upgrading ram: any advice?

[annalea]

im going to add another ram to my pc. Another 512 to make it a 1g. will this make my pc more faster. im currenlty using 512. what do you think? does adding 512 will make a huge difference? pls need help.

[diegofer_9]

I am no expert, but RAM will help you. You should try to get 2GB though if you are upgrading. Now, the change from 512 to 1GB will be fairly noticeable, but there are so many factors like the processor you have and the speed of it. I used to just keep increasing RAM and there was some improvement in my machine, but when I switched to a dual processor, THEN the difference was really noticeable! Some guys here in the forum might comment later to your post and they really can suggest what is better for you. This was just from my experience.

Good luck.

[AJLynn]

What he said.

[Greg Hess]

Ram is like gasoline. If you run out of it, you've gotta get out of the car and walk.

 

Adding more gas doesn't necessarily make a car faster, it just prolongs the amount of time before you run out.

 

Most of the time, large amounts of ram won't result in a performance increase, in less you change a number of settings within the programs/games or windows itself to make sure of the extra space.

 

Most games (oblivion for example), will only use a pitiful 100 megs or so of ram, unless you adjust the ini settings to make use of a large ram cache.

 

Up to around 512 megs of ram, there is generally some performance in windows. After that the performance increase is substaintally less, unless the end user makes adjustments.

 

Rendering performance will be unaffected, unless you are using up all your ram currently...if thats the case, you could see a 400-500% increase in speed.

 

Personally, all the workstations I build/spec for the dept recieve 1 gb of ram per core/processor.

[AJLynn]

But with only 512? There's not much you do in arch vis these days that will fit in 512. Today I was working in Autocad and had it above 512. (There was a problem with my drawing.) Heck, here everybody gets 1GB or more.

[scherten]

switching from 512 to 1GB had speeded my renders up because mray was swapping like hell!

it will be good for the overall system and photoshop too, so go for it.

(but the ram isnt cheap theses days)

[renderbeads]

For an extra pesos go for a 1 gig. Here in the office we use Gheil DDR. And that is for Autocad alone. Rendering with vray gives much better rendering times in addition.

[Matt McDonald]

I'd put as much RAM in there as you can afford. I'm pretty surprised that you have been able to make do with 512mb. Max sure eats a ton of RAM (1Gb + depending on the scene) while rendering but has always seemed pretty manageable for modeling.

 

Do you do much Photoshop work? With the newer versions (CS & CS2) it seems like you can't have enough RAM. Its always Photoshop that has me pulling my hair out.

[ronel]

upgrading your ram will do, but check your speed processor otherwise, the ram you have added is useless. theres a lot more pros and cons to speed up rendering, sometimes it is on the rendering setup and parameters we have. try to check some dos and donts. ah by the way, my email rpadc2002@yahoo.com and rpadc@searchmachine.com.