A question..since Live can only use up to 4Gig RAM.....

[mholloway]

...does it make any sense for me to bother getting 8 GIG of RAM when I buy my new iMac soon?

obviously in terms of Live's current situation, no, it doesn't (unless I was running other stuff that I want more RAM for, but Live is the main production tool I use, so that's not really a factor....)

...BUT if it seemed wildly likely that Live 9 would support making use of MORE than 4 gigs of RAM, then it'd be a damn good thing I got that 8 GIG's to begin with....

how likely does that seem, to pose the silly speculative question..?

what would YOU do?

thanks...
-M

[theophilus]

getting the extra 4 gigs of ram is like $25 now. a no-brainer. also, i don't know the mac allocates memory, but on win7, just running idle you could be over a gig in use.

also, not sure how this will work, but live is capable of opening multiple copies on the same computer. i'm curious to see how well this works - i'm guessing it would work OK as long as you don't have a lot of tempo changes in your music. i would think you'd need a virtual midi port or something to get them synced up (could use rewire but then you lose VSTs on the second session, no good). You might not even need them synced up, depending on what you are doing... you could also use the second ableton session as just a virtual instrument host. Even though you couldn't have a single instrument open that is more than ~3G, you could have total instruments open up to the amount of memory you have (and in this workflow, you could even use something cheaper like reaper or energyxt maybe? as the second instrument host). You would lose automation though if you do this; you'd still be able to use midi of course.

Point being... there are ways to use the extra memory if you are creative, and it's cheap. my extra 8G should be arriving tomorrow, but i'm on win7 so can't really give you any feedback on how well it will work for you...

[ark]

I'm not directly familiar with MacOS, but since the 1970s, Unix systems (of which MacOS is one) have used RAM that's not being used for anything else as a cache for the disk. So for any application that wants to read a lot of data from disk--and any sample player falls into that category--more RAM will basically always result in better performance, even if your applications aren't using it directly.

[mholloway]

getting the extra 4 gigs of ram is like $25 now. a no-brainer..

uh, the difference between an iMac with 4GIG RAM and 8GIG RAM is $200, insofar as buying from Apple goes.

I have no interest in taking apart a brand new iMac, if what your suggesting is replacing the RAM on my own...



-M

[theophilus]

i can understand not wanting to open a new mac. pity, as the memory is very cheap on the open market.

not sure if I would do it for $200, doubt you would see that much difference. i would be very surprised if live 9 isn't 64 bit though. do you use a lot of large sample libraries? i mean, you can get a whole core i3/i5 windows laptop for $350-400... with the 4gb in it.

[fishmonkey]

the RAM is dead easy to replace, the instructions come with the iMac, and you can look up illustrated guides online.

unless you have money to burn, buying extra RAM from Apple is nuts.

[mholloway]

ah k, just watched a video online, didn't realize how easy it was to do. obviously then I'll go with the 4gig iMac and upgrade the RAM on my own, rather than pay apple 200 bucks for it...

thanks guys
-M

[Nilus]

Max out your memory as your budget allows. It is a 64bit machine and OS... Live will be along shortly to complement this. Or you could wait and maybe the price of memory will go down, but an 8gb setup on Crucial right now is $50.

[eddiex]

the RAM is dead easy to replace, the instructions come with the iMac, and you can look up illustrated guides online.

unless you have money to burn, buying extra RAM from Apple is nuts.

+1....yeah changing RAM and your hard drive is super easy in a MAC....buy the cheapest and upgrade yourself....changing your hard drive and memory, im pretty sure, doesn't even nullify your warranty.

[mholloway]

+1....yeah changing RAM and your hard drive is super easy in a MAC....buy the cheapest and upgrade yourself....changing your hard drive and memory, im pretty sure, doesn't even nullify your warranty.

well, changing the hard drive is actually way harder than changing the RAM. requires taking out the glass screen, much more unscrewing...basically dismantling the whole unit. Ram is just a slot on the bottom that you open and stick it in. oh, and I'm pretty sure changing the hard drive does nullify the warranty.

-M

[aizo]

+ 1000 for Crucial! I've bought ram from them for both of my machines and their service it unbeatable!

[eddiex]

+1....yeah changing RAM and your hard drive is super easy in a MAC....buy the cheapest and upgrade yourself....changing your hard drive and memory, im pretty sure, doesn't even nullify your warranty.

well, changing the hard drive is actually way harder than changing the RAM. requires taking out the glass screen, much more unscrewing...basically dismantling the whole unit. Ram is just a slot on the bottom that you open and stick it in. oh, and I'm pretty sure changing the hard drive does nullify the warranty.

-M

oohhhhh I-MAC

[eddiex]

+1....yeah changing RAM and your hard drive is super easy in a MAC....buy the cheapest and upgrade yourself....changing your hard drive and memory, im pretty sure, doesn't even nullify your warranty.

well, changing the hard drive is actually way harder than changing the RAM. requires taking out the glass screen, much more unscrewing...basically dismantling the whole unit. Ram is just a slot on the bottom that you open and stick it in. oh, and I'm pretty sure changing the hard drive does nullify the warranty.

-M

delete

[tscoolberth]

Just installed 4 more gigs for $50.00 (new egg store). Not sure I can tell the difference but its an older Mac (G5 2.0 Ghz Duo Core)maybe I'm just allowing Ableton to hog 4 gigs and everything else now has tons of room.

I play rock & metal so I can just flatten tracks along the way ... as a newb it'll probably help me make final decisions and complete songs more decisively.

[shuutobi]

Desktop mem is cheap right now.

16GB ($90) Best in its class...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231315
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820233143

64bit Live would be nice.