RAM & FCP

[Steve Eisen]

You must install in pairs. You can mix 512MB and 1GB sticks inside the MacPro. RAM is very cheap these days. OWC will buy back your old RAM.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Chris Babbitt]

Maybe I misunderstood, but I read somewhere that for FCP, Apple advised against mixing 512 & 1-gig sticks, even if they were in matched pairs. However, I can’t find this info on the Apple site. Is it no longer an issue or was it ever?

[Steve Eisen]

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304492

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Chris Babbitt]

Exactly!
The way I read this is that I either need to have all 512 modules or all 1 gig modules, but not a combination of both. Right or wrong?

[Steve Eisen]

You can mix 512MB ,1GB, 2GB or 4GB modules.

My Mac Pro has
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 1 512 MB
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 2 512 MB
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 3 1 GB
DIMM Riser A/DIMM 4 1 GB

DIMM Riser B/DIMM 1 1 GB
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 2 1 GB
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 3 EMPTY
DIMM Riser B/DIMM 4 EMPTY

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Which surely then doesn’t follow this advice from that link:
To achieve optimal performance when running Final Cut Studio applications, memory DIMM pairs should be installed evenly on both risers.
Does it make a difference?

[Paulo Jan]

I might be wrong, but I think that the reason Apple advises this is so that the memory can be accessed in Dual Channel mode, which (in theory) doubles the memory bandwidth of the computer. Now, this said, there is some controversy in homebuilt PC forums (and these days Macs are just PCs with fancy cases 🙂 ) about how much performance gain Dual Channel actually buys you; I’ve read quotes that say that it isn’t much more than a 10% speed increase in practice.

Personally, I don’t have any first-hand experience about it, but I’ve always been curious about it, so when we upgrade our MacPros at work I’ll be sure to run some benchmarks.

Paulo.

[Bob Pierce]

The way I interpret it, Apple is saying that you should do it that way for “optimal” performance, specifically with FCP. If you do mix up the ram, I don’t think they’re saying it won’t work – you just might be missing out on a bit of performance. I recently went through this process myself and decided to shelve my 512 sticks and go with a pair of 2gb for a total of 4gb. OWC has great prices, and as someone said, they do offer a trade-in policy.
Good Luck!
Bob

[Mark Maness]

Also… something to keep in mind. You need at least one gig of RAM per processor on your Mac Pro – for optimal performance. So if you have a Mac Pro Quad, you’ll need at least 4 gig (four 1 gig memory bars) of RAM. If you have an OctoCore, you’ll need at least 8 gig of RAM.

Trust me, it sounds like BS but it is true. My system running two gig ran, but did so very slowly as compared to the 8 gig that I am using now. Mine is a little overkill on my Mac Pro Quad but I use alot of apps while working.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey

[Michael Bloodgood]

Dual channel RAM is better optimized for ECC RAM than for conventional unbuffered RAM that most homebuilt users use. The performance benefits are greater, I’d say about 35% better. Xbench is kinda good for telling the difference but it really isn’t a good benchmark. I’ve used 3dmark64 on a similarly configured homebuilt Xeon XP64 workstation and there was a huge difference when enabling dual channel.