I recently fitted another GiG of DDR RAM to my machine.

My machine now has: 1x 1gig stick & 2x 500 Meg sticks with the 1 GIG stick in the first slot.

All seems well, however when I monitor the RAM usage during a challenging render it rarely shows anymore than about 1.1 gig being used.

Is this the norm?

Or is my machine only utilizing the new 1 GIG stick?

Have any of you monitired RAM usage when rendering your images?, if so are they on par with my results?

Thanks

MaRv

Message edited on: 06/25/2004 12:00

That is the norm. Rendering is a CPU process.

So the speed of the render is governed solely by the speed of the CPU and the RAM only effects the complexity of the render that your machine can handle. I noticed that RAM usage incremented as Poser was loading objects, reaching a plateau when the actual rendering started. Ergo, a machine with 1 gig of RAM when put up against a machine with 225 Meg of RAM both with identical processors will in theory finish the render at the same time. However, if the render has an abundance of objects which would cause the machine to attempt to utilize the full 1 gig of RAM it likely that the lesser machine would lock up. Is this the case, or am I talking a load of rubbish?

Fairly close, really. The other major factor that's going to come into play is the Virtual memory buffer or swapfile. There are a bunch of related factors, but basically the bulk of 3D software rendering engines that are not tied to a specific card are going to be software based, and therefore entirely CPU dependent on performance. This is true not only of poser, but of the bulk of high end rendering applications as well. Modelling and the actual scene setup and design are most heavily influenced by RAM and Swapfile. CPU is then utilized for preview display, unless the display is hardware based (eg, OpenGL), in which case it's often shunted to the video card. Poser is entirely software based itself. So CPU will affect rendering and display of what you load primarily, while RAM and swapfile will handle the actual loading and adjusment tasks. Those three factors are the most important ones to Poser.

I am not sure but I think that poser only uses a certain amount of available ram for rendering. Try another program that uses a lot of memory and see if that goes over the 1.1 gig memory used.

It's even more complex. Simplified, it works appr. like this: Rendering means calculating, and this is done by the Central Processing Unit. But the data that have to be calculated must be available, and, if possible, at the speed the processor works. Therefore there is so-called cache memory which stocks the data that are used and re-used, and then there is the Ram memory which is used for data that cannot be held by the cache memory. Ram is very fast, but not as fast as the processor. And when there's not enough Ram, data have to be written to the hard disk, and the speed is not sufficient to feed the processor. This can lead to problems. So if your scene contains many data that can be held in cache, the ram won't be fully used. This is, as said, nearly an oversimplifocation, but it should give you an idea.

So Ref the swap file or page file, which is I believe the cache memory (correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't be the first time LOL)would you reccommend for windows to manage this or are there tried and tested settings that assist in Posers ability to render faster. Minumum and maximum values etc.

Attached Link: http://www.oddditty.biz/Files/5Things.rtf

When my PC renders, it's not the processor that spikes, it's the Page File Usage. If your machine has the capacity (and with more than a Gig of RAM it probably does) you can increase the Page File Maximum. I don't know how, but someone will either add onto this post, or one of your "computer buddies" should know how. This conflicts with what was said above. Specifically, that "rendering is governed by processor speed". I'm sure that plays a part, but like I said, it's the Page File usage that rises dramatically while my processor speed tootles along at normal speed. Chloe

Page file is part of the functioning of your OS, but it is the hardware that is the engine. Many things at that level are written in languages that go much deeper than an OS does. But you are right that it is the OS that works as a go-between between hardware and application.