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i7 iMac - 4GB/8GB RAM difference for editing?

mcoe19

mcoe19

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2007
28
0
UK
Hey there guys! I'm sorry to be a pain and ask annoying questions :p

I'm a Television Production student about to specialise in editing and hoping to start getting some jobs on the side during the last half of my degree. So, I'm taking the plunge and upgrading my MacBook to an i7 iMac with Final Cut Studio.

The question is if I should upgrade to 8GB of RAM instead of the standard 4GB. I know more is obviously better but I was wondering if it would be a noticeable difference. It would be for jobs such as editing, rendering, exporting, Photoshop and the likes.

Also, if it would be well worth going the extra mile RAM wise would it be better to go via Crucial or get the official Apple RAM. The price difference isn't the be all end all. Just thought I'd run it by y'all :)
 
Personally, I would go for 8 GB because RAM is so cheap these days, but quite frankly, there is NO way anyone can possibly answer your question unless you provide some numbers. Are the size of your files or projects going to be less than 500 MB? If so, then you don't need 8 GB of ram. You need to know the size of your working data to determine how much RAM you need. So again, there is no way anyone here can answer your question.

But again, since RAM is cheap these days, go for the 8 GB just to be on the safe side. I would buy name-brand memory from a known memory manufacturer. Apple has a very large markup on their RAM.
 
obviously it will be faster but it depends how big your files are really as to whether it is neccessary, the way i see it is buy the 4gb one and then buy 8gb of ram... so much cheaper doing it that way then through apple, and anyways 8gb of ram nowadays is like £70 so it isn't exactly break the bank expensive and super easy to install
 
iFirmware said:
obviously it will be faster but it depends how big your files are really as to whether it is neccessary...
Click to expand...
Im running latest FCS on a MacPro with 16GB RAM.
I also teach it at a local college on a lowly older iMac with 2GB.
Unless you go deep into the HD say over 5 min length sequence with multiple tracks using Compositing, I honestly dont think you will see much from 4 to 8.
However if your like me and have FPS and everything else e.g. Final Cut for editing, Photoshop for graphics, After Effects and maybe Compressor then you will need more than 8GB.
At school the 2GB older iMacs were able to edit 1 hour plus SD (720x480 DV-NTSC ) sequences with no problems.
It just changes when you get into HD.
 
I'd be working mostly with HD files, 1080i50i. Project sizes probably between the 5-10 minute mark. I'll probably go with the 8GB as I will be wanting to dip into Motion at some point also.

If there's a negligible, if any, difference in performance I'll probably just grab 2x2GB from Crucial..
 
MovieCutter said:
If you're working in Motion, definitely go to 8GB for your RAM preview
Click to expand...
I think Motion is 64bit (Im hoping). Currently After Effects is still 32bit so RAM Preview is limited in HD.
I work with HD every day and would love to preview longer than 15seconds :( Even with 16GB, you cant in my workflow :p
 
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