Recommended memory for Aperture?

Question

I will soon be ordering a new iMac and was wondering what memory people recommend for Aperture?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi John,
I finally have everything setup and a card full of images to test with. I'm pretty new to Aperture so I'm not really sure what tests would be ideal, but here's what I've done.
My SD card had 1774 (raw + jpeg) images, and I popped the SD card into the internal iMac SD slot. I created a new Aperture library for the purposes of testing, first on the iMac and then on the MBA's hard disk attached in target disk mode. In both cases it took only a few seconds, but it seemed to take a little longer on the MBA's drive and I saw a spinning beach ball momentarily.
Then I imported images as managed files into the new library. In each case I had restarted the iMac and had nothing other than Aperture running. I opened the Activity window and timed it from clicking the Import button. I checked the time when it had completed the "copying files" task and again when the "processing" task finished.
iMac internal disk: Copying files finished @ 21 min, 24 sec; Processing @ 31 min, 38 sec
MBA target disk: Copying files finished @ 23 min, 09 sec; Processing @ 33 min, 11 sec
For my own interest, I put the SD card into a USB card reader and attached it to the MBA directly, opened aperture and imported them to my existing library (referenced).
Copying files finished @ 22 min, 7 sec; Processing @ 25 min, 13 sec
So I have no idea what the "processing" step is doing but its interesting that it's faster on the MBA! I even ran that test twice to confirm.. Anyways for the MBA target disk scenario, it would seem that there's a small delay introduced by the MBA target drive.
I also had bookmarked this thread about testing Aperture performance:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/13386837#13386837
So, using 100 raw files from my D7000, results are as follows:
Auto Enhance All:
     iMac internal disk = 2 min, 1 sec
     MBA target drive = 2 min, 7 secs
     MBA = 8 min, 27 secs
Generate New Previews:
     iMac internal disk = 1 min, 16 secs
     MBA target drive = 1 min, 15 secs
     MBA = 7 min, 48 secs
Export Full Size JPEGs:
     iMac internal disk = 3 min, 17 secs
     MBA target drive = 3 min, 17 secs
     MBA = 6 min, 48 secs
So overall I think the delay introduced by the MBA in target disk mode seems insignificant compared to the improvement in image processing time. Since I'd like to keep the option to use my Aperture library remotely on the MBA I think it's a good option!
If you can think of any other useful tests let me know, I'd be happy to run them.
And I set up a clone of the MBA drive using CCC, copied ~130GB in around 50 mins. Nice!
Message was edited by: niccas - formatting