Memory slowly decreasing and then crashing...

[biglolly]

Hi All,

My workstation has developed a strange new habit of late when rendering as a server as a part of our network. It's a Dell Precision 690, 4GB ram, dual quadcore xeons running Windows XP x64 - memory shouldn't be that big of a problem.

I can't figure out of it's vray/max causing the problem or another application. When I start to render something heavy, but even if it's not heavy, the other machines and slaves fly through it, their memory usage for the application raises and then the cup sits at about 100% whilst it renders.

My machine on the other hand, has the memory slowly raise then eventually gets there, usually to about 3gb or so depending on what i'm rendering, and then the cpu usage spikes up and down, memory starts to lower, or just becomes sporadic.

I'm baffled, it's only started doing this within the last few weeks. I'm fairly sure it's not file dependent as it's done this with other files i'm working on. Oh, we're using Vray 1.5, not the SP1 version, the one before that. I wonder if there are any issues with this version and my hardware configuration...

[vlado]

What resolution are you rendering it? It is strange that the other machines do not have the issue.

Best regards,
Vlado

[biglolly]

Rendering at 5000 pixels, split scanline. Could it be some piece of spyware or something like that on my machine that's causing the problem?

Also, sometimes when rendering all of the machines complain about not having enough virtual memory. What I don't understand is that each machine has 4gb of ram and plenty of HDD space, so in the task manager they never really go above 3gb per process. Is that normal?

Actually it could be the file, I've tried another machine and the machine that had the problem has a wacom tablet attached. I'm not sure if this is related, but during the memory problems, the wacom driver says there is a problem with the driver, reinstall it or restart. Restarting usually fixes it.

I might investigate updating the tablet driver and see if that's anything to do with it.

[Morne]

just set your virtual memory (swap file) to double the size. Its controlled by software so it has nothing to do with your 4gb physical memory.
Right click on "my computer" and go to properties. Depending if you're using Vista or Xp it will be different of how you get there.

its a good idea not to let Windows manage your swap file, but rather set the minimum and maximum value to the same value manually. Usually double or even 4 times your physical memory. This basically tells windows to use X amount of hard drive space as memory (virtual memory) This should solve the problems you're having with the machines complaining about virtual memory.