Does it help to have more than 16 gb of memory?

I am buying a computer and I wonder if it makes sense to purchase extra memory. I do a lot of number crunchng on sound waves sampled at 44 kHz and my last two computers had at least 32 gB of memory. So, is there a benefit to having lots of memory when using Matlab?

Thanks.

Dave

[DGM]

I only have 8GB and I do interactive multilayer image composition (like in photoshop). I can at least say that having less than 16GB is an absolute pain.

Consider that (at least in my observations) the baseline memory footprint of the newer versions of MATLAB seem to be significantly higher, and things like web browsers (and the increasingly burdesome content they deal with) are only going to get better at wasting as much of your system resources as they can. If you don't need 32GB today, you will probably want it eventually.

How critical the specs are to you today is something that's probably best determined by you. If your machine has 32GB of RAM, consider pulling half of it and take it for a spin for a few days. Observe performance and swap usage and see if it's an issue or not.

[David Koenig]

Thanks!

[Dave B]

I thought it might be worth adding a few things about platform:

• If it's a PC, you can likely upgrade after the fact (installing ram is pretty easy even if you've never done that kind of thing before, so long as you can be very careful and follow instructions). If it's a mac, particularly a new M1 Mac, it will be extremely difficult (I think currently impossible on the M1). On the other hand, the M1 macs are super speedy!
• In my experience linux does way better with memory than Windows. If you want a MATLAB variable that consumes 13gb, and you have 12 available, windows will come to a grinding halt...but linux happily moves to using hard disk without you having to notice. Not sure how Mac handles that, but I suspect more like linux? Some of that may have changed in recent years...but my instinct is it's generally more useful to have more memory on Windows.

[David Koenig]

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

In general the more the better. I'm not sure how long your audio files are but probably 32 GB is plenty. I have 32 GB and deal with images, which are usually way bigger than audio files and that's fine for me in most situations. Just booting and running Outlook, Firefox, MATLAB will usually take up about 14 GB or so, so 16 GB would not be enough, but 32 GB seems to be okay. I rarely, if ever, get close to 32 GB being used, even with lots of images open. If your audio files really long (gigabytes worth) then you might see if you can get more than 32 GB if you can afford it.

[David Koenig]

Thanks!