Benchmarks after OWC RAM upgrade (Nehalem Mac)

[Mac Husky]

As I mentioned in another thread, some new data has been published by a topical OWC report this morning concerning RAM upgrade of the new Mac Pro.

As it has been pointed out the last days here in the forum, there ist no 6/8GB limitation of RAM for the quad. But as mentioned before: no bargain To decide wether to go for 6/12 or 8/16 GB RAM have a look at this barefeats´ article. And some interesting benchmarks concerning the upgrade from OWC here.

OWC published some graphics, where you can see, how much RAM you really might need comparing benchmarks for After Effects and Photoshop. And once more it is shown, that 8-core has some really benefit for apps like After Effects, but nearly no benefit for apps like Photoshop. Nothing really news so far. But looking at the RAM upgrades I got the impression, that more than 6GB have no visible effekt on speed using either AE or PS (exeption - and i don´t no why: 12GB in a 2.26 octo). At least no effect, that would bring me to buy more RAM so far. Am I wrong with that?! To short-sighted view?!

Of course: using more parallel apps that will switch.

Statements or comments welcome...

 

[VirtualRain]

As I mentioned in another thread, some new data has been published by a topical OWC report this morning concerning RAM upgrade of the new Mac Pro.

As it has been pointed out the last days here in the forum, there ist no 6/8GB limitation of RAM for the quad. But as mentioned before: no bargain To decide wether to go for 6/12 or 8/16 GB RAM have a look at this barefeats´ article. And some interesting benchmarks concerning the upgrade from OWC here.

OWC published some graphics, where you can see, how much RAM you really might need comparing benchmarks for After Effects and Photoshop. And once more it is shown, that 8-core has some really benefit for apps like After Effects, but nearly no benefit for apps like Photoshop. Nothing really news so far. But looking at the RAM upgrades I got the impression, that more than 6GB have no visible effekt on speed using either AE or PS (exeption - and i don´t no why: 12GB in a 2.26 octo). At least no effect, that would bring me to buy more RAM so far. Am I wrong with that?! To short-sighted view?!

Of course: using more parallel apps that will switch.

Statements or comments welcome...

These tests definitely do not support the view of many here that say unless you have 16GB of RAM your productivity is seriously limited.

It seems to suggest that a good sweet spot is 6GB regardless of which model of MP you purchase.

 

[trancepriest]

These tests definitely do not support the view of many here that say unless you have 16GB of RAM your productivity is seriously limited.

It seems to suggest that a good sweet spot is 6GB regardless of which model of MP you purchase.

Depends on how much memory your apps can use. Memory maybe faster in triple channel.. but paging out to hard drive is definitely not what anyone wants. I went for 32GB instead of 24GB... OWC memory arriving tomorrow.

 

[Mac Husky]

Maybe - after all - things will change with Snow Leopard, althought some guys here are negating that. When I read the following right (my native language is not English), than the limitating factor is the operating system Leopard.

"Unfortunately for our testing (but fortunately for Apple), the Mac Pro is a machine that far surpasses the capability of the current Mac OS X Leopard operating system. OS X 10.5 is a 32-bit operating system which inherrently is limited to 3GB of memory usage per process. After the 3GB of real usage is attained, the rest of the memory in the system is essentially not recognized as being available to use. Snow Leopard, a true 64-bit operating system, should alleviate this dilemma and allow single processes to use all the memory available to it. This is a far cry from stating that 3GB is all that is needed in a machine until Snow Leopard is released."

 

[sigmadog]

Won't much of the software we use need to be re-written before it can take advantage of 64-bit operating systems? If so, that would negate many immediate benefits of a 64-bit Snow Leopard.

I could easily be wrong here, not having any real geek credentials.

 

[cmaier]

Won't much of the software we use need to be re-written before it can take advantage of 64-bit operating systems? If so, that would negate many immediate benefits of a 64-bit Snow Leopard.

I could easily be wrong here, not having any real geek credentials.

Yes and no. I worked at AMD on the design of opteron/athlon 64. x86-64 offers many improvements to the x86 architecture beyond 64-bit addressing/calculations. Among them are a bigger register space, etc. All of these improvements gave a 10-15% speed improvement to 32-bit compiled software running under a 64-bit OS in my testing.

Re-compiling for 64 bit (generally an easy thing to do if the original code was written to Cocoa - photoshop need not apply) adds even more benefits to certain types of software, but was mainly beneficial to increase the amount of addressable RAM.