Is it worth increasing RAM?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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The Northern Contingent
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Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by The Northern Contingent » Sun Nov 29, 2009 10:59 pm

Apologies if this has come up before - I tried searching 'RAM' in the forum search engine and got millions of people's computer configuration descriptions!

I run a 2.5Ghz Macbook Pro with 2Gb of RAM already installed. Ableton is pretty stable, but when projects get bigger, this obviously takes its toll on CPU. Would increasing my RAM to 4Gb help ease this in any way? Or should I just start freezing/converting to audio etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice on this.

IP
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by IP » Sun Nov 29, 2009 11:05 pm

imo you should add more ram and load the samples over there..

naujpablo
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by naujpablo » Sun Nov 29, 2009 11:07 pm

Yes, yes, some times things will run faster if you have more RAM, because you'll be running stuff from your RAM and not from the HD which is obviously slower. Besides, RAM is very cheap today, just search a brand that won't have any problems with your mac and buy it on newegg.

evernaut
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by evernaut » Mon Nov 30, 2009 12:45 am

Of course it is. You're always gonna get better performance with more RAM...question is, can you justify the expense? If you can afford it, cool - RAM that baby as far as it'll go. If not, there's ways around your problems - like freezing/flattening, using return tracks for FX etc etc.

hurlingdervish
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by hurlingdervish » Mon Nov 30, 2009 1:48 am

RAM upgrades are WAY too cheap not to buy

ThrowAway
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by ThrowAway » Mon Nov 30, 2009 2:16 am

Simply put yes. you will notice a huge difference upgrading your ram to the max.

LOFA
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by LOFA » Mon Nov 30, 2009 4:55 am

Just bought a recent mac mini and threw 4 gigs of 3rd party RAM in there. An installation I made that was making my core 2 duo macbook (2 gigs of RAM, but similar spec's otherwise) choke is running with very smoothly on this other, little computer.

I highly recommend maxing out ram.

The Northern Contingent
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by The Northern Contingent » Mon Nov 30, 2009 7:49 am

Thanks everyone - I wasn't too sure as a friend of mine said increasing RAM doesn't always improve performance on every application - it depends on what type of program it is. An investment for the new year maybe...

Nicknackerski
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by Nicknackerski » Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:37 am

Every calculation a program carries out has to stored somewhere, i.e you type in 2+2 the data is allocated to an area of RAM to be accessed when called upon. (Hence Random Access Memory)
The result is stored in RAM also (2+2=4)
therefore the more RAM you have the more things you can store/call upon at once (this translates to Having shit loads of tracks running (i.e loads of calculations) at once in Ableton.

The Faster your processor the faster all these calculations can be carried out.
(Obviously there is more to it than this but this will give you an idea)

I think virtually every Audio program benefits from more Ram.

photonal
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Re: Is it worth increasing RAM?

Post by photonal » Mon Nov 30, 2009 9:14 am

With more RAM you'll reduce Paging which could would otherwise lead to audio breakup. Which could happen when you're using large sample banks in a project and they don't all fit into your RAM; so the computer ends up paging between RAM and the HD to transfer the sample files.

This benefits your whole computer system not just the Audio software.

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