[OFF] MBP RAM–Get 3GB???

[Ben Holmes]

Mine is on the way with 2Gb – hard to see any justification for 3Gb – especially as 5.1 does not play nice with more than 2Gb when used with certain external devices.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.

“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ben Holmes] “Mine is on the way with 2Gb – hard to see any justification for 3Gb – especially as 5.1 does not play nice with more than 2Gb when used with certain external devices.”

Haven’t heard that one. We’re running 4GB RAM minimum in all our dsektops with 5.1. ATTO Fibre cards are the last of the items I’ve heard with 2GB limits and that’s only for desktops.

As for the laptop, sure 3GB is great because FCP itself can use 2GB RAM. The OS I believe uses over 250MB to run to anything over 2GB is good because that allows FCP to use as much RAM as it can while still allowing plenty of overhead for the OS.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Ben Holmes]

[walter biscardi] “ATTO Fibre cards are the last of the items I’ve heard with 2GB limits and that’s only for desktops.”

ok – good to know – thought it was a wider issue still.

Still not sure I expect to see enough of a performance gain most of the time to shell out for a 2gb stick – pricey… But point taken. At the end of the day, it’s a laptop system, so if I need that much power, I’ll fire up something a little more quad-dy…

😉

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.

“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com

[Ben Holmes]

Really OT, but I ordered mine with a Glossy screen! Let you know how it goes…

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live OB operations. FCP systems just used on Sky Sports coverage of the Ryder Cup – live from the K Club.

“The Supercar Run” now available for international distribution from http://www.electricsky.com

[Robert Broussard]

[walter biscardi] “As for the laptop, sure 3GB is great because FCP itself can use 2GB RAM.”

Okay, sounds like the MBP with 3GBs RAM is worth the premium.

Thanks,

Robert

[Bill Lee]

MacBook Pro: For maximum performance, upgrade memory in matched pairs
“if both slots are loaded with an equal amount of RAM (such as two 512MB DIMMs of the same type), you can take advantage of the system’s dual-channel memory architecture for an additional performance boost.”

DO MATCHING MEMORY PAIRS MAKE IT GO FASTER?
“We tested the MacBook Pro with both matching pairs of 1GB SDRAM and non-matching pairs (one 1GB and one 256MB module). None of the GPU test results were affected but the matching pairs did provide a small gain in CPU intensive tests (2.5% in iMovie, 3.5% in Photoshop CS).”

So, there you have it – although Barefeats didn’t test FCP, they found a small increase in speed with matched memory modules. This means that to take advantage of this memory configuration, you’d have to buy 2 x 2GB modules and waste the 1GB that is unusable due to memory-mapped device (and other) space. The question is: Is that worth the money, and that depends on how much you need those extra few percentage points of speed. If it isn’t then would 3GB give you more actual performance increase compared to 2 x 1GB matched pairs due to less paging in and out of RAM?

I run a 2GB PowerBook G4 with MenuMeters so that I can see when I’m running out of RAM: once it does it will start paging to disk, and performance will suffer severely from this point. So far, I have found very few occasions that 3GB would have been worthwhile over 2GB, considering that the performance will decline as you run more apps simultaneously (as each of them is given CPU time), so that you would perhaps be better off by running fewer simultaneous applications with matched RAM on a MacBook Pro. Turning off all unwanted software features may also give you a couple of percent more performance, but you have to ask yourself – should I be doing this on a portable computer if performance is so critical? Do I need a Mac Pro instead?

Bill Lee

[Nadeem Khan]

Ben, I am also debating glossy v not…any thoughts? as I’ve never seen a glossy pro monitor and that the glossy screens are so reflective, i’m interested in what you think. must say that the glossy ones look sooo slick tho’…