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For what do you need more then 32G RAM ever on a desktop (excluding time travelling forwards). If you are asking yourself that question you need to get a proper

by MrDosu 12y ago

For what do you need more then 32G RAM ever on a desktop (excluding time travelling forwards). If you are asking yourself that question you need to get a proper server or rendering farm.

bitL 12y ago
You'd be surprised how fast you can run out of memory if you are mastering your own, non-professional 5k/4k video and applying some advanced non-linear operations such as video stabilization. It's not GPU accelerated, parallelism is limited by the nature of the algorithm which makes rendering farms useless. Do you need a power hungry and noisy server with slower single thread performance than a top end i7 just for additional RAM? On the other hand, beyond 32GB, ECC seems to be very important so you probably won't have any choice but to buy a proper workstation unless AMD makes a miraculous processor on par with i7 (as they do support ECC in all models).
- Xcelerate 12y ago
  > non-linear operations such as video stabilization What do you mean by non-linear? Are you referring to an equation containing a linear combination of the dependent variable and its derivatives, or something else?
  - astrange 12y ago
    Usually a non-linear video operation would mean one that doesn't just process each frame of the video beginning-to-end, like moving clips around. Stabilization seems pretty linear to me, though.
alwillis 12y ago
If you didn't need the 5k display but you did need more memory and rendering capacity, the Mac Pro has you covered maxing out at 64 GB of RAM or 128 GB is you use non-Apple RAM upgrades. So there's that.
Too 12y ago
Virtual machines behaves best with as much ram as a normal machine. Assuming you have 3 machines running, osx host and windows+linux vms and you want to give them 12gb each you are already at 30+. Might sound like a crazy setup but some times a compiler is only supported on one platform and then you want a replica of your clients server in one VM etc etc.
gambiting 12y ago
No, not really. I work in a games studio and our usage on individual workstations goes above 32GB when compiling our project. Due to technical and licencing issues it's also not something that can be relegated to a remote server farm for compilation.
- MrDosu 12y ago
  Im guessing this is C++ with a lot of template abuse and header interdependencies? C++ has a powerful compiler, buts its also easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Yep. Also the fact that the project cross compiles on 7 different platforms from the same code base.
- TillE 12y ago
  If it's that gigantic, then a distributed build on local servers makes a lot of sense. Much faster than each developer doing it on their own single workstation.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    We do distributed builds on local workstations across the studio with Incredibuild. That's the only way we could get away with licencing for consoles. That reduces the build times(from over 40 minutes to less than 5) but the RAM usage is still very very high.

by MrDosu 12y ago

For what do you need more then 32G RAM ever on a desktop (excluding time travelling forwards). If you are asking yourself that question you need to get a proper server or rendering farm.

bitL 12y ago

You'd be surprised how fast you can run out of memory if you are mastering your own, non-professional 5k/4k video and applying some advanced non-linear operations such as video stabilization. It's not GPU accelerated, parallelism is limited by the nature of the algorithm which makes rendering farms useless. Do you need a power hungry and noisy server with slower single thread performance than a top end i7 just for additional RAM? On the other hand, beyond 32GB, ECC seems to be very important so you probably won't have any choice but to buy a proper workstation unless AMD makes a miraculous processor on par with i7 (as they do support ECC in all models).

Xcelerate 12y ago
> non-linear operations such as video stabilization What do you mean by non-linear? Are you referring to an equation containing a linear combination of the dependent variable and its derivatives, or something else?
- astrange 12y ago
  Usually a non-linear video operation would mean one that doesn't just process each frame of the video beginning-to-end, like moving clips around. Stabilization seems pretty linear to me, though.

alwillis 12y ago

If you didn't need the 5k display but you did need more memory and rendering capacity, the Mac Pro has you covered maxing out at 64 GB of RAM or 128 GB is you use non-Apple RAM upgrades. So there's that.

Too 12y ago

Virtual machines behaves best with as much ram as a normal machine. Assuming you have 3 machines running, osx host and windows+linux vms and you want to give them 12gb each you are already at 30+. Might sound like a crazy setup but some times a compiler is only supported on one platform and then you want a replica of your clients server in one VM etc etc.

gambiting 12y ago

No, not really. I work in a games studio and our usage on individual workstations goes above 32GB when compiling our project. Due to technical and licencing issues it's also not something that can be relegated to a remote server farm for compilation.

MrDosu 12y ago
Im guessing this is C++ with a lot of template abuse and header interdependencies? C++ has a powerful compiler, buts its also easy to shoot yourself in the foot with it.
- gambiting 12y ago
  Yep. Also the fact that the project cross compiles on 7 different platforms from the same code base.
TillE 12y ago
If it's that gigantic, then a distributed build on local servers makes a lot of sense. Much faster than each developer doing it on their own single workstation.
- gambiting 12y ago
  We do distributed builds on local workstations across the studio with Incredibuild. That's the only way we could get away with licencing for consoles. That reduces the build times(from over 40 minutes to less than 5) but the RAM usage is still very very high.