Is "More RAM" = Better DAW performance?

[murnau]

16 GB is more than enough. Only exception is big orchestral libraries.

To allocate over 16 GB of libraries you first need to read that much data from your disk... which will take a lot of time on its own. If your projects take forever to load, now you know why

And? Of course the loading time on big projects is long.What exactly is your problem i don't get it?

[MogwaiBoy]

More RAM is better for big sample libraries, ie: Kontakt instruments - but you can still hit a bottleneck with the CPU. How many cores in that i7? Enable multi-threading and you should be good for years to come.

[Scotty]

CHeck you resources usage in task manager. I used 16 gigs for the past 4 years with no issue using Kontakt Instruments and total memory use rarely exceeded 14 gigs . I recently purchased the East West catalog (monthly plan) and I had to upgrade as I was hitting the wall with the memory. I added another 16 gig and have all the headroom I need but for composers with large midi orchestal setups 64 to 128 gigs is not unheard of. . .

[kelldammit]

it may or may not depend on your OS, too. if memory serves, OSX grabs all of the RAM, and distributes it as it sees fit. Windows just seems to use it as required.

I've made it policy to max out RAM in whatever machine i have, just out of principle...i don't want to need to upgrade for some reason, and have to wait for shipping or whatnot to do so....

[Jax Pok]

Samples use up a lot of RAM if you don't have enough RAM the OS is forced to use some of your hard drive as virtual ram which is way slower and can cause problems. If you have enough RAM for your typical projects and add even more RAM in you won't notice a difference. On Windows look at task manager you can see how much your DAW is currently using. If its not near your max amount of RAM save your money.

[Chris-S]

Load a large project into your DAW and checkout the windows resmon.exe tool (tab "memory"), to check if the system is swapping or something.

[planetearth]

I know though 16G is not that much ... But I came across a term called "RAM drive". Any benefit for DAW/Vsti?

The "RAM drive" won't help you here. A "RAM drive" reserves a chunk of RAM to use instead of the swapfile on your hard drive, since that's much slower than accessing RAM.

However, if you're barely using the swapfile (and with 16 GB of RAM, you're probably barely using it), then reserving RAM is counter-productive. You'd end up using more of your swapfile because you cut down on the amount of available RAM.

I haven't seen anyone worry about a "RAM drive" in DAW use. And honestly, I haven't seen anyone worry about one in general in years.

Steve