More ram, is it worth it?

[rwest]

My PC: Compaq Presario 1625NX
XP Home
AMD 3200+ Venice core 2.0ghz
2 x 512 DDR pc3200
160 GB SATA 7200 rpm HDD
combo 16x dvd(+/-)r/rw (+/-)r dl LS drive

I use DVD decrypter and DVD Shrink. I only use full disk mode and leave everything in tact. All I do is uncheck the foreign languages.

I can currently do a conplete back up in approxiamately 1 1/2 to 3 hours.(depending on the size of the movie) This is with a deep analysis and AEC on.

I have DMA enabled. If I understand correctly the encoding is done in ram.

My MOBO will support 4 gig of ram. Not sure if DDR2 is supported.

Okay, finally!:) Here's my questions:

1. If I upgrade to 2gig of ram, will this help my encoding time? My MOBO supports up to 4gig.

2. If yes, got any ideas on-by how much? Also; should I get 2 more 512 stix or 2 1gig stix. Which do you think would be the faster setup?

3. I realize my times are within acceptable ranges for my pc. I would like to cut the encoding time. So will adding 1gig of ram to this system help cut the encoding time much?

4.Lastly, I know I've got room to do some other upgrading, but I think the ram is where I should be looking at reguarding encode speed. Or am I just wrong?

[CWR03]

Most of the encoding speed is dependent on the processor and the system front side bus. I actually get slightly faster encodes with my 1.2 GHZ Athlon on a 400 MHZ fsb board using 256 MB of PC2700 RAM than with my 2.0 GHZ Athlon on a 333 MHZ fsb system with a full GB of PC3200 RAM. It's probable that more RAM will help your encode speed, but I don't believe it would be significant.

[rwest]

If I understand what your saying, basically system bus is my hold up. While more ram will help the overall system (as will a faster processor) my times are still gonna be limit controlled by system bus.

So I should sick with my original plan to upgrade next year when all my upgrades will be much more $$ tolerable.

[CWR03]

I think they've hit a wall for the time being as far as FSB speeds (I just bought a 1600/2000 MHZ fsb board) but the prices may come down.

[Daodan]

Indeed I don't think ram will help you with almost anything atm (maybe some games). You may try the free solution of upgrade: overclocking. Since you have a venice you can go nicely to 2400 or maybe 2500 mhz depending on your mainboard and ram stability. This will give a nice boost with very low risks (unless you raise voltage the chances of breaking something are more cases of bad luck).

[Surf]

I have 512mb and it doesn't seem to have any issue with Decrypter or DVDshrink.

This(I think) is a must: a 2nd hard drive:

1. Decrypt to C drive.
2. Use VOBblanker and output to D. (think of a Spanish Bull runner :D).
3. Use PGCedit to finalise/customize.
4. Recode back to C.

I think it's got to do with streaming directly....instead of reading from C and writing back to C.

[jggimi]

How can you tell if you could exploit additional RAM?

Valid with ANY operating system that uses virtual memory, on any hardware:

Look at your swapping/paging rates. If they're more than zero, then yes, additional RAM may provide value.

[setarip_old]

Postings at other forums have indicated that, under WinXP, DVD Shrink functions optimally with 512Mb of RAM...

[gameplaya15143]

Look at your swapping/paging rates. If they're more than zero, then yes, additional RAM may provide value.
That isn't necessarily true.. windows will alway use some virtual memory whether it actually needs to or not (as long as virtual memory is enabled).

I think it would be better to check your RAM usage, if its 100%, then you need more RAM.

The problem I mentioned with windows always using virtual memory even when there is a lot of RAM free is exactly the reason why I have disabled the windows pagefile.. that and laptop hard drives are slow. 512MB of RAM here, It is very few and far between that I ever run out of memory, only some hog video games will actually use it all.

[rwest]

That sure was a lot of good and helpful information!!!:thanks: I thougt 1 gig of ram should have been plenty. But I didn't know for sure. I'll try disabling Virtual memory and see what that does.

I'm gonna price some Hdd's. I do have seperate partitions set up on the same drive. But that's not gonna do the type of routing I want, is it? It's gonna have to be a dfferent drive on the second channel, correct?

[jggimi]

@gameplaya: I don't want to drag this off topic too far, but I believe we may be comparing apples and oranges -- I/Os from page faults are not the same as pages-marked-in-use which are static or nearly so.

@rwest: you are correct regarding partitioning, and in splitting high use devices between IDE/ATA busses.