PT RAM Usage 389MB - Excessive?

[j20056]

If I check in Windows Task Manager after I load PTLE 7.0, with no sessions loaded, I find that PTLE uses 389MB of RAM on my machine. Is this normal?

[spkguitar]

From the compatibility pages of every version of Pro Tools 6.x:

384 MB Minimum Required

So yes, that is normal.

The momory requirement for PT7 has been raised to 512;

512 MB minimum required**, more recommended

[bb_aus]

sp thats min for the entire system not just PT remember windows uses about 150MB straight off

i just load PT to chack and it was using 163MB of course that goes up once a session is loaded

[j20056]

Wow, only 163MB. I wonder why mine is 389MB. What buffers size and system level do you use?

[j20056]

I figured out why. It must be the DAE playback buffer setting. I had it set at 8, the highest level. If I use level 2, my RAM usage of PT, with no session loaded, drops to 245MB, and 200MB if I go to level 0.
Now, has anyone any experience at what the difference between these settings are, as a user?

[AlexLakis]

389 is normally right around where I'm at nominally in Pro Tools at any buffer size.

[j20056]

I added 1GB of RAM, for a total of 2GB, and things are much better now. My problem was that I use very memory intensive plugins such as BFD and SampleTank2. BFD is a very high quality drum plugin, but the samples are excessively large. A cymbal decay sample is like 160MB alone... I have a simple session with one instance of BFD, SampleTank2 and Guitar Rig, and the memory usage of ProTools jumps to 1.1GB. No wonder I had pathetic performance with 1GB of RAM. Things are excellent now, and I can even run at 64 samples and level 8 DAE buffers. Given that the extra GB cost like $100, it's *really* worth it.