question about ram 3 gig vs. 4 gig

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personrandom
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2010/09/28 00:40:22 (permalink)

question about ram 3 gig vs. 4 gig

hello,

i created a thread on the Sonar forum, but it's turning more into a ram question, so i wanted to get some ideas
over here.

i have  2 x 512meg ram.  i want to get more ram.  i can get a pair of 2 gig sticks. but then someone said
i have change something related to "/3" in the boot.ini file.

also people have said you can't access the full 4 gigs anyway due to the windows limitations.

so maybe i should get a pair of 1 gig ram sticks.  then i will have a total of 3 gigs 2x512meg + 2x1gig

i'm not trying to be super crazy, i only work with a few tracks at a time.  so maybe this is a better way for
me to go.

i want to get more ram because i'm going to buy a vst piano sample library, and it's good to have some more
ram around.
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    Bristol_Jonesey
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    Re:question about ram 3 gig vs. 4 gig 2010/09/28 06:00:09 (permalink)
    The answer is - it depends.

    For some people, activating the /3g switch makes their system unstable and as a consequence, they won't ever get the benefit of adding extra RAM.

    However, if you're running a 64 bit system, you can load up as much RAM as you motherboard supports, and Sonar will see all (most?) of it.

    The one thing you haven't told us is what operating system & version of Sonar you're running.

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    Karyn
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    Re:question about ram 3 gig vs. 4 gig 2010/09/28 06:09:48 (permalink)
    Don't mix different types of RAM sticks on a motherboard.  Yes it could work, it could also crash and burn.  (Not burn in a literal sense).

    At the moment you have 1G of ram.  Windows will be wanting to use most of that so your apps will be mostly working off the ram swap file on your HDD.  This is fine for word processing, even for photoshop, but no good for real time audio production.

    Rip out the 2x512 and put in the 2x2G.  Windows will now use 2G for its own processes leaving 2G for your apps to use. In most cases this will be all you need to do unless you're thinking of loading huge sample libs.

    If you really need more ram then the /3 switch forces windows to only use 1G, leaving 3G for you. (You can never use the full 4Gig simply because Windows needs memory as well). You may see some degrading in Windows speed as it will revert to using swap files to make up the extra ram it needs.  Or you may not notice a difference. Depends on your setup.

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    Guitarhacker
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    Re:question about ram 3 gig vs. 4 gig 2010/09/28 09:16:34 (permalink)
    I've heard that XP allows 4G of memory to be accessed. So when I recently built my new box, I installed 4G in one stick. I have 3 slots open so I could add 12G more but my understanding is that I would need to upgrade the OS to access it all.


    You did neglect to indicate the OS you are using. The OS does matter. 

    I always thought that the computer looked at the memory upon startup and set it's memory access accordingly.

    Example.  I have 2 computers that are exactly alike. One won't boot, the other is my wife's machine for her stuff. I pulled the memory stick out of the unbootable machine and installed it in the open memory slot in my wife's computer. When I turned it back on, it recognized the new memory stick, reconfigured itself for twice the memory, and now it runs a bit faster. I did not have to reconfig anything. The computer did it.
    post edited by Guitarhacker - 2010/09/28 09:17:49

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    slartabartfast
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    Re:question about ram 3 gig vs. 4 gig 2010/09/28 13:26:37 (permalink)
    Read this:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2267427

    And this:

    http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2007/03/23/memory-management-demystifying-3gb.aspx
    post edited by slartabartfast - 2010/09/28 13:34:27
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