Ableton Forum

I have a summer 2004 dual G5 powermac and it's capable of holding 8GB of ram. Currently, I have 2GB.

Obviously the only performance monitor in ableton is really the "processor"...I understand that RAM is actually what throws the data at the processor....so...is it true that more RAM is unnecessary if you're maxing the processor?

I'm curious because I'm not certain I want to invest in 6 more GB of RAM if it's unnecessary...

Also, what's your bottleneck experience in ableton? Are there external monitors that report hardware perf that would be good to run in parallel?

Thx!

6 gigs of powerbook ram could almost buy you an entry-level macbook which would give you SOOOO much more firepower.

I would go with a really fast external drive for your audio files.. this should help performance, but if you have done that already, then I think you will have to face the fact that your powerbook will not get any faster.

^good point.


one bottleneck is that Live has to be ready to play ANY clip, so it has to keep at least the beginning of EVERY clip in memory.

FX also eat up processing power.

video gets the lowest priority in Live, so if you want smooth GUIs keep your video RAM in check.

I think most users stop at 2Gb of RAM, some still run 512k, I think 1Gb is the norm.

It's a powerMAC, not a powerBOOK. And, not to like completely pwn you, but the maximum the best macbook PRO will hold today is 4GB. (I too, wish this was more, and wouldn't mind a multitouch pad and an update to the casing as well...damn it Cupertino...anyways, diff rant

I had not considered the drive factor...currently I have an internal 7200 rpm drive. What kind of drive do you suggest?

Machinate wrote:6 gigs of powerbook ram could almost buy you an entry-level macbook which would give you SOOOO much more firepower.

I would go with a really fast external drive for your audio files.. this should help performance, but if you have done that already, then I think you will have to face the fact that your powerbook will not get any faster.

That would explain some of my trigger and effect delays...probably RAM related.

Another note:

Let's please keep this thread hardware vs software performance related folks. I'm sure you all have beautiful ways of optimizing your sets, but let's stay on topic.

Tone Deft wrote:^good point.


one bottleneck is that Live has to be ready to play ANY clip, so it has to keep at least the beginning of EVERY clip in memory.

FX also eat up processing power.

video gets the lowest priority in Live, so if you want smooth GUIs keep your video RAM in check.

I think most users stop at 2Gb of RAM, some still run 512k, I think 1Gb is the norm.

DL777 wrote:It's a powerMAC, not a powerBOOK. And, not to like completely pwn you, but the maximum the best macbook PRO will hold today is 4GB.

eh? when have I ever claimed otherwise? You were the one going on about 8 gigs of something, weren't you?

I had not considered the drive factor...currently I have an internal 7200 rpm drive. What kind of drive do you suggest?

an external likewise. But, not to completely pwn you, I would save my money and put it towards a macbook at a later stage.

I'm not talking about LAPTOPS at all. A Powermac G5 is NOT a LAPTOP. It's a desktop machine. There's not even a laptop made that can hold 8GB of RAM.

Machinate wrote:

DL777 wrote:It's a powerMAC, not a powerBOOK. And, not to like completely pwn you, but the maximum the best macbook PRO will hold today is 4GB.

eh? when have I ever claimed otherwise? You were the one going on about 8 gigs of something, weren't you?

I had not considered the drive factor...currently I have an internal 7200 rpm drive. What kind of drive do you suggest?

an external likewise. But, not to completely pwn you, I would save my money and put it towards a macbook at a later stage.

DL777 wrote:I'm not talking about LAPTOPS at all. A Powermac G5 is NOT a LAPTOP. It's a desktop machine. There's not even a laptop made that can hold 8GB of RAM.

Nor do I care, really, since my point, since the beginning, has been that the RAM isnt the problem!!!

I am trying, without upsetting you, to tell you that my recommendation would STILL be to save. for. a. new. computer. Any computer. My studio partner just switched a medium-range G5 for a lowly intelmacMini and saw a HUGE performance increase, even when just running 1gb of ram.