how much RAM is too much?

[Paul Escandon]

I have 8 gigs of ram on my Mac Pro and I would highly recommend it – especially if you have multiple programs open from time to time like Adobe After Effects with Final Cut Pro. Your system will run so much faster for if After Effects is using it’s max amount of ram… you still have 4.5 gigs of ram that other apps can use.

If you’re comparing 4 gigs of ram vs 8 gigs of ram with only Final Cut open and doing HDV – then I doubt you’d see much improvement… I wouldn’t call 8 overkill though.

* * *
Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University

[Dom Silverio]

FCP cannot address more than 2.5 GB of RAM as most 32 bit OS X apps. Motion is the exception as 64 bit environment was in mind when it was created.

The benefit of more RAM is best evident when you have multiple apps open. 4GB is a good sweet spot. I would not go over 8GB unless you do crazy amount of heavy Motion editing (at that point your CPU and GPU is probably a bigger bottleneck). More than 8GB would make more sense when apps move away from their 32 bit codes.

[Kent Beeson]

Thanks everyone for the replies, I guess 8 gigs of RAM is not a bad thing to have.

KB