message saying "Error: Not able to process audio in time." Are you suggesting that CPU is the limiting factor in how many plugins I can open, and RAM determines how glitch-free the ones already opened will run?

Of course, it'd be great if I could just afford a new computer. As a relatively poor educator, perhaps I've chosen too expensive a hobby!

Not quite. look at it this way, RAM is where the plugins will live (the same as all programs). CPU determines the efficiency that these get run. If you do not have enough ram to house all the plugins you launch, then they start getting swapped in and out of virtual memory (read hard disk). Also, the audio lookahead buffers are limited to what can be held in ram as well.

The CPU is the executor - it determines the efficiency, speed, whatever you want to call it - that the plugin runs at.

Your error message indicates that the audio engine cannot process the audio fast enough. That may be because there are too many plugins to process in its CPU bandwidth (cycle limitation), or it may be due to IO underruns (because your plugins are getting swapped in and out of virtual memory). With your system it really is a crapshoot as to which that would be, but 1.7GB is nothing to sneeze at. I'd guess that adding ram would help.

My $0.02.



So, when a plugin cannot

 

[Ben Logan]

Not quite. look at it this way, RAM is where the plugins will live (the same as all programs). CPU determines the efficiency that these get run. If you do not have enough ram to house all the plugins you launch, then they start getting swapped in and out of virtual memory (read hard disk). Also, the audio lookahead buffers are limited to what can be held in ram as well.

The CPU is the executor - it determines the efficiency, speed, whatever you want to call it - that the plugin runs at.

Your error message indicates that the audio engine cannot process the audio fast enough. That may be because there are too many plugins to process in its CPU bandwidth (cycle limitation), or it may be due to IO underruns (because your plugins are getting swapped in and out of virtual memory). With your system it really is a crapshoot as to which that would be, but 1.7GB is nothing to sneeze at. I'd guess that adding ram would help.

My $0.02.

Thanks for your well-supported $0.02 fraser. Your "housing" and "executor" analogies are helpful.

 

[e unum pluribus]

Not quite. look at it this way, RAM is where the plugins will live (the same as all programs). CPU determines the efficiency that these get run. If you do not have enough ram to house all the plugins you launch, then they start getting swapped in and out of virtual memory (read hard disk). Also, the audio lookahead buffers are limited to what can be held in ram as well.

The CPU is the executor - it determines the efficiency, speed, whatever you want to call it - that the plugin runs at.

Your error message indicates that the audio engine cannot process the audio fast enough. That may be because there are too many plugins to process in its CPU bandwidth (cycle limitation), or it may be due to IO underruns (because your plugins are getting swapped in and out of virtual memory). With your system it really is a crapshoot as to which that would be, but 1.7GB is nothing to sneeze at. I'd guess that adding ram would help.

My $0.02.



So, when a plugin cannot

ditto

but if his 1.7ghz is coming from a intel-r p4 is gonna be bottlenecking performance at the processor during simple multitracking and realtime plugin based editing...

for instance as i said before i run on my averatec amd xp 1600/256 ram BUT when i record and edit i have everything turned off(i idle after startup at 40-45mb of RAM usage) and when i record/process i dont even come close to maxing out my RAM through plugins,

just to be sure after reading this thread i opened my n-tracks hit record and opened my task manager, then i watched my ram usage as i opened plugins, with my most taxing plugin(ozone 3) running at the most CPU eating preset i could find, my ram only jumped 4 to 5 mb of usage but my CPU maxed out after i opened 4 or 5 instances of the plugin. if you maxout your cpu too much you will evntually lock up or crash

now remember if his processor is a 1.7 intel-r it is not near as powerful as a amd 1600 when editing audio

so yes upgrading to 512 ram wouldnt be a bad temporary fix but dont waste anymore then 50-100 dollars upgrading that dell, it would be cheaper to streamline windows to run more effeciently

 

[Ben Logan]

"Bottlenecking" is a new concept for me, but I think I get the idea based on your guys' explanations. Thanks for running those tests with Ozone, etc., e-unum.

If I read you right, when you suggest that upgrading to 512 (for 50 to 100 bucks) wouldn't be a bad way to go, you mean to "add no more than 512 mb total" (rather than the 738 mb total I was considering), since bottlenecking probably will prevent me from getting any more juice out of RAM beyond 512.

If you would, please correct me if I've misinterpreted.

 

[Ford Van]

If the "more RAM= more plugins" were true, then I little test I ran a while back just wouldn't have made sense!

I have a project that was running at around 85% (average) cpu usage with 512 or RAM installed.

I pulled out one of the 256 chips of RAM, and went back and ran the project again. Guess what? It ran with 85% (average) cpu usage.

This was a project in Sonar, with about 29X 24bit 44.1KHz files running. The plugins were a bunch of different things, RoomVerb2, PSP Lexicon PCM 42, several instances of Sonitus Multiband, several compressors, an amp emulator. 23 plugins in all.

The only difference I noted between 256 and 512 of RAM on a DAW is that the response time of open/closing windows, opening applications, etc...was slower with less RAM, and that could be expected.

I don't think that plugins even use 1mb of RAM each. I can assure you that you will LONG run out of cpu power before plugins start to drain your RAM to the point of them not running.

You need MORE CPU. More RAM might certainly help your work flow, but it really isn't going to gain you any more plugin instances.

A UAD-1 card would be great!

 

[fraserhutch]

If the "more RAM= more plugins" were true, then I little test I ran a while back just wouldn't have made sense!

If you'll carefully read my post, you'd realize I did not say that unequivocably. I did state that not enough ram can cause audio processing to slow down. But as to whether it's the CPU or the RAM is a crapshoot. I still suspect the RAM.

And I *have* personally seen cases where more RAM did increase the number of plugins that could be run.

Agreed with the UAD-1.

 

[fweyd]

yeah me too..

i run a Adobe Audition 1.5 and Waves Diamond Bundle (got a copy from my uncle ) and after like 8 tracks with around 3 plug ins in each.. most of it is L3 and some rennaisance or C4. then i pressed ctrl+alt+delete.. and saw my CPU jumping around 80-95% Usage. then Audition is getting around 300KB Of Memmory. but i still have around 300 Left.. (1GB Memory)

i hate it, when i play it back.. it plays slow, i mean the bar moving through the spectrum, the numbers counting how long the track, the VU Meter.. everything moves too slow, all though the sound is there normal. Is it probably my CPU ?? Or is it using Virtual Memory?

 

[fweyd]

Im using :

Biostar RedFox 6100-M9
Athlon 64 3200+ 939
GEiL 1GB Dual Channel
Excelstor 7200RPM 80GB SATA
and the number one component of all!!!!

Realtek AC97 Soundcard