The Great RAM Cram Debate

Friends,

There seems to be a strong difference of opinion on this forum about RAM. Some say 4 Gb is plenty and others say more, more, MORE!

I recently upgraded my 64-OS notebook from 4Gb to 8 and I still have the old memory sticks! If we can agree on a Logos-centered test, I'll put my machine through its paces with 4Gb, then with 8Gb. I've already done NovaBench tests and posted them here, but I'm more interested in how RAM affects Logos performance.

My signature summarizes my hardware. There are many, many Logos forum users with more up-to-date systems, not to mention MUCH more technical expertise. If anyone else would like to take the RAM cram challenge, they are welcome to it! Smile

How does one test the performance of Logos?

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Comments

Mark Barnes

Additional RAM will help Logos because Windows will use the extra RAM to cache frequently used files. How much RAM you need will depend on how large your library is, and how often you use similar resources. With additional RAM you should notice less slowdown when you repeat operations.

The files you will benefit most from being cached by Windows or the index files. They're stored in the following folders (all within %localappdata%\Logos4\Data\{random}):

\ResourceManager\logos
\BibleIndex
\LibraryIndex

Those three folders will be about 1.5Gb per 1,000 resources that you own. If you have sufficient RAM so that all these files can be cached, you should notice increasing speed benefits during a Logos session. Particular areas that should benefit from this caching are the three guides, searching, and the parallel resources menu.

Dave Hooton

How does one test the performance of Logos?

I doubt that one would notice any difference between 4 GB and 8 GB in normal use. The statistics of search times may show differences, but which value do you take because the first is slowest and then caching takes over, making subsequent runs faster, eventually levelling out eg. 0.96s, 0.86, 0.67, 0.64 etc. Do you search a single resource or a collection? If a PG is populated 1s faster, is that significant? If it is too slow we tend to focus on the information that is really needed and customise accordingly.

The debate is really about affording 8 GB or more (if the system/OS will accept more!) because there is no question that more is better (multitasking, future-proofing for genuine 64 bit apps, etc). 4 GB is the minimum for new systems, but I've run a 64 bit OS + L4 in 2 GB

Steve Johnson

I doubt that one would notice any difference between 4 GB and 8 GB in normal use....

My NovaBench scores took a nice bounce with the upgrade: 479 to 510.

Jonathan Burke

Although I've been experimenting with a RAM drive recently, I noted a few days ago that the first generation OCZ Revo Drive is now at a very interesting pricepoint. The 50GB drive is about the price of 16GB of good quality RAM, and offers considerably more storage.

I am thinking seriously of purchasing one of these specifically for Logos, especially since the size of the drive offers massive over-provisioning in proportion to the size of my entire Logos folder (around 21GB).

For those interested, a Revo Drive benchmark looks like this. Most important is its significantly superior 4k performance over standard SSDs (see here and here).

Mark Barnes

I am thinking seriously of purchasing one of these specifically for Logos, especially since the size of the drive offers massive over-provisioning in proportion to the size of my entire Logos folder (around 21GB).

You do have to make sure you've got enough room for re-indexing as well. Before purchasing I'd definitely track disk usage during a re-index command.