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Is ram really that important?


strip22
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What type of speed are you talking about. You can be talking about how fast your system starts, or how fast your system opens an application. Or, how fast a program compiles or renders something. But for any of that, the processor has more of an effect on it. Ram just helps you multitask more and runs more apps semlessly at once. But 5gb wouldnt be bad anyway :rolleyes:

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I just bought a new mac pro, standard config with 1 gb, and it feels a bit slow... Would it help upgrading it to 5 gb ram? Would more than a total of 5 gb speed it even more? Your thoughts...?

 

Yes, it most certainly will. Although your computer is very, very fast indeed (4 cores), adding more than 1 Gb of ram helps. Whenever an app is launched, information is stored in ram. When it runs out the system switches to the hard drive which is much slower. Adding more ram will improve multitasking especially for this reason.

 

BTW, for the other folks, his hardware is a new Mac Pro (he said so). Pretty damn sweet computer. :worried_anim:

 

5gb is tooooo biiiig! i wish your comuter mac or pc has more slots to occupy that big ram!

 

And yes it can hold up to 16GB of memory.

 

It will help for parallels desktop especially. Then if you have 2gb of ram, you can allocate 1gb to OS X and 1gb to WIN XP.

 

Personally, although it depends on what you wanna do, i'd say go for 2-4 gigs. Only reason to go more is seriously intensive workstation work that's heavy on ram usage like video editing, or 3d rendering...

Edited by Synaesthesia
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Yes, it most certainly will. Although your computer is very, very fast indeed (4 cores), adding more than 1 Gb of ram helps. Whenever an app is launched, information is stored in ram. When it runs out the system switches to the hard drive which is much slower. Adding more ram will improve multitasking especially for this reason.

 

BTW, for the other folks, his hardware is a new Mac Pro (he said so). Pretty damn sweet computer. ;)

And yes it can hold up to 16GB of memory.

 

It will help for parallels desktop especially. Then if you have 2gb of ram, you can allocate 1gb to OS X and 1gb to WIN XP.

 

Personally, although it depends on what you wanna do, i'd say go for 2-4 gigs. Only reason to go more is seriously intensive workstation work that's heavy on ram usage like video editing, or 3d rendering...

 

Thx for the reply, its that the beachball appears sometimes when i play WoW, itunes and using Azureus. Im a bit dissapointed about apple releasing a 8 core mac pro...

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don't be dissapointed, it probably wouldn'tt add too much in the way of performance for you unless you're doing some MAJOR multitasking. 2gb would probably be good, but if you really have a lot running at once, you should go with 4 gb. Adding more ram makes a huge difference.

Edited by rollcage
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WoW, Itunes, Azureus, messenger and Keystrokes is always running. I have noticed that my screensaver lags and i dont like it...

 

There are more reasons for lag then just RAM... eg: CPU usage, harddrive access etc Azureus is a Java program, therefore notoriously slow. Adding couple more gig would probably help, after that you will get into diminishing returns very quickly. Think of it this way, each gig you add will have half the benefit of the one before.

 

P.S. WoW has very limited multi core support, I'm guessing Azureus has none...

Edited by consolation
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bus speed, RAM, processor, hard drive speed - thats the order of things that make a difference. This myth that the CPU is the deciding factor in computer performance is annoying. Looking at the Mac Pro, I would say its tragically 'under-rammed' (my word damnit! hands off) and needs about 4GB.... ish. Its not a scientific thing. Try and keep RAM upgrades even, ie. 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB also.

Edited by Embio
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There's pretty much no such thing as too much memory. Apps will use often whatever memory you have available so they can run faster.

 

I've found that my machine when running MacOS kinda kludges along with 2GB, more then when in Windows when doing about the same things (VMWare, Video Editing, lots of little programs open, etc.) Any rosetta apps you have running tend to eat into your RAM too, and I run Office:mac a lot.

 

So, I threw in a couple more 512MB sticks I had laying around and it's much better.

 

1GB? {censored}, MacOS almost uses half that just to boot. I'd say 2GB minimum these days. I mean, RAM is cheap.

 

I'll upgrade to 4GB at some point soon and be done with it. 4GB is a magic number right now, anything more and you won't see too much improvement in performance; especially because PAE kicks in on 32-bit MacOS. But RAM is never really a waste of money, it's just that the benefit shrinks the more you put in.

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WoW, Itunes, Azureus, messenger and Keystrokes is always running. I have noticed that my screensaver lags and i dont like it...

 

 

No offense, but don't run so damn much. That much will lag many systems and like said above, since WOW is running, it may be a cpu lag and not just ram. WOW can and will take most of the ram, SO if you really need all that running, just go up to 2 gigs. I don't see the need for any more.

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Weird, I just don't see why the need to run so many things at once. But if you want to, *shrug* , then that your preference. I just think over time, the cost of having so much ram to multitask just hurts you over time. BUT, I am different person and I do multitask, but if I run a game I don't so I am NOT judging anybody here. Like errandwolfe said, 3 gigs may be the sweet spot, but if you go 2 you will fine I think.

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WoW, Itunes, Azureus, messenger and Keystrokes is always running. I have noticed that my screensaver lags and i dont like it...

 

Ahhhhhahahahahaha. Ok people, HOLD THE F ON. You're trying to run azureus and play wow AT THE SAME TIME? And I suppose you have 4 very popular apps downloading and seeding in that slow ass hoggy Java app (Azureus). I don't care how many cores you have or how much over 2 gigs of RAM you might add, this will simply never fly. Azureus can be a system killer, (as any bit torrent client can, but azureus is writting in java so it's got that to deal with too) because uploading/seeding/sharing many files or just a few popular ones can kill your networking. There are hundreds or thousands of connections/IPs/other-people coming and going and this tends to slow down the best of systems (computers or routers). My old Linksys wireless router would die routinely if I had too many downloads going or if it was a super popular file (which, on top of the connections, the raw speed could also kill your networking).

 

Take that system killer, and then add WoW. A real time, massively-multiplayer, fairly graphics intensive video game. This also requires fairly dedicated access to the internet. But with 1 or more torrents going, it's not going to get that. There are some routers which are gaming oriented which will give priority to your gaming IPs/ports and sort of put the other traffic (azureus) on the back burner. That MAY help things. But really, if you're a hard core azureus user, that's a call for a new computer as it is. But while that solves traffic routing to your current computer, it's still a lot of network traffic at the router and to the ISP.

 

I'd say try completely closely azureus and see if you still have any problems. I'll bet it can handle everything else just fine. (Not sure what Keystrokes is.) Run Azureus (or a replacement! :( ) only at night and/or only when you're not doing much else (perhaps just web browsing).

 

Also, I'd suggest trying other bittorrent clients. I had azureus on my Win XP machine and couldn't do much else with it running, either. Java apps like that tend to just drap things down (at least in the windows world). I now run uTorrent and can burn a DVD and watch a movie on my TV while trading a couple of things.

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I can run azareus and WoW just fine together. I have never seemed to have the problems with Azareus that everyone else does, don't ask me why. I mean don't get me wrong I am not downloading/seeding more then 4 or 5 torrents at once, and I use SpeedScheduler to make sure Az doesnt eat all my bandwidth. Running it like that though i have never had any problems with lag or anything. I mean granted I have a 10 Mb down 1 Mb up cable connection at home (thank you Bright House networks!), but just memory and system resources wise it runs great. Just for pits and giggles I once tried to see how far I could push the system before I did notice the lag and this is what it took:

 

In Mac OS:

Coding a movie in VisualHub

Opening several flash heavy pages in firefox

Listening to iTunes

Running Azureus (or however you spell the damn thing)

Playing WoW

 

While at the same time in Parallels Windows XP:

Running firefox

Running AOL

Running Yahoo Messenger (watching a webcam)

 

Now that is only on a P4 dual core 2.66, and the key just seemed to be breaking the 2gb memory barrier. At 2 Gb there was a definite lage taking out the Visual Hub component. Once I bumped it to three it ran NICE. I thought about going to 4 Gb just to see what would happen but it became way cost prohibitive at that point. My compnay finances my little experiments, but even they will only go so far.

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