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SSD or RAM upgrade?
What will have a bigger impact on performance/workflow going from 64gb to 128gb or going from a Gen4 SSD 7,400mbs to a gen5 14000mbs ssd cache drive?
I Use Prem and AE edit 4k h.265 footage.
replied 1 year, 12 months ago 4 Members · 12 Replies
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12 Replies
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Neither of those options will make much of a difference as your existing specs are more than good enough for Adobe suite even if you work in 8K resolution.
If you want more performance, then look at GPU and CPU. If you end up doing a lot of software rendering the CPU will govern performance. On the GPU side you want to see what specific FX are accelerated via the GPU and final render. Many higher quality output formats (HDR etc.) don’t have hardware accelerated support from the GPU so will be CPU based.
Faster RAM can gain 10-18% but going from 64GB to 128GB will not be noticeable even on very large projects. Next time you run a large Adobe Pr/Ae/Ps project check how much of your RAM is being used, you’ll be surprised how little is used. One of my largest projects and I was at 36GB.
I even experimented with virtual RAM drives setting up a 128GB RAM drive (out of a 256GB total RAM), made no difference at all.
Cheers, Rob.
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Definitely CPU… adobe programs are CPU hoggers
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Yes I understand CPU and GPU are much more important, i just built a new PC and got a new CPU i9 14th and 4070 ti super.
This upgrade was just the final little upgrade.
I have check my ram usage it probably maxes out at 60% usage atm. whats interesting i used to have 128gb of ram i would often hit 60 percent usage of that so i thought i could use more than 64gb
So you think upgrading the cache SSD with gen5 would have more impact than the 128gb?
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actually using after effects i get up 80% usage with 64gb..
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Go for 128 GB RAM regardless, once you’ve got it, you don’t want to go back. And the cost in the bigger picture, is small, in comparison to the gains you get in performance IMHO.
Yesterday, I found this blog from NVidia, and as I run both Adobe and Davinci, the new ADA boards started making sense (I got a RTX 3500 ADA in my laptop). Currently going through making the changes to my system, updating drivers, and installing “plug-ins”.
Might not be what you are looking for, but anything that can improve working speed and processing, helps:
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-decoded-rtx-pc/Atb
Mads
blogs.nvidia.com
AI Decoded: Demystifying AI and the Hardware, Software and Tools That Power It
RTX AI PCs and workstations deliver exclusive AI capabilities and peak performance for gamers, creators, developers and everyday PC users.
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Interesting, I would have said go for the SSD if I had to choose. With a better / faster SSD, you can increase your paging file, and also use it for fast caching, which while it doesn’t do the same job as RAM, it does reduce your systems dependency on RAM. A better RAM with faster combined i/o speeds will also help computations complete much faster, which will mean that the programs using RAM for any kind of file manipulation will use the RAM for a shorter time, thereby freeing up some capacity.
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Hey Tom,
If one is going to the pagefile for memory operations then that usually means they’re running out of physical RAM address space. Going to a pagefile will be 100X slower than RAM even on the fastest SSD. Pagefile access is to be avoided at all costs.
To Quote:
“In storage, a pagefile is a reserved portion of a storage drive that is used <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>as an extension of random access memory for data in RAM that hasn’t been used recently”
I’ve never seen Adobe be intelligent about RAM usage regardless of how much I allow it to use. In my testing 64GB of faster RAM will out perform 128GB of slower RAM. Normally, as RAM capacity increases it’s access frequency specification are slower (increase load on the memory controller forces frequency drop and increased timings). In fact, if you can get away with 32GB of faster RAM, that would provide better overall performance so long as you don’t swap to pagefile for “data as RAM”.
To summary, if one uses smaller projects and/or never exceeds 32GB, then get faster 32GB RAM (can gain as much as 18% in render performance). Otherwise get the lowest capacity RAM and highest frequency and best timings you can to stay “just above” the project RAM requirements.
Cheers, Rob.
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I agree Rob, pagefile definitely isn’t a replacement, I was more saying that if you’re in that situation that you’ve maxed your RAM, you’ve still got something which is better than nothing… So if you only expect to max out your RAM on a heavy project a couple of times in a year, then it might not be worth getting more RAM for the few times you’ll need it… very much dependant on what you’re doing though – I just know I’ve found that faster I/O file speeds on a better SSD have a huge impact on RAM dependency in the first place, not to mention generally having a cleaner and more efficient system.
Also fully agree on your point about Adobe bad usage of RAM! I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that however much RAM you have, After Effects especially will just hog it out of spite… often wonder what optimisation processes it goes through!
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its interesting some people say you will rarely ever use 128gb ram, but i hit 99% in after effects with 64gb with 4k clips. with motion blur & warp.
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What are you using to read RAM usage? I’ve used those two FX and more and never got to 32GB usage. The biggest memory usage I get is when I start using Mocha and do a lot of tracking.
Not to mention both Blur and Warp are GPU supported/accelerated.
Even HDR doesn’t impact RAM that much.
Do you have some plug-in that might have a memory leak?
Cheers Rob
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