Video compression and System RAM

[The Therion]

Hi,

quick question,

how much does system RAM affect the speed of video (and audio) compression ?

Is it worth getting 1GB RAM instead of 512MB undr WinXP ?

thanks

[Acaila]

It helps a little, not very much. Not worth the price of buying a 512MB stick IMO.

[hakko504]

Consensus a while ago was that 128MB was enough for most apps under Win2k. Some apps like AviSynth who stores intermediate results wants a little more, and XP usually wants a little more memory than Win2k. The important thing is to make sure you don't start using the Swap file during encoding, but with 512MB you should be OK in almost every case.

[The Therion]

Indeed there does not seem to be much need for a lot of memory for the average user.

Check this link ---> http://www.kingston.com/tools/umg/umg01b.asp

It helps the most on 3d rendering ,heavy photo editing etc. but i was wondering the same thing hakko504 mentioned : Is it worth getting 1GB and get rid of the swap file altogether ?

Also hakko504, you said 512MB will be enough in ALMOST every case :(

The reason that i 'm thinking much into this ,is that i will have to get twin modules RAM , so in order to get 2x256MB i must be sure i will not need more memory ever,because i want to have the same modules in the 2 dimm slots (2x256 or 2x512).

Has anyone made or seen any tests on this ?

[hakko504]

Almost, because it depends on whether you want to do something else at the same time, if you are filtering heavily and what picture size you start with. Let's say you intend to convert a HDTV stream of 1280x960 (is this the correct size?), want's to filter it with many filters and only rezise it to 1024x576 (still very large picture). In this situation you will probably need quite a lot of memory.

If you don't detect excessive use of the Swapfile right now I'd say wait.

[The Therion]

Actually now i have 384MB PC133 RAM,but this is an older system ,which i'm going to upgrade.

This is why i'm trying to figure out 2x256 or 2x512 so i can use the $ for something else in its not worth it :(

[CaptainCarrot]

This is why i'm trying to figure out 2x256 or 2x512
I'd go for 2x256 with low latency, that's still cheaper than regular 2x512 but you will have increased speed all the time whereas the extra 512 will only kick in if you have a really memory consuming application. Maybe it'll help when encoding h264 one day, i read something about long range referencing, but i'm no expert on that. With present codecs it won't help, I always have free mem on my 512MB-system when encoding.
Btw. WindowsXP won't like it if you disable the swapfile. I don't know why, but when I tried once I had "low memmory"-errors all over the place even though there was a lot of free memmory left.

[crusty]

Depends on what your other options would be....

A issue like this always depends on the questions you have to ask yourself:

1 -how much money do you want to spend?

2 -what are the things you are going to do with this new computer for sure?

3 -how long do you think you're going to keep this new computer?

4 -what sort of things do you want to try out with this new computer?

I can't advise you on question 1 because I have no acces to your financial information so...:D

2 - If you're just going to rip movies you can live with 512 MB, at least on w2k. I would suggest buying a faster processor for the money you spared because that would help more than the extra memory, although not much. Look at the prices of processors, all of them, and divide the performance power by the price. Buy the one that comes with the best price/performance ratio. Easy, huh?
Other stuff that will help you with ripping are a good DVD-drive with good extraction speed and, very important, one that is or can be made region-free.
Also, harddisk speed is important but if you buy an 80 or 120 Gig harddisk now you're fine. Don't buy less than 80.

3 - If you're going to stick with this computer for a few years, then the mainboard becomes more important than the processor. Buy a cpu like I told you and pick a motherboard with the best upgradeability for the future, especially for memory and cpu.
That way you don't have to buy the fastest processor now (which are always very expensive NOW but will fall in price significantly in the future) but can wait 12 to 18 months and simply buy a faster processor then.

4 - only if you're going to do DV work, DTP, CAD/CAM or photo processing would I be willing to advise over 512 MB.

Hope this helps..

[JohnMK]

My encoding PC and gaming PC are one and the same. I've found 1 GB of RAM invaluable in swift mult-tasking -- to be honest the hyperthreading nature of my P4 helps a lot too, but with only 512MB of RAM (as I have on a seldom used Athlon XP 2000+ PC) I notice much more swapping to the HDD when I, for instance, fire up Unreal Tournament (classic) while encoding XviD/MPEG-4 in the background using Avisynth/VirtualDub. I don't know about you, but I'm supremely impatient (diagnosed with ADD in 2nd grade) and I just can't tolerate any disruptions to my wishes. :D UT opens within seconds on my 1 GB RAM PC even with the aforementioned encoding work going on in the background.