Is 8GB Ram enough?

[dcpmark]

I've got a 2008 Octo 3.2 that came with 2GB. I'm mostly going to use it for ripping, video encoding, converting, and editing, burning DVDs, etc., some iLife use, and to occasionally boot into Windows 7 via Bootcamp. Since the OWC speed tests show I should have either 8 x 1GB DIMMS (cheap) or 8 x 2GB DIMMS (expensive), is 8GBs enough for what I want to do? No gaming, modeling, simulating, or even Photoshopping for me.

TIA

 

[xraydoc]

I've got a 2008 Octo 3.2 that came with 2GB. I'm mostly going to use it for ripping, video encoding, converting, and editing, burning DVDs, etc., some iLife use, and to occasionally boot into Windows 7 via Bootcamp. Since the OWC speed tests show I should have either 8 x 1GB DIMMS (cheap) or 8 x 2GB DIMMS (expensive), is 8GBs enough for what I want to do? No gaming, modeling, simulating, or even Photoshopping for me.

TIA

More than enough.

 

[macfrik]

4GB should be enough for your needs. But if you have a budget for 8GB, then go for 8GB. You should see a lot improvements in terms of overall performance in your Mac Pro!

 

[thermodynamic]

I've got a 2008 Octo 3.2 that came with 2GB. I'm mostly going to use it for ripping, video encoding, converting, and editing, burning DVDs, etc., some iLife use, and to occasionally boot into Windows 7 via Bootcamp. Since the OWC speed tests show I should have either 8 x 1GB DIMMS (cheap) or 8 x 2GB DIMMS (expensive), is 8GBs enough for what I want to do? No gaming, modeling, simulating, or even Photoshopping for me.

TIA

If you do all that simultaneously 😱 then 8GB is good.

I can do Flash and Photoshop open at the same time and eventually use all the RAM on my Mac Pro.

On my Macbook Pro, I usually constrain what I have running - Photoshop and one or two 300DPI letter-sized images max. Or Flash if I'm doing web content creation, in which case Photoshop with smaller 72DPI images is just fine.

From what you said, 4GB is quite adequate. While Win7 will never ever better XP, it is better on RAM than Vista ever ever ever EVER would be. (and it's not "superfetch" or "unused RAM is wasted RAM" because Vista only used 1.8GB of a 8GB computer and never bothered with the remaining 6.2GB... never mind there's no competent memory/task manager to show what is being used where and how... Vista was a dilettante's honeymoon.)

 

[Shademaster]

Hm I'd say it is enough. I went from 4 to 12 and the difference was huge. I almost never top it out though. Only when I start doing heavy stuff it goes up to maybe 7gb or so.

 

[disconap]

4, 6, or 8 are all fine, just base it on budget. I advise buying the largest sized sticks possible, so that any future upgrading isn't a matter of replacing, just of filling in empty slots (cheaper and more efficient for the future),

 

[dcpmark]

Yeah, I've got 10GB now, which seems plenty, but I'm either going to 8GB or 16GB to get full-speed memory. I was worried 8GB might not be enough.

 

[kxfrog]

8gb is enough for you, i am upgrading to 8gb for photoshop use and some light rendering, so what you do 8gb is definately fine, you could perhaps get away with 4gb, but you can never haave too much ram!

 

[Max(IT)]

Yeah, I've got 10GB now, which seems plenty, but I'm either going to 8GB or 16GB to get full-speed memory. I was worried 8GB might not be enough.

8 gb Are more than enough for you, and maybe 4 gb could be fine.
But in this room of the forum, if you don't have 16 Gb you have nothing 😉

 

[dcpmark]

Ok, guys....I've been testing my usage with 10GBs, and after some ripping and converting with MacTheRipper and Handbrake, my page in/page out ratio was a respectable 4/1. After using Visual Hub for a few lengthy encodes (5 TV episodes on one disc), the page in/page out ratio is now at 1/1. Why are my page outs so high with 10 GBs??

I also noticed that huge gobs of memory (7.97GBs) are being used by 2 httpd processes, IIDCAssistant, and a kernel task, even though nothing is running right now other than Safari, Mail, and Activity Monitor. I show only 175.82mb of memory is free!

Other than a reboot, which I'm sure would free up the memory, any thoughts as to why these things are happening?