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Question

mac pro - 24 gb ram vs 48 gb ram - adobe cc indesign, illustrator, photoshop, acrobat

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
February 1, 2017
4 replies
3801 views

hi

bought the 2xmac pro 6 yrs ago

1. 3 x 8gb = 24 gb ram ram - faster config as per apple

1066 mhz ecc ram ddr3

mechanical HD but pretty fast

cpu = 2.8 ghz quad core intel xenon

2..other mac pro is twin except less ram 3 x 4gb recently added 4th stick ram for new total of 16 gb

about to upgrade from macOS 10.9 to 10.10 and adobe cc 2015 to 2017

looking for an cost effective speed bump -

higher end mac does about 50% photoshop

poorer sister does about 50% in design

would it it make sense to install the 3x8gb ram in the poorer sister and then buy/install 3 x 16 gb ram = 48 gb ram in the richer sister ?

both mac pros get more ram that way - apple had a real hard on to keep 3 sticks of ram in each mac so as to maximize performance

as always your opinions are appreciated

This topic has been closed for replies.

M

macspectrumAuthor

Known Participant

just ran blackmagic hard disk test

mac pro 1 w/ 16 gb ram

boot drive

mac pro 1 -

clone drive

============================

mac pro 2 w/ 24 gb ram

boot drive

mac pro 2 -

clone drive

is putting the scratch disk on the 'clone drive' helpful ?

RoninEdits

Inspiring

those speeds are pretty low, even for hdd, so its very likely it would help. you can always test it and if its performing any worse just switch it back...

M

macspectrumAuthor

Known Participant

more ram would help ?

or

changing the scratch disk to the 'clone' drive ?

M

macspectrumAuthor

Known Participant

was hoping for more replies or a reply from adobe

called adobe tech support and after lots of wrangling they seemed very weary to offer any opinion

they kept posting over and over their link for ram for adobe cc products which 8 gb - recommended

finally they said no to bother adding more ram even for the mac that does a lot of photoshop work

since both macs have a 2nd HD for clone purpose and the 2nd drives are about 400 gb free each i asked about creating a 'scratch disk' on the 2nd drive, to increase photoshop performance, and they reluctantly said 'yes'

i would have thought that going from 24 gb ram to 48 gb ram was a good idea, especially for a mac that did a lot of photoshop work

Bill Gehrke

Inspiring

That Xeon processor is puny. The most important thing you could do to those old Mac Pro's is upgrade the CPU to a newer one with more cores and speed.

Also for a speed boost I would strongly suggest using some of the newer, faster storage devices like SSD's for all your project files.

M

macspectrumAuthor

Known Participant

unfortunately a cpu upgrade for both mac would be expensive

RoninEdits

Inspiring

adding more ram likely wont give a performance boost, unless the software is using all the available ram and there is very low or no free memory. you could check the memory usage while the programs are being used to see what the software is using for memory and how much is still available/free.

if you have the older macpro's, like the 5,1, the system used memory in groups of 3 sticks, like 3 or 6 sticks of ram. that's probably why apple wanted 3 sticks in each machine, as it would be optimal for memory performance...