Windows XP and MS Pro 6.5 needs MEMORY!

[Hulk]

I recently picked up a P4 1.5 system with XP Pro.

I tried instant preview with 128MB. The result was bad. It took a LONG time to initialize the preview, and once started it just kind of skipped through the project.

I added 256MB to the system, for a total of 384MB. What a difference that made! Now the instant preview was playing back close to real-time, and this was a very complex test project.

If you have XP make sure you have a lot of memory!

Mark

[Hulk]

Yes, I think I am going to...

go to at least 512MB. I do have three 256MB sticks around here somewhere. I'll probably put all three in. XP seems to make good use of the extra memory.

Mark

[Jerry Jones]

I'm to the point, now, where I believe it's time to start thinking 1 *gigabyte* of memory in newer systems.

This is particularly true when using applications such as ULEAD Cool 3D 3.5!

Jerry Jones

[Brian Ellis]

Wouldn't it be nice, Jerry, if memory operated at 1 GHz, especially if you have 1 Gbyte of it?

I think, with the price memory is just now, it would not be a bad idea to go to 384 or 512 Mbyte with any O/S. What you experience in XP will be reflected, even in 98SE. I upgraded from 128 to 384 Mbyte on my 98SE video computer and noticed a very significant difference in MSP 6 (did it before 6.5 came out).

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

Just a FYI, but I recently picked up 512MB PC133 from CompUSA for about $39 after rebate. Adding that to my 256MB dramatically improved Win2K performance as well.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup, given todays prices and motherboard/OS compatability 512 to 1024 MB is almost a necessity, especially when using 3D programs like Cool3D. They can eat RAM fast.

Dr. Mordrid

[IM_Riktar]

Hey Doc,

I noticed your sig file notes 512mb of ram on your system. Have you considered upping the ante to 1024mb?

For myself I am sitting pretty well at 512mb in W2K with MSP 6.0 and Vegas Video 3.0 but was wondering if jumping up would make enough of a difference in speed to offset the (Now anyways) higher price of ram.

My editing is pretty basic in the sense that I am capturing DV footage (About 15 - 20 minutes) and boiling it down to about 2 - 4 minutes of finished product with minimal titling and transitions (I find crossfade my favorite) on the finished product.

Since W2K is working well for me I no intention of upgrading to XP anytime soon.

[wkulecz]

Back in October I upgraded my Dual PIII-500 box that has been running W2k since before the begining (I had the OEM CD a couple of weeks before the "official" release, it was a dual PII-400 back then) from its original 512MB to its max of 1GB.

Difference is rarely noticable, but I don't think I've hit swap since. Anytime you regularly hit swap its time to get more RAM. If you never swap you're fine with what you have.

Instant Preview is far from instant on my PIII-800 with 1GB of RAM, its much better on the 1.4Ghz Athelon with 1.5GB RAM but I don't think the RAM has much to do about it.

RAM is cheap now. Max out if you plan on keeping your current system in service as you'll be paying "priceless antique" prices for it in a year as it disappears from the pipeline. Priced any 64MB 72-pin EDO SIMMs lately?

I've never tried W2K on less than 128MB of RAM but previous PIII-700 notebook performed quite well with this amount other than the swaps forced by having to use Outlook here at work.

Never tired XP on less than 256MB. XP has pretty much sealed the deal that my next desktop will likely be a Mac unless a viable DV editing for Linux setup appears from nowhere. I can live with XP on my new notebook -- I thought about Powerbook Titanium, but I must be able to run MatLab on it and Mathworks abandoned Mac when version 5 came out :-(

For Photoshop, and all the other non-Video "normal" uses, I just don't see me needing more than the old Dual PIII-500. No problems with multiple 60MB+ scans from medium format slides and negs.

--wally.

[Patrick]

I'd wait a month or two to see if the market again forces a price drop.

I don't know if the price of SDRAM has risen the same everywhere, but here it's gone up 150% in the last month and a half. Luckily I maxed out my CUBX to 1024 Mbs when the price was at it's lowest. I'm happy I bought when I did.

To be honest however, I don't see a heck of a lot of improvement compared to 512 Mbs while running Win98SE. I can get away with using a 10 Mb fixed swapfile though.

[IM_Riktar]

Patrick and Wally:

Thanks for the insight. Given that memory prices are a bit on the high side I will probably sit on the 512 megs I currently have.

Since the hard drive LED's seldom come on when I am working I guess I am ok with 512mb.

Next time the prices drop I am going to stock up if for no other reason than having it available for future building projects.

[wkulecz]

DDR probably will go down after supplies catch up again.

But SDRAM is on the way out, so if you think you'll ever want more, get it when you see a good price. That's why I've maxed out all my PC100 and PC133 SDRAM motherboards a while back.

I'll probaly stand pretty pat with the hardware I have now until the 32-64 bit transition dust starts to settle, unless DVD-R compatability gets fixed and I decide I need a P4 2+GHz or Athelon XPwhatever to get the rendering times down.

--wally.

[Hulk]

As people begin to upgrade there might be some used SDRAM deals to be has as it begins to re-enter the market.

As far as the 32-64 bit transition goes, I can't believe we're thinking about that already. As far as I'm concerned, XP was the 16-32 bit transition that was started with Windows 95. I think that MS knew they had to have 5 or 6 years of OS's (Win95/98/98SE/ME) that could natively run both 16 bit and 32 but software. Really the only way to make the transition to a full 32 bit OS. As people upgraded their software to newer versions, the newer versions would become 32 bit version. My Corel Draw 3 and 5 were 16 bit, but 8 and 9 are 32 bit.

It's amazing to think that after a 5 or 6 year migration period MS will have to go through it all again in a few years! Ah, the price of progress.

I am really wondering what we'll need 64 bit OS's for? 32 bits can access 4GB of data. I guess 64 bit would be good for huge databases. More registers are always better since they are the fastest type of memory. I guess I can see why we needed 32 bits, 16 bit limitations were reached. I am just wondering when we will actually hit the limitations of 32 bit OS's?

[wkulecz]

Need for 64 bits is obvious to me. DV is 13GB/hr. HDTV will be bigger. 32-bit W2K & XP can not mmap a file in a chunk larger than 2GB therefore requiring the same old bug ridden "segmentation" tricks to deal with the large data structures in a video file. 64K boundry, 4G boundry same bugs, different threshold.

--wally.

[Hulk]

I'm not positive about this but I don't think the 2GB/4GB file size limitation is a 32 bit OS issue. It's something that's been carried over.

Could someone clear this up.

But I do agree with you, I am tired of the file size limitation.

Mark

[wkulecz]

32 bits means 2^32 is the biggest address == 4GB. No index into a data structure can be bigger than this without some kludgy address extension segmentation. The 8080 was a 16-bit processor, sure it had 20 address bits but no data structure bigger than 64K could be indexed with an offset in a single register. Leading to all manner of bugs. We have the same problem now at 4GB. 2GB is the internal limitation because of the way windows maps memory, 4GB is the limit even if you started with a clean slate for a processor with 32-bit internal registers.

4GB ~= infinity for text and static graphics, but its small for video and national budgets and databases.

I have to deal with 4GB wrap-around every day as I've some real-time code that tries to time external events with 1/10 millisecond resolution (obviously with special hardware assistance) and counting tenths of milliseconds wraps around in a bit less than a day. Delta-T is generally a few seconds but once in awhile a naive subtraction gives an enormous number with unsigned arithmetic because of wrap-around. Turns out its easier to use signed arithmetic and after every delta-T subtraction, test if the result is negative and if it is add 2^31 to get the real result. The problem happens twice as often but is much easier to fix.
These kind of bugs are tough, if they are not designed out from the beginning, because they happen infrequently (once a day at the most in my case) and to squash 'em you have to have extra code that every time wastes resources testing for something that rarely happens. If I remember my calculation correctly, the sun will be a cold rock by the time a 64-bit unsigned integer wraps around counting tenths of milliseconds. Its fun to do the math some day when you are bored, a milliday is not quite a minute and a half :-)

W2K and NTFS neatly removes the file size limitation. Unfortunately the programming to support files bigger than 2GB is far from clean, hence weird bugs are a way of life :-(

--wally.