KVR Audio

cowby · Post by **cowby** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:06 pm

Hi,

Just upgraded to an i7 Win10 machine with 16G memory. Wondering the benefit of having more memory is to load larger sample. But how about if it helps on better DAW performance?

Regards!
Cowby

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:08 pm

It also means you can load more plugins in your projects overall (well, until your CPU falls over). Other than that, no real performance benefit AFAIK.

dune_rave · Post by **dune_rave** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:16 pm

You can make a project with all your vsti loaded. And you can set inactive tracks to not use cpu, and it will be ok.

cowby · Post by **cowby** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:30 pm

dune_rave wrote:You can make a project with all your vsti loaded. And you can set inactive tracks to not use cpu, and it will be ok.

I know though 16G is not that much ... But I came across a term called "RAM drive". Any benefit for DAW/Vsti?

Mushy Mushy · Post by **Mushy Mushy** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 1:38 pm

cowby wrote:
dune_rave wrote:You can make a project with all your vsti loaded. And you can set inactive tracks to not use cpu, and it will be ok.
I know though 16G is not that much ... But I came across a term called "RAM drive". Any benefit for DAW/Vsti?

16GB is loads.
I get by on 4.

Jim Roseberry · Post by **Jim Roseberry** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:09 pm

You need enough RAM for your largest project.
You don't want the machine hitting the VM swapfile in lieu of real physical RAM (which kills performance)

Lets say your largest project uses 12GB RAM... and you've got 16GB in the machine.
Increasing the machine's RAM to 32GB won't buy any additional performance.

Having additional RAM would allow loading some instruments into RAM (rather than disk-streaming).
That could increase performance... but the extra RAM itself won't increase performance.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:19 pm

Jim Roseberry wrote:You need enough RAM for your largest project.
You don't want the machine hitting the VM swapfile in lieu of real physical RAM (which kills performance)

Lets say your largest project uses 12GB RAM... and you've got 16GB in the machine.
Increasing the machine's RAM to 32GB won't buy any additional performance.

Having additional RAM would allow loading some instruments into RAM (rather than disk-streaming).
That could increase performance... but the extra RAM itself won't increase performance.

this is how I feel with one exception, the size of the project can be misleading. I have an i7, and I use 8 gigs of ram but of course I can go to 32. I do have projects that if you check the size of the folder it's over 8 gigs of ram but actively only using far less...obviously I'm not good at housekeeping or letting go

DJ Warmonger · Post by **DJ Warmonger** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:20 pm

There is no benefit for more RAM if you can already fit your project in what you have. It can only degrade performance if you have too little.

But nowdays 8 GB is standard in PCs, so everything I can imagine should work fine. If you still run 32-bit DAW, you can allocate only 3 GB RAM anyway.

Yudaidhun · Post by **Yudaidhun** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 2:38 pm

It depends on your usage.
Launch task manager and see how much you use RAM.

I don't use 2GB+ RAM so I'm still sitting on 32bit bench.

incubus · Post by **incubus** » Sun Jul 03, 2016 12:24 am

16 GB of ram is actually perfect unless you work on really heavy orchestral stuff. Nothing wrong with having it (good insurance, mine is 16gb)

As an example, if you have trilian, SD, and some kinda kontakt thing for synths/pads and didn't set it to take lower ram, you'd take about 5-6gb and then your system is around 2gb so you probably wouldn't crash all the time (like if you tried that in x86)

So yes, better performance except cpu use which is another subject (and a boring overly debatable one at that)

BITWORD · Post by **BITWORD** » Sun Jul 03, 2016 12:37 am

Ram lets a system run at its potential, it doesn't speed anything up - just allows it to do what the software wants to do.

xx JPRacer xx · Post by **xx JPRacer xx** » Thu Jul 07, 2016 6:00 am

cowby wrote:I know though 16G is not that much ...

People were making music with trackers on the Amiga with 512 KB of RAM.... 16 GB is more than enough. Only exception is big orchestral libraries.

DJ Warmonger · Post by **DJ Warmonger** » Thu Jul 07, 2016 6:45 am

16 GB is more than enough. Only exception is big orchestral libraries.

To allocate over 16 GB of libraries you first need to read that much data from your disk... which will take a lot of time on its own. If your projects take forever to load, now you know why

jlaws · Post by **jlaws** » Thu Jul 07, 2016 8:37 am

This is why optane should be the beezneez...

xx JPRacer xx · Post by **xx JPRacer xx** » Fri Jul 08, 2016 1:32 am

DJ Warmonger wrote:
16 GB is more than enough. Only exception is big orchestral libraries.
To allocate over 16 GB of libraries you first need to read that much data from your disk... which will take a lot of time on its own. If your projects take forever to load, now you know why

I don't know if that

was directed at me... But if it is, could you point out where I said anything about loading time?

Is "More RAM" = Better DAW performance?