@Nick Batzdorf said:
JWL, the limit is 3GB total under Windows XP at this point, not per program; anything over that isn't even recognized by the OS, and from what I understand the main reason people put in 4GB rather than 3 is to keep the RAM all the same (although I vaguely remember reading something cm wrote about 4GB giving slightly better performance than 3 for other reasons, but I could be wrong?).
It's only Macs that can run stand-alone programs outside the DAW to gain more than 3GB or so of memory access, and there's absolutely no point in putting 16GB in a PC.
I also haven't read any reports from Mac users with more than 8GB in a machine (i.a Mac Pro). The processor may get bogged down after a certain number of instances.
Thanks, Nick.
I knew about the PC issue, but 3GB has been a magic number on Macs also. Thanks goodness for standalone, nonetheless.
I'll check another forum where one member has a Quad PPC to see how much RAM he's running. It makes sense that 16G would bog the CPU with instances.
So, under what conditions would you say that 16GB RAM makes sense, even beyond the realm of VIs? From what I understand, no app on the Mac will access any more than 4GB and probably closer to 3GB by some accounts.
I'm just trying to gather all the real-world and official benchmark data I can. As usual, the truth lives somewhere in between....
Cheers.