Mac Pro 2009 RAM

[Sascha Haber]

Resolve is a 32 Bit App. and will never use more than 3 Gig . For Audio caching a SSD will do just fine.

A slice of color…

DaVinci 8.0.1 OSX 10.7
MacPro 5.1 2×2,4 24GB
RAID0 8TB eSata 6TB
GTX 470 / GT 120
Extreme 3D+ WAVE

http://www.saschahaber.com

[Jonathon Lee]

Hey Sascha,

I do know about the 32-bit adress space limit. Some apps can take advantage the PAE (physical address extension) support on OS X intel machines. I was never quite sure how Resolve did or did not take advantage of this. Which makes me wonder about the high RAM recommendations by BMD for resolve.

In any case I am curious if anyone had specific experience using 6x 8gb DIMM’s in a Mac Pro 2009 or 2010. Specifically what happens when this RAM configuration is installed and one boots into the 32-bit kernel under 10.6.8. I had read a technical post indicating that only 32gb of system memory is recognized under the 32-bit kernel. So will the system just ignore anything above 32gb or will it completely ignore the DIMM’s in the 3rd slot of each processor RAM bank?

Eventually I will be running everything in 64-bit kernel so at least there will not be an OS level constraint. Basically I’m wondering if there will be performance hits or if the thing just won’t boot, or if all will be good in Valhalla and unicorns and cotton candy clouds will jump out of the heat vents of my Mac!

On the Pro Tools HD 10 issue. I get what you are saying about the SSD, but what I’m talking about is very different. Avid/Digidesign have always had storage “addressing issues”. For one, Pro Tools used to be VERY picky about what type of storage it would allow you to read and write too. For the most part, on a non-Unity Pro Tools system writing or reading to NAS was not allowed. Also on the Mac writing to USB was not allowed. On the PC direct writing to FW drives was not supported (although you could try).

WIth V10 Avid implemented an entirely new disk caching scheme that utilizes the PAE on a Mac and the equivalent on WIn7. What it does is it allows the user to allocate any amount of available RAM to pre-cache audio data so that ANY storage, even slow USB1 or network attached storage can now be used as record and play volumes. A huge deal for Pro Tools users — this means that no longer are fast shared storage systems always necessary. A facility using v10 can simply use any decent server that has ethernet. Pro Tools, like any audio app really, needs to write in very small and high density blocks. This would often bring the mightiest FC-SAN’s to their knees, the ones with multiple PT systems reading and writing.

I know most facilites would not be dumb enough to use the same system for DI and audio! So at the office we are not dumb and don’t have them on the same system. But at home, I am really, really dumb and I have my main system with Smoke, Resolve, Maya, FCP, MC, CS 5.5, etc, etc…. with expansion chassis and FC RAID. I was hoping to install 6x 8gb DIMM’s so I could take advantage of the new PT10 RAM caching (which must be system RAM not SSD unfortunately). Actually I found Crucial and Kingston 6x 8gb for about $500!

Apologies for giving T.M.I. just wanted to clarify. Maybe someone else can use this info. I always do appreciate your input here and on the Scratch list. You have solved problems for me several times in the past few years! I for sure owe you a few beers.

– Jonathon