is more than 1 gig of ram worthwhile??

[Scott Cairns]

Hi all, I know this may sound a little silly but has anyone here noticed if having MORE than 1 gig of ram really offers a significant performance boost?

The reason I ask is that as far as I know our ram is limited by the speed of the PCI bus. I suspect that having over and above a certain amount of RAM might start to plateau the system at a certain point.

I run Windows XP and my motherboard will take up to 3 gig of ram. I was really wanting to hear from anyone who had 1 gig of ram and then installed more. Did you notice any performance gains?

Thanks, Scott.

[Simon Ravn]

It doesnt give you any direct performance gains to add more RAM. It gives you the ability to load more samples though, although GS has a problem utilizing more than 1GB of memory. The amount of memory transfers needed to do digital audio is rather insignificant in the big picture. For instance, getting 160 voices in GS with 16-bit samples only needs 14mb/sec. to go from HD to memory - nothing compared to the bandwidth of todays PCI busses/RAM speeds.

[mal7]

So Gigastudio has problems addressing more than 1GB of RAM....Can anyone else comment on this please?
And does anyone know how much Ram Win98se can address?

[Scott Cairns]

And does anyone know how much Ram Win98se can address? <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Hi Mal, good to see another Aussie here!

Windows98 supports 128-256MB, Windows 98SE supports 256-512MB from what I have read.


So Gigastudio has problems addressing more than 1GB of RAM....Can anyone else comment on this please?
<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Dont forget that the ram is already going to be loaded with your operating system, sequencer and any soft-synths/vst\'s you may own. I dont think it is a worry if Giga cant handle over 1gig of ram cause it would be very rare for there to be a whole gigabyte left over by the time Gigastudio gets its turn.

The initial reason for my post was that even with XP having the ability to utilise over 1 gig of ram, at some point I believe that the motherboard has to bottle-neck. I was curious to see if users noticed any significant gain over and above the 1gig mark.

Regards, Scott.

[mal7]

Hi Aussie Scott
So Win98se addresses up to 512MB ram only images/icons/mad.gif
How much does XP handle?

Also,what is the general consensus as to the best operating system for Giga...Win98se or XP?

[Simon Ravn]

Don\'t regard.

[Oliver Vessey]

I have 1gB RAM and have successfully switched from XP to 98SE - I would estimate that I\'m able to load about 30% more than I used to.

Windows 98SE will see 1gB, but you have to add the following lines to system.ini (under [vcache]):

MinFileCache=32768
MaxFileCache=32768

[Scott Cairns]

Oops. Double post.

[Scott Cairns]

Hi Mal, I read that XP will accept up to 4gb of ram.

Most modern motherboards have fewer slots than the older ones for some reason. With my MSI board it has three ram slots so that is a maximum of 3gig of ram that I could take. In other words, XP will take more ram than you can give it!

I actually havent used Giga that much so cant really vouch for its operation under various O.S\'s

I can say though that XP is infinitely more stable and robust than 98/98SE/ME.

Don\'t know what soundcard you are using but I think Giga will let you run a soundblaster card with 98 but it wont with XP. Tascam dont have GSIF drivers for soundblaster under 2000/XP.

Regards, Scott.

Just one thought if you were thinking of migrating to XP.

[Scott Cairns]

It doesnt give you any direct performance gains to add more RAM. It gives you the ability to load more samples though, although GS has a problem utilizing more than 1GB of memory. The amount of memory transfers needed to do digital audio is rather insignificant in the big picture. For instance, getting 160 voices in GS with 16-bit samples only needs 14mb/sec. to go from HD to memory - nothing compared to the bandwidth of todays PCI busses/RAM speeds.<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Hi Simon, what you say makes perfect sense. I forgot to thank you for your reply the other day. images/icons/smile.gif

Cheers, Scott.

[Simon Ravn]

Scott: no sweat:) Maybe XP is more stable - but for GigaStudio?? Not in my experience, and not by judging the amount of \'conexant wavestream errors under XP\' posts I have seen at Tascam and this forum... I run on Win98se and GS hardly ever ever crashes. I can make it crash more easily by really stressing it with a lot of release triggers though, it seems.