64 bit uses more RAM?

[iHate]

I just upgraded to a 64 bit machine with 6gb DDR3. I came from a 32-bit machine with 2gb DDR2 sloooow speed. Running the same exact project from my old machine which used well, no more than 2gb of ram with a 800mb S2.0 kit; the new 64bit machine is using 4+ gigs of ram on cubase alone WITHOUT the 800mb S2.0 kit loaded...

How is that possible?? Does 64-bit allow the full capacity to be shoved onto the RAM without needing to read the hdd so often or what am I missing here?

Makes me think I should have went with 8GB instead of 6... Or kept fighting with my old machine...

 

[Wolfeman]

I think is has something to do with running 32bit programs in a 64bit OS

 

[TheDarkProject]

How is that possible?? Does 64-bit allow the full capacity to be shoved onto the RAM without needing to read the hdd so often or what am I missing here?

Yes, that is precisely what 64-bit computers are for. 32-bit operating systems can only access 4GB of memory per program, whereas 64-bit systems have a theoretical maximum of 16 exabytes of memory (an exabyte is roughly 1,000,000,000 gigabytes, by way of comparison). 32 bit Windows is worse than 32 bit MacOS as I understand it because Windows reserves 1 or 2GB of the theoretical 4 for the operating system.

However, your situation does imply that you were using far too much ram in the first place! If you ever end up mixing on an old machine again, check the memory usage and bring it down because reading off the disk due to lack of memory is likely to be the sole source of your performance problems.

 

[iHate]

Im running cubase 5 64-bit in Windows 7 64-bit...

In my 32-bit system, on cubase 32-bit, only 1.35gb of ram is being used with the project loaded and running just fine. I set paging file size of the hdd to 0 and it still runs at 1.35gb and runs just as smooth as before. Nothing crashes, no "not enough memory" errors or anything like that.

Now the same project loaded on my 64-bit system, in cubase 64-bit, uses more than 4gb ram.

I only upgraded because I needed more processing power, but it doesn't really make much sense that the same exact project uses 3 more gb ram.

 

[TheDarkProject]

Yeah, in that case I'd say something has gone wrong in the software somewhere! Although it also depends on how you're measuring memory usage - sometimes an operating system won't reclaim used memory from a running app until it absolutely needs to, and some measurements can end up including this unused memory.

 

[Jind]

Yeah, in that case I'd say something has gone wrong in the software somewhere! Although it also depends on how you're measuring memory usage - sometimes an operating system won't reclaim used memory from a running app until it absolutely needs to, and some measurements can end up including this unused memory.

I agree with TheDarkProject - there should be no reason that the project is using more resources (well at least to the degree you are seeing), are you looking at the memory usage in your DAW or at the OS level?

I've been running some of my older projects from my 32bit days in my Win 7 x64 DAW and I've not seen any significant memory usage increases.

 

[iHate]

It is strange, I agree.

I did some more testing with a smaller project. Just audio files and several plugins and ampsims loaded, 130mb ram usage on my 32-bit system and 480mb usage on my 64-bit system on cubase 64-bit. I then decided to install cubase 32-bit on my 64-bit system. I loaded up the project, and it's taking up even more ram at 530mb. With no projects loaded, cubase takes up about 100mb on my 64bit system and about 80mb on my 32bit system.

I dont know how else to test it really. Feels like such a waste to upgrade the computer, I think I'm just going to stick to my 32-bit system and get a nice preamp and compressor. iHate computers.... bahhh

 

[TheDarkProject]

You didn't mention how you are measuring the memory usage. Depending on where you're reading these values the validity of the numbers can be completely different. eg. Windows 7 does what Linux has done for years, which is allocate almost all of the free memory to disk caching. (eg. see http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/behind-the-windows-7-memory-usage-scaremongering.ars) This boosts performance by using otherwise unallocated and dormant memory to keep parts of your disk contents in memory, but naturally this means that certain measurements will say that you're using more memory. If you ever did need that memory though, the OS would just shrink the disk cache so that you could use it. What is likely is that Windows 7 is keeping some of your audio tracks in that memory cache whereas your old machine was just streaming them off the disk. In other words, it's probably not a problem.