better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache?

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G.Crisci

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better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache?

PostWed Mar 15, 2023 4:23 pm

Hey there,

I have made many searches but I can't find if Smart Render Cache use RAM or the Drive for the project in use, I mean I understand that finally Render Cache have to be saved on SSD, but during use is stored in the RAM?

So more RAM can speed up Render Cache acquisition?

Thank You
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Jim Simon

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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostWed Mar 15, 2023 8:25 pm

Cache is written to the hard drive, whether Smart or User.

I recommend a dedicated Cache drive. (I use a 10 Tb spinner, myself.)
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CougerJoe

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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostWed Mar 15, 2023 10:52 pm

Jim Simon wrote:Cache is written to the hard drive, whether Smart or User.

I recommend a dedicated Cache drive. (I use a 10 Tb spinner, myself.)


Do you mean a 3.5inch hard drive, if so why not a very fast SSD?
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostWed Mar 15, 2023 11:01 pm

Yeah, I'd have gone for an SSD for my cache drive since that's what'll be primarily accessed by Resove. Keep the original source files on spinner if you want but if you're creating a cache and proxies, throw then on the fastest drive you have.
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostThu Mar 16, 2023 1:08 am

Definitely SSD. This is not just about throughput, but most of all access times.
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Jim Simon

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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostThu Mar 16, 2023 1:59 pm

CougerJoe wrote:Do you mean a 3.5inch hard drive, if so why not a very fast SSD?
Whatever permanent storage you have in the system - HDD, SSD, NVMe.

It's not kept in RAM. It's a new file.
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G.Crisci

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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostThu Mar 16, 2023 6:08 pm

Thank You All
for the clarification!

(I'm still trying to figure out where RAM makes the difference....)
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostThu Mar 16, 2023 7:34 pm

G.Crisci wrote:Thank You All
for the clarification!

(I'm still trying to figure out where RAM makes the difference....)



The ram makes the difference in fusion :D for example....
it is very notorious.

But in general, you have to have a good amount of ram
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostThu Mar 16, 2023 10:42 pm

Jim Simon wrote:
CougerJoe wrote:Do you mean a 3.5inch hard drive, if so why not a very fast SSD?
Whatever permanent storage you have in the system - HDD, SSD, NVMe.

It's not kept in RAM. It's a new file.


Yeah, you're making the differentiation to help answer the question, but for you, I'd consider using your system SSD for caching if you only have the single SSD. I have seen cache writes near 2GB/s with Resolve, while a HDD is only capable of 250MB/s, but as the other gentleman mentioned, the access times are much slower with HDD too.

If you notice the improvement and you should, look to get a NVME SSD scratch disk if you do have 2x m.2 ports to save your C drive excess wear
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostFri Mar 17, 2023 2:02 am

I will go for a stupid amount of fast drives striped with redundancy.

or a good NVME, but you might run out if space fast....

at the moment at home I have 4x4tb spinning drives as cache, soon i will have completed the "monster drive solution" with 25x4tb SSD RAID 6 SAS connection... speed/redundancy/space all in one....

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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostFri Mar 17, 2023 4:46 am

waltervolpatto wrote:I will go for a stupid amount of fast drives striped with redundancy. or a good NVME, but you might run out if space fast.... at the moment at home I have 4x4tb spinning drives as cache, soon i will have completed the "monster drive solution" with 25x4tb SSD RAID 6 SAS connection... speed/redundancy/space all in one....

You a crazy man! We just have the 4TB SSD NVMe internal for what I still call the "Scratch Drive" (technically, it's Gallery Stills/Cache). I just checked it and it's got over 1.1TB free... but it's probably time for me to manually go in and delete everything older than 9-10 months.

A friend of mine just reminded me of walking by one of the major hard drive manufacturers' booths at a SMPTE show maybe 9-10 years ago, and they had a big metal box the size of a washing machine filled with hundreds and hundreds of boards and chips. We asked what it was, and they said, "this is a giant RAM drive with -- can you believe it? -- 1 TERABYTE of storage!" We asked what it would cost, and they laughed and said it was just a prototype technology demonstration, and would be completely impractical since it would have to sell for over a million bucks.

And here we are, in a world where a 1TB SSD is pitifully cheap, like $64 or something. Maybe it's time for me to up the Cache drive to 16TB...
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostFri Mar 17, 2023 12:31 pm

Yikes. I only have a 1TB NVMe scratch disk. I've been thinking of swapping it out for a 2TB stick, to give a little more breathing room, but honestly, I don't really need to. The 'Smart' Render Cache setting would have me believe that absolutely everything, everywhere needs caching all the time... instead, I have caching set to 'User' with everything auto disabled, and (most of the time) I really don't need to cache anything much at all.
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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostSat Mar 18, 2023 10:14 pm

Marc Wielage wrote:
waltervolpatto wrote:I will go for a stupid amount of fast drives striped with redundancy. or a good NVME, but you might run out if space fast.... at the moment at home I have 4x4tb spinning drives as cache, soon i will have completed the "monster drive solution" with 25x4tb SSD RAID 6 SAS connection... speed/redundancy/space all in one....

You a crazy man! We just have the 4TB SSD NVMe internal for what I still call the "Scratch Drive" (technically, it's Gallery Stills/Cache). I just checked it and it's got over 1.1TB free... but it's probably time for me to manually go in and delete everything older than 9-10 months.

A friend of mine just reminded me of walking by one of the major hard drive manufacturers' booths at a SMPTE show maybe 9-10 years ago, and they had a big metal box the size of a washing machine filled with hundreds and hundreds of boards and chips. We asked what it was, and they said, "this is a giant RAM drive with -- can you believe it? -- 1 TERABYTE of storage!" We asked what it would cost, and they laughed and said it was just a prototype technology demonstration, and would be completely impractical since it would have to sell for over a million bucks.

And here we are, in a world where a 1TB SSD is pitifully cheap, like $64 or something. Maybe it's time for me to up the Cache drive to 16TB...
:-) I remember when I bought my first p ata hdd, a size incredible that I can, 120 megabyte…
In a period where Os was on a floppy disk of 880kb and 3d animations which I was doing use since 70-80kb per frame…. I thought I never filled that amount of memory


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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostSat Mar 18, 2023 11:58 pm

carlomacchiavello wrote: I remember when I bought my first p ata hdd, a size incredible that I can, 120 megabyte…
In a period where Os was on a floppy disk of 880kb and 3d animations which I was doing use since 70-80kb per frame…. I thought I never filled that amount of memory


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Re: better to add an SSD or RAM for speeding up Render Cache

PostSun Mar 19, 2023 3:51 am

You guys had it so easy.

My first computer had 1KB of RAM and 1KB of ROM. It had a 1MHz (that's one megahertz) clock and spoke to the world through a 110 baud serial terminal.

Yes, it was homebuilt.

Ah... happy days :-)
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