16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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rickdorr
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16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by rickdorr » Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:44 pm

Just installed 16gig of ram on my macbook pro (Lifetime RAM from sweetwater), currently have a 128g available on a 500g hard drive. But I still go up to 50% cpu in ableton when I use Omnisphere, Razor, Maschine and Izotope Ozone. Same thing happened with 4gigs of ram. Maybe this is a question for apple forum but just wondering if there are some Ableton configurations I'm missing? I used geekbench and my performance increased significantly however I'm not seeing a difference in Ableton?

H20nly
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by H20nly » Wed Oct 03, 2012 7:10 pm

RAM does not equal CPU.

RAM handles active storage. CPU handles active calculations. RAM can help reduce the burden on CPU but that benefit doesn't jump out at you beyond a certain point and that point would be much lower.

also if it's a 32 bit application (which Live is unless you have the 64 bit beta installed) then adding more RAM will benefit multitasking (in your OS) and your VSTs but not really do as much for Live... besides free it from sharing just 4GB of RAM with all your plugins. that gets us back to my first sentence: RAM does not equal CPU.

eddiex
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by eddiex » Wed Oct 03, 2012 8:58 pm

dude razor and maschine blow it up on CPU for me too. especially razor (reaktor), KILLS CPU!!! I've started rendering down to audio, anything I can. I usually have a track for playing maschine live, but just one track. and never in combo with razor or reaktor. also on razor, I'm not sure if you know this but you can switch the 3 D spectrum analyzer to 2D. apparently that helps with CPU usage too
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login
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by login » Wed Oct 03, 2012 9:34 pm

yep, that's is pretty much expected, normally increasing ram has very marginal effect on CPU use.

Vios
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by Vios » Wed Oct 03, 2012 10:58 pm

Freeze tracks. Sometimes it's a matter of inserting an audio track and then routing your audio to the audio tracks to do half of your processing and your sidechain compression (as Live won't let you freeze tracks with sidechain compression). Several times I've taken a instrument and took half of the effects and moved them to a new audio rack and did the rest of the processing (including sidechained effects) there. Not pretty, but necessary when working with cpu intensive effects and instruments.

rickdorr
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by rickdorr » Thu Oct 04, 2012 5:27 am

I wish I posted this question before purchasing the RAM! I thought more RAM = less CPU usage. What benefits will I see in Ableton now that I have a RAM upgrade? I like using Razor, Omnisphere and Maschine in the same session. I'm going to tryout the CPU workarounds, thanks for the tips!

convex
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by convex » Thu Oct 04, 2012 6:20 am

Common mistake, but I'd say move on with the knowledge that you won't be running into any problems due to lack of RAM. The gains are going to be more subtle, but you won't be sorry that you have it, particularly if you want to run more than one application at a time.

Rewiring another application to Ableton should be more stable. It's good if you like to use multisampled instruments. There are other examples of how it will improve your performance. It's not the sexiest upgrade, but you've improved the stability of your system in the long-term even if you aren't maxing it out now.

H20nly
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by H20nly » Thu Oct 04, 2012 3:59 pm

convex wrote:Common mistake, but I'd say move on with the knowledge that you won't be running into any problems due to lack of RAM. The gains are going to be more subtle, but you won't be sorry that you have it, particularly if you want to run more than one application at a time.

Rewiring another application to Ableton should be more stable. It's good if you like to use multisampled instruments. There are other examples of how it will improve your performance. It's not the sexiest upgrade, but you've improved the stability of your system in the long-term even if you aren't maxing it out now.
this. exactly.

you didn't do a bad thing. there are gains. if anything... you have given your computer so much RAM that Live can use it's maximum amount without having to share any of it. that in and of itself makes the purchase/upgrade a good one.

tintala
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by tintala » Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:03 pm

You'll need the 64 bit beta Live and not 32 bit to access 8gb of ram.. this might help load instruments and plugins faster without cpu degradation. As 16gb is sorta useless with a 32 bit program. Also you might think about getting a dedicated ssd hd just for memory cache.

rickdorr
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by rickdorr » Fri Oct 05, 2012 4:47 am

Downloading the 64bit beta copy now. I also have a 2 terabyte glyph drive coming in the mail which I plan to data swap to and replace my internal hard drive with a terabyte hard drive.

alex808
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Re: 16gig of Ram and the same CPU problems?

Post by alex808 » Sun Oct 07, 2012 3:01 am

i have a i7 2,2 on my mbp and a i7 2600k @4.2gb in my desktop(both 8gb ram),working on mbp always cause a lot of cpu usage for me, but i'm courious to try final 64bit version to verify less cpu usage and full support for all plugin in my mbp.

these plugn (all in the same project) kill your mbp cpu,freeze the tracks or update your daw or...waiting for 64bit version

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