[Huskertko]

I thinking about spending some money on my computer and have narrowed it down to two areas. Which should I do to get the most out of EMC9, add more memory or upgrade my video card. I use it mainly for video editing and picture editing, as well as gaming, but that is another forum. I currenly have 1 gig of memory and a 128 ATI Radeon video card.

[ggrussell]

More RAm wouldn't help video editing. Definitely a new video card - the best thta you can afford. Would help with your gaming, too.

[grandpabruce]

ggrussell, on Nov 3 2006, 09:32 AM, said:

More RAm wouldn't help video editing. Definitely a new video card - the best thta you can afford. Would help with your gaming, too.

Actually, the RAM and video card, both will help with the editing. The RAM won't help when encoding to a DVD compliant movie.

[ggrussell]

I have 2gig RAM and when I load Videowave WITH a one hour video file, it only uses about 340MB of memory. So I don't see how adding more system memory than 1gig would help much if any at all. I've tried loading my system up running like 10 apps at once and haven't even gotten close to using 1 gig. I think Windows still uses the pagefile often regardless of RAM size.

This post has been edited by ggrussell: 03 November 2006 - 09:07 AM

[grandpabruce]

ggrussell, on Nov 3 2006, 11:06 AM, said:

I have 2gig RAM and when I load Videowave WITH a one hour video file, it only uses about 340MB of memory. So I don't see how adding more system memory than 1gig would help much if any at all. I've tried loading my system up running like 10 apps at once and haven't even gotten close to using 1 gig. I think Windows still uses the pagefile often regardless of RAM size.

I have 2 GB of RAM, and I agree, having more than 1 GB propably won't help much with the editing. However, it does with AutoCad.

[Huskertko]

grandpabruce, on Nov 3 2006, 09:11 AM, said:

I have 2 GB of RAM, and I agree, having more than 1 GB propably won't help much with the editing. However, it does with AutoCad.

I guess what my biggest problem is, is when editing with VideoWave, it is very slow and most of the time will hang and stop responding. My only way out is a control-alt-delete and shut down videowave.

[grandpabruce]

Huskertko, on Nov 3 2006, 01:02 PM, said:

I guess what my biggest problem is, is when editing with VideoWave, it is very slow and most of the time will hang and stop responding. My only way out is a control-alt-delete and shut down videowave.

Which ATI card do you have? Do you have the latest drivers loaded?

[Huskertko]

grandpabruce, on Nov 3 2006, 02:09 PM, said:

Which ATI card do you have? Do you have the latest drivers loaded?

It is a 128MB PCI Express x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X300 SE

I updated the drivers yesterday.

[grandpabruce]

Huskertko, on Nov 3 2006, 04:49 PM, said:

It is a 128MB PCI Express x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X300 SE

I updated the drivers yesterday.

That should work with no problems at all.

[poisongirl]

Huskertko, on Nov 3 2006, 06:48 AM, said:

I thinking about spending some money on my computer and have narrowed it down to two areas. Which should I do to get the most out of EMC9, add more memory or upgrade my video card. I use it mainly for video editing and picture editing, as well as gaming, but that is another forum. I currenly have 1 gig of memory and a 128 ATI Radeon video card.

I agree with the others, to go for a better graphics/video card as they will give you more RAM as well on the card itself (right?) and that will go towards needing more RAM for video items (and gaming). 1 gig of system RAM seems enough, I have heard many people say they have like 2-4 GB of RAM or more even, but that it doesn't hardly make a difference in anything after 1 GB (well, some applications do want a bit more, but you could easily live without it for now- upgrade the RAM later on).

Me and my roommate have 2 desktops and 2 laptops between us, the desktops and one laptop are all windows -XP SP2 for the desktops and XP MCE 2005 for my laptop (which is actually XP Pro just a bit scaled down and with some bonus media items -basically an add-on) and all have only 512 MB RAM each and pretty much work just fine. When running multiple LARGE applications you notice the lag but since the processor speeds are all at fairly decent: Pentium 4 @ 3.2GHz, Celeron D @ 2.53GHz and a Centrino Pentium M @ 1.73 Ghz -which kinda equals out to a p4 2.4? ---- They can seem to take most of what we throw at them. My other laptop is an old refurbished Mac iBook 12 inch Dual USB (from 2001) @ 500MHz and about 320MB RAM running OSX (10.2.8) and while I can't do much about the processor speed, I can add more Memory to make it 512MB and that should help it out quite a bit.

So yeah, recap: Get a new graphics card (you didn't say whether you had PCI, AGP, or PCTe available on your system -*edit* actually you did, I just skimmed past it) but definitely go for one 256 or higher -some 512 cards that are fairly decent can be found for $130 or so, try TigerDirect... Yeah so now that I know you have PCIe, go take a look at the ATI ? RADEON x1600 iceQ ...And go and upgrade you RAM later on if needed (or just wait and then get a better system). It is so much cheaper to just buy a new system will all the items you want at the same time than to go and buy them to add-on later (even just a few months after purchase). So sometimes it is best to just go ahead and get a new system, with the latest technology (it will be old in a year anyways, but at least it will still be *decent* in a years time compared to totally outdated)... And you will end up saving money by doing this or at least just spending the same amount all at the same time. IMy roommate got a new desktop, lower end model as it was to be a second desktop and not used as often. I have my laptop but can't play certain games on it, my graphics are great but just due to the game not working on ANY laptop at all... so I use the spare desktop... wanted to add in an extra PCIe video card we have laying around, and THEN found out that the machines motherboard only has PCI slots on it, so now I am stuck looking for the BEST of the crappy (PCI) cards available. Think I found one, now I just have to open up the case and see how mnay slots there are to know if I can get a PCI tv tuner and a PCI sound card for it too(it only has onboard stuff right now, but decent speakers). Again, I think it only has 3 slots compared to the old machine the "spare" video card came from which had 2 PCIe and 3 PCI slots.... You always have to watch out for and research before you buy as they did not have those specs listed at all when he bought it.

Sorry about the horribly long post.... I always talk/write too much...

This post has been edited by poisongirl: 07 November 2006 - 12:32 AM