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Old 11-11-2001, 10:23 AM
Mark_Knecht Mark_Knecht is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Posts: 2,500
Default Re: 512 DDR better than 256?

Mr. Kong,
(May I call you King?)

It might help, but I don't think it will help a lot, unless you are using some aftermarket RTAS plug-ins that are truly memory hogs.

I've done measurements on my system, which is pretty much a baby sister to yours:

1.2G Athlon
256 MB SDRAM
Asus A7V133

I'm using an aftermarket cache memory manager on my system, as I've said in other posts. One nice thing about this software is it lets me see how memory is beign used at any given time. (I CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT THIS TOOL WORKS CORRECTLY, OR THAT THE NUMBERS HERE ARE EVEN REAL.)

When I boot my system, get it into the state where I normally use Pro Tools, the software tells me I have 162MB free. My system runs lots of things ALL the time, so I have 10 items in my sys tray when I check with ALT-CTL-DEL. I then launch Pro Tools, and don't open a session, and free memory drops to 118MB. No need for more memory at this point.

If I run the 'Be Here' demo, memory drops to 99MB. Still no need.

If I run the dave_c test, then with 24 tracks recording and 5 plug-ins per track, memory drops to about 47MB. I recorded this morning for 3 minutes just to look and it didn't change the amount of free memory.

Now, I probably could use up memory if I loaded every different plug-in I could get me hands on. I'm sure that each memory image of a plug in is somehow duplicated, and that the dave_c test doesn't hit memory as hard as loading 120 completely different plug-ins, but my point is that it seems quite hard to get beyond 256MB with just Pro Tools.

So my input right now would be spend the $30 on a good bottle of wine. If you're buying a new system, go ahead because the incremental cost isn't large.

Mark
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