2GB or 1GB?

[panthon]

Hi!

What is your memory limit before crashing? With 2 GB ram we are able to reach 2,6 - 2.7 Gb and then boom... We have a 3GB ram pc which doesn´t seem to be able to surpass 2.7 either I don´t know why, I guess this particular machine should be able to reach 3.6 Gb before crashing... Windows detects the correct amount of ram...so I think it should be something else... Have u got any experience with 3Gb of physical RAM and windows XP (not XP64)?. Thanks!

[percydaman]

hmmm...its basically doing what its supposed to be. before the /3gb switch you were allowed 2gb per process, so mem capped at 1.7gb...with /3gb memory is 3gb per process, which would cap at 2.6gb...so I think your fine.

[panthon]

I´m wondering what´s the benefit of placing 3gb Ram on a single machine if the maximum of memory u are allowed to reach is in total 2.7.
We reached 2.7 with 2Gb in a single pc (counting the virtual memory), and we get exactly the same with 3Gb installed...So, does it make any sense? Is the extra 1Gb completely useless?

However our 3dsmax.exe process stops at 2.7Gb, not 3 Gb, and vray doesnt crash, it just gets frozen...

[instinct]

we got 4GB´s here now in the workstations...and tho i didnt do too many "number tests" it feels better :P Actually my taskmanager shows a total of 3.14GB user-adressable ram. the rest is only available to the system but seemingly used. Wich means more Ram for the user processes. We got some scenes that rendered only via backburner on 2Gig machines...and render locally now on the 4Gig machines.

Greetings,
Thorsten

[panthon]

It´s cool to hear that from you instinct!

I was hopeless

We´ll try harder with our renderfarm in order to get better results...

[percydaman]

if you get 3gb per process and only have 3gb of system memory then you only get for that process whats left over after windows takes its share and whatever other programs are running in the background. Soooo...having 4gb of memory would allow you the full 3gb for your rendering process and allow windows to use the other Gb of memory. Also It would allow you to have more programs running and such.

Here at work, my machine only has 2gb of system memory running the 3gb switch. Which means I frequently cant have photoshop up and running alongside max if Im working on a large scene, which seems is all I work on these days.

At home its a different story, I have 4gb of memory running winxp 64bit

I dont really know how you were able to get windows to use 2.7 gb when not running the 3gb switch. I would really have to see it personally to believe it.

[instinct]

Actually our new boxes here at work used 3.14 out of the box without 3gb switch....(at least taskmanager is reporting 3.14 usable gb no matter if switch is in or out). but with 3gb switch our gfxcards went nutso (gfx7800gtx) so we had to add the userva switch to reduce the 3gb switch manually to 256mb less. then all works like a charm...pretty odd...prolly cause of PCI-X adress space overlapping or sumthin like that.

Thorsten

[priad]

Soooo...having 4gb of physical memory would allow you the full 3gb for your rendering process and allow windows to use the other Gb of memory. Also It would allow you to have more programs running and such.

I disagry with this, I have one computer with 4GB and only 3 are used in windows XP.
That's why XP64 is better.
Cheers.

[s0real]

this 3gb switch thing still confuses the hell out of me!!!

i've got 2gb of ram but haven't enabled the 3gb switch as i thought i didn't need to unless i have 3gig...

should i be using the 3gig switch?

will vray be able to use more of the available ram if i do???

[percydaman]

yes you should be using the 3gb switch. Because it includes virtual memory. As it is now, you hit the 1.6 limit, crash and never get a chance to use any virtual memory at all.

Priad: Ya I think your prolly right, Ive never owned that exact config, so was kinda guessing.