Hardware Adding RAM

[huston]

I'm thinking about adding an additional 16 GB of RAM to my system (I already have 16). Would this make a difference in encoding times or would I be wasting my money? I don't know why you'd need the following data but I'm sure someone is going to ask... I have an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and two 8 GB sticks of Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3000C15 (I would add an additional two sticks).

[huston]

Anyone... anyone? Bueller?

[october262]

probably wouldn't hurt to get a newer more powerful graphics card
such as Nvidia, GTX 1050 or higher, 1070 or 1080 if you plan to do UHD discs - https://forum.dvdfab.cn/forum/softwa...ade-windows-10

[JLB2]

I've been using dvdfab products since 2006 (but am new to the forum). I'm certainly not an expert when it comes to this. Someone more in the 'know' on how much RAM a dvdfab product uses might have something additional to say.

In your original post, you didn't mention if you are seeing high RAM allocation/usage in general. And you didn't mention what product you were using when you said "encoding times" (i.e. dvdfab, streamfab, etc.).

So I am going to use streamfab as an example.

I did an 'unofficial' test of streamfab (using a basic benchmark program) and what resources and how much of those resources were impacted when:

1) opening streamfab
2) downloading a 2hr 26 movie (h.264, 1080p, 5.1 EAC, and subs)
3) processing and re-muxing the video

There was only a slight increase in RAM usage when I opened streamfab; and no appreciable increase in RAM usage throughout the entire process. Mostly it was increases and decreases in CPU and GPU usage during the 'processing' and 'encoding' phases---which, of course is to be expected---and they were fairly light.

I should mention I have a very capable PC that I am running my dvdfab products on (dvdfab 12, AI smoother, streamfab, etc. etc.) So perhaps because of that I am not seeing much of an impact as others might see.

Also, I closely monitor what is running in the background of my PC; and routinely kill processes that I am not using; and restrict what processes will start when I start-up my PC. So my general resource usage might be lower than what others may typically see.

My PC:
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Processor, 16-core / 32-thread @ 3.4GHz, (4.9GHz Boost), 64MB L3 Cache
10GB EVGA NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming GDDR6X video card
128gb Corsair Vengeance LED, DDR4, 3200MHz (4 x 32, i.e. 4 32gb sticks)

Now, to your question about adding more RAM. It couldn't hurt. If you are seeing high RAM usage on your rig, it wouldn't hurt to add more. By doing so, the only negative effect is to your wallet. You may not need an entire additional 16gb (even, perhaps, no additonal RAM at all), so you may not 'see' much 'benefit' after the upgrade.

I realize it's not much of an answer, but when it comes to RAM usage (how much the OS uses, how much the OS allocates for use, how much a program uses) is a murky area. If you do a search on this subject on the net, you'll see all sorts of opinions/answers--even from the 'experts'.

Final thought: I say this, if you can afford it, and want to throw in another 16gb; go for it! Personally, I think, based on your system, 32gb would be a nice amount and should more than cover your needs.

[LaciBacsi]

I only use DVDFab to backup Blu-ray discs (and occasionally DVD). As mentioned above, you will see the biggest gain by upgrading your video card since that is where most of conversion work is being done. With that said, your biggest bottleneck will be throughput of your read/write devices if backing up a disc, and primarily the read speed (this is co-dependent on your reader as well as how the original was pressed). For example, backing up a 50GB disc from reader to 25GB on HDD typically takes me about 20 minutes average. However, if I make a clone copy of that same disc to HDD, and create a 25 GB from that, it only takes about 8 minutes! So clearly, the read speed of the original disc is the bottleneck. I really don't think adding more RAM will give much improvement (if any) when doing a disc backup.

I have two PCs. My main unit is an Intel i9 9900KF CPU, 64 GB G.Skill 3600 MHz RAM, EVGA GTX 1050 GPU and LG WH14NS50 reader/burner. My other PC is a much older Intel i7 3770K , 16 GB 2400 MHz RAM, EVGA GTX 660 CPU, and identical LG WH14NS50 reader/burner. As a test, I have copied the same 50 GB BD to 25 GB to HDD and, as mentioned above, took about 21 minutes on the i9 PC, and 26 minutes on the i7 PC. Not a huge difference. The main difference here affecting speed is likely due to the slower GPU in the i7 system.

My conclusion and opinion is save the money towards upgrading your GPU. Of course GPUs are priced extremely high at the present time, and may not be dropping considerably in the near future. Unless you run other apps/programs that would benefit from the extra RAM (e.g. photo editing) I doubt you will see too much of a difference. Of course extra RAM is always nice just because.

As stated, the above is an example of backing up a BD disc, so don't know if other modules, such as FAB Stream would benefit with the extra RAM, since BD backup is the only module I really use. When using FAB Stream, I assume other factors would come into play, such as your download speed.