Blackmagic Forum

So my old Threadripper CPU died. I decided to upgrade to AMD 9950X3D and a new motherboard. On the old computer I had 128gb of ram and when editing a movie in DVR the program used the maximum amount (70% of 128). Now this new motherboard supports 256gb of ram with the 64gb sticks being not very expensive. Are there any gains in editing though? Will DVR run smoother/faster? Any of you guys have this much RAM can give me an advice?

I have 8GB RAM on my M2 Mac mini and Studio works flawlessly.

My new M4 Mac mini has 16GB RAM and Studio works flawlessly.

I can't see that upgrading to 256GB would make any noticeable difference but who knows?

I don't know about Windows machines but Macs are designed to use most of the RAM all the time even when just idling, which leads many uninitiated folk to feel incorrectly that they need more.

Puget Systems does a lot of hardware testing for Resolve. See if they've ever tested memory capacity.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/

Jim Simon wrote:Puget Systems does a lot of hardware testing for Resolve. See if they've ever tested memory capacity.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/

This is the only thing I could find on their website. Just says the minimum for 6k editing is 128gb ram.

farscaper131245 wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:Puget Systems does a lot of hardware testing for Resolve. See if they've ever tested memory capacity.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/

This is the only thing I could find on their website. Just says the minimum for 6k editing is 128gb ram.

Not sure how they calculated that and what it means by "resolution you work with". But we regularly grade 4K (DCI and UHD) feature-length projects with 4K, 6K and 12K media. Some of our systems have 64GB of RAM. DR barely went over 50 GB. It is more important that the GPU has at least 12GB for 4K, preferably it has 24 GB.

64GB for 1080p is definitely overkill.

Dom said this:

we regularly grade 4K (DCI and UHD) feature-length projects with 4K, 6K and 12K media. Some of our systems have 64GB of RAM. DR barely went over 50 GB. It is more important that the GPU has at least 12GB for 4K, preferably it has 24 GB.

64GB for 1080p is definitely overkill.

but it could have been me, similar workflows, features in 4k, mutiple machines, we have 96 to 128g in each machine, rarely see more than 50g in play as well, although one time i had mutiple projects open at the same time, and saw 72g sys ram in play, that's once in the last 12 years or so tho, and could have easly not had so many projects open

if you use Fusion, that's worth asking the folks who play with it, i don't use it on our workflow, i've heard it eats ram

Yeah, I should add a disclaimer that we barely use Fusion. And I heard the same that Fusion is a RAM hungry app.

If your existing machine is not using 128gb, I would expect the new machine to be the same.


Fusion cache can use basically unlimited ram, but this is just cache.

Resolve color effects cache to disk (and you can cache fusion to disk too if you want) so it doesn't eat as much ram.

You can always get 2x 64gb today and get 2x more down the road if needed. Do check the mobo manual, I would not be surprised if 4x mem cards is limited to slower speed (2 dimm per channel). Not that I think 5000 vs 5600 mt/s will bottleneck resolve.

mpetech wrote:

farscaper131245 wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:Puget Systems does a lot of hardware testing for Resolve. See if they've ever tested memory capacity.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/

This is the only thing I could find on their website. Just says the minimum for 6k editing is 128gb ram.

Not sure how they calculated that and what it means by "resolution you work with". But we regularly grade 4K (DCI and UHD) feature-length projects with 4K, 6K and 12K media. Some of our systems have 64GB of RAM. DR barely went over 50 GB. It is more important that the GPU has at least 12GB for 4K, preferably it has 24 GB.

64GB for 1080p is definitely overkill.

I too don’t know how they calculated their numbers but you can see on my signature that Imused an Intel iMac Pro with 64gb of RAM and I do several feature length indies with it. I don’t use Fusion, well maybe very simple node tree, but 64Gb RAM is plenty. The clips that I get are from 2.8K, 4K, and up to 6K, and I deliver them in 2K DCI and 4K DCI without issues. So 64gb is more than enough especially if you’re delivering in 2K or 1080p.

farscaper131245 wrote:So my old Threadripper CPU died. I decided to upgrade to AMD 9950X3D and a new motherboard. On the old computer I had 128gb of ram and when editing a movie in DVR the program used the maximum amount (70% of 128). Now this new motherboard supports 256gb of ram with the 64gb sticks being not very expensive. Are there any gains in editing though? Will DVR run smoother/faster? Any of you guys have this much RAM can give me an advice?

Ivan, I am curious as to what is it that you’re doing that consumes 70% of your 128Gb RAM. If it’s Fusion with lots of transitions and mergers, then probably. But if you tell me that you’re just editing and doing color grading, something is not right because they depend on GPU VRAM for most of the work done. I would suggest looking into your workflow and how you have DVR resources configured.

My own assessment (not scientific but experience) are (and no Fusion)
1080p or 2K timeline - 8Gb VRAM gpu
4K max - 12-16Gb VRAM gpu
6K max - 20Gb VRAM gpu
8K max - 24Gb VRAM gpu
*based on a NVidea 3090 gpu.

Generally, i9 16 core cpu with 64gb of RAM.
Mac Silicon is different. There’s a post somewhere in this forum that recommends how much RAM you need based on the core count of the GPU. If I’m not mistaken, it was 2gb or RAM for every GPU core. So a Mac Mini with 16 core of GPU will allocate 32gb of available RAM and the rest for the CPU. So for this example, a 48gb Mac Mini with a 12 cpu core and 16 gpu core is sufficient enough for most project resolutions.

Ellory Yu wrote:

farscaper131245 wrote:So my old Threadripper CPU died. I decided to upgrade to AMD 9950X3D and a new motherboard. On the old computer I had 128gb of ram and when editing a movie in DVR the program used the maximum amount (70% of 128). Now this new motherboard supports 256gb of ram with the 64gb sticks being not very expensive. Are there any gains in editing though? Will DVR run smoother/faster? Any of you guys have this much RAM can give me an advice?

Ivan, I am curious as to what is it that you’re doing that consumes 70% of your 128Gb RAM. If it’s Fusion with lots of transitions and mergers, then probably. But if you tell me that you’re just editing and doing color grading, something is not right because they depend on GPU VRAM for most of the work done. I would suggest looking into your workflow and how you have DVR resources configured.

My own assessment (not scientific but experience) are (and no Fusion)
1080p or 2K timeline - 8Gb VRAM gpu
4K max - 12-16Gb VRAM gpu
6K max - 20Gb VRAM gpu
8K max - 24Gb VRAM gpu
*based on a NVidea 3090 gpu.

Generally, i9 16 core cpu with 64gb of RAM.
Mac Silicon is different. There’s a post somewhere in this forum that recommends how much RAM you need based on the core count of the GPU. If I’m not mistaken, it was 2gb or RAM for every GPU core. So a Mac Mini with 16 core of GPU will allocate 32gb of available RAM and the rest for the CPU. So for this example, a 48gb Mac Mini with a 12 cpu core and 16 gpu core is sufficient enough for most project resolutions.

I do lots of pan and scan of historical photos in Fusion. Last movie had nearly 300 photos. I am guessing that is eating up RAM.

I have 64gb of ram and 32gb of VRAM, works very smooth. It doesn't even use half of 64gb tho

farscaper131245 wrote:I do lots of pan and scan of historical photos in Fusion at the early part of this thread. Last movie had nearly 300 photos. I am guessing that is eating up RAM.

If the OP said that they are doing a lot of things in Fusion, this thread would have been shorter because it’s a known entity that Fusion is a CPU and RAM hog. You can never have enough RAM for Fusion and if you read through what others have posted here including myself, we never experienced any problems with Resolve but also pointed out that we didn’t use (or use very little) “Fusion” in our projects and systems.