can live make use of more than 4gb of ram?

[flincmusic]

And does this apply for both mac and pc?
c

[Zoosh]

XP 32 bit has a 4Gb limit, to increase the RAM you need to goto a 64bit windows OS, not sure about macs tho

[Pasha]

Live is a 32 bit application. As such it cannot address more than 4 GB of Ram.
This happens also on a 64 bit OS like Windows Vista 64 or 7 or Snow Leopard.
A 32bit application can address 4GB per process so in a 64 bit environment
you can have Live + other software address 4GB each which won't be possible
in a 32 Bit environment. That's my understanding.

- Best
- Pasha

[Hermanus]

XP 32 bit has a 4Gb limit, to increase the RAM you need to goto a 64bit windows OS, not sure about macs tho

XP32bit is limited to 3Gb

Mac oS is 32bit but it handle "huge" amount of ram

A friend's just bought a desktop with windows 7 + an i5 quadcore @2.66ghz + 6Gb of ram__ it simply rocks

Dunno about xp64, I got mine which handles the 4gb on my laptop, but it can't handle my external audio driver.
Damnit on mac, no need for a driver for this card!

One more thing which leads me to buy a macbook pro [in a year or two lol]

[DirectGumby]

Hello,

In regards to the 3 vs. 4 gigs on a 32bit OS... the answer is a bit more tricky that just 3 or 4 gigs and in fact the answer relies heavily on the hardware memory controller on your system. In short due to legacy issues there are "memory holes" in the use of all 4 gigs of memory. Thus, when you put 4gigs of RAM into your system you may end up with 3 to 4 gigs. usually something closer to 3.8 gigs of memory. The bottom line is that you can not physically address more than 32 bits of memory and that hardware may actually map the 4 gigs above the 32 bit boundry. Hence the common thought that the max is 3gigs. The retailers of hardware just tell you that 3gigs is the max usable and call it good. Just simpler that way.

To the other point on can a 64bit OS allow two 32bit applications to use separate memory locations. The answer here I believe is yes (although I will double check and reply if my assertion is wrong here). The OS will remap the 32 memory to an optimal place in overall system memory. So, if you ran 64 bit Windows 7 with 16gigs of RAM you could have both 4gig sets of apps fully loaded and fully in memory. Keep in mind that even though this may be possible the system still may move the memory in and out of active physical memory based on a number of conditions.

As for the Mac OS 32bit vs. Windows 32bit and the use of the 4 gigs... well, they both have the 32 bit physical limit because itis a hardware issue that software cannot work around.

Hope that helps 'a bit',
Brett

[davepermen]

XP 32 bit has a 4Gb limit, to increase the RAM you need to goto a 64bit windows OS, not sure about macs tho

XP32bit is limited to 3Gb

xp itself isn't. it's limited exactly to 4gb. but hw might take some away from it.



to the op. well, if you f.e. get 5gb of ram, then you can use 4gb for live, and still 1 for the os and everything else.

so going 64bit (f.e. with 6gb ram, a widely proposed option) helps you to max out live to it's extreme, and still have headroom for 'everything else'.

[flincmusic]

Thanks guys, for all your answers to a obviously not so easy question.

If I understand it correctly, then Live - as a 32 bit application - can only make use of more than 3-4 gb ram IF i buy a mac?
What about plugins? Will they - used in live, together with live - be able to make use of more than 3-4 gb ram? I use east/west orchestral libraries f. ex. ?

[davepermen]

Thanks guys, for all your answers to a obviously not so easy question.

If I understand it correctly, then Live - as a 32 bit application - can only make use of more than 3-4 gb ram IF i buy a mac?
What about plugins? Will they - used in live, together with live - be able to make use of more than 3-4 gb ram? I use east/west orchestral libraries f. ex. ?

no. even on a mac, it won't use more than exactly 4gb ram. an app has to be compiled in 64bit, or developed with memory extensions in mind, to allow for more ram. both didn't happen.

no clue about plugins, but does the orchestra need that much ram? disk space, maybe. but ram?

[DirectGumby]

I am not a Mac expert, but I would suspect it has the same (or very similar) limitaions as Windows given they both have the same issue. 32bits is max 4gigs of RAM, both OSes run on Intel hardware that can have the same hardware limitations. Thus, if you are running Mac OS on 64bit with 8gigs of RAM your 32bit application can still only use a max of 4gigs. But, the OS can load two 32bit applications into memory and place both them in RAM at the same time. I would expect very similar results.

Thanks,
Brett

[junqueira]

I have an i7 rig with 12 gb and I can't use more than 3.5 - 3.8 ish without my audio crackling and many crashes

[arachnaut]

It's much worse than that for x86 machines. The virtual address space for each 32-bit process is 2 GB. If you watch Live load large samples you'll see it max out near 2GB. It's very easy to get Live to crash loading samples into Kontakt, for example.

Here's a good summary of the issues from Microsoft:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... s.85).aspx

Note in particular the (arbitrary) built-in limits on the various version of Windows 7 and compare the Server versions.

Want 16 GB? Better not buy Windows 7 Home Basic... Note that the Premium edition has a 16 GB (arbitrary) limit.

Since Apple uses the same CPUs, the non-arbitrary limitations are the same.

For Windows XP there is a kludge called the PAE (Physical Address Extension) switch that you set on start-up, but that gives little relief and may cause problems.