Hi all, I use Vue 5i on a PC with 4 GB RAM. I like to do very complicated scenes with lots of imported objects, and I often run into memory problems. The amount of physical RAM is more than sufficient, but Vue runs into the 2GB per app limit on WinXP. Now I have a question. Since a Mac G5 can handle up to 8 GB of RAM, and the OS can handle it too, can Vue5i use more than 2 GB on a Mac? Has someone tried? If it can, it might be a good reason to buy a Mac.

Go visit the forums on e-on's web site. Unfortunately, Vue 5i suffers the same fate on a Mac. I'm not sure how you've determined Vue uses an entire 2 gigs on a PC; I've loaded complex scenes and noticed the most it has ever used is under half a gig. There are known memory leaks on the PC version causing crashing, and the crashing seems just as prevalent on a Mac. The latest beta patch does not address this issue. I get a lot of crashing in the Advanced Materials Editor. Even running in compatibility mode I suffer frequent crashing, and it's not like my machine can't handle Vue.

Well, at least Vue5i has a better idea of what free resources are: Vue4.5Pro crashed at 50% free resources (and 50% of 4 GB, there you go). Vue5i seems to do its calculations based on 2 GB, which is correct in a WinXP environment. I usually monitor memory usage with Task Manager. Vue5i, with my latest scene fully loaded and OpenGL disabled, took 1.3 GB physical RAM. Rendering at a resolution higher than 1600x1200 - Vue complained that it needed almost a full gig and that it wasn't available anymore. I often put a scene together this way: loading a related set of objects, grouping and positioning them, and then saving the group out as an object. I replace the group by a box, then I load the next set, position and group, and so on. I can do this with OpenGL enabled, without crashing. When the scene is ready, I disable OpenGL and replace the boxes by the appropriate group objects. And then the lighting experiments start.... There certainly are memory bugs in Vue5i, but they're less severe than in Vue4.5Pro in my experience. I'd love to see those bugs squashed, and I'd definitely love to see a way in Vue to work around the 2 GB limit.

Well, I guess my scenes aren't as complex as yours, I try to keep them under a billion polygons - LOL! At least the ecosystem seems to be stable for me. When I populate a scene I have no problems. Thanks for the tips on scene construction! Being new to V5i I need to experiment more with various settings. As I mentioned the last time it crashed it asked me if I wanted to use compatibility mode, which I did. It seemed a little more stable...until I went into the Advanced Materials Editor. Some people are reporting crashing in the Plant Editor as well. Frequent saving has helped me from going insane. Hopefully, e-on will address the memory issue in an upcoming patch. I'm worried though, if they didn't in Vue 4 Pro...

"There are known memory leaks on the PC version causing crashing" I read the eon forums quite regularly, not sure what these are. I'm having the same issue that Vue is only taking about half the RAM available, I'd like to see this one looked at. But I'm not having memory leak issues that you mention.Perhaps you could explain more, and whether there are tech threads open so eon definitely know about these issues? "Some people are reporting crashing in the Plant Editor as well" I think some of these problems were down to faulty installs of V5i for some people. Missing files caused some of the crashes as the V5i disks don't like all CD/DVD drives for installing. The workaround is to copy all the CD files to a folder on your HD and install from there. Cheers

I had a thread on the E-On support forum a while back - whilst some people were complaining that V5I was only using half of their resources, on my system it rapidly uses up all of the 1.5 gig of physical ram, then crashes because there isn't any more! That was whilst trying to use one very complex Poser object though ... ... ...

Yep, I'd seen that LordWexford. I've also run out of memory with massive ecosystems too, though this has improved with the subsequent updates from eon. But that's not a memory leak, just insufficient RAM or Vue not grabbing sufficient memory where it exists. I always understood a memory leak to be where the application keeps grabbing memory, never releasing it back to the system when it had done (e.g. when an object was no longer needed in Vue). I've not seen this type of behaviour from Vue.

So let me see if I understand this. My board can support up to 12GB of memory. I am using Windows 2000 Pro and Dual 2.8Ghz P4 Xeons. If I buy another 10GB ram, will I be wasting my money, if Vue isn't going to use it I mean? Some help on this would be appreciated... Thanks... Gareth:)

@Belgareth: apparently you have server hardware. Windows 2000 and Windows XP can use up to 4 GB, but can only assign 2 GB per application. With a little trick that can be increased to 3 GB per application (a startup switch, I don't know exactly which, but it can be done). Only Win2000/2003 Server can use more than 4 GB (Enterprise or Datacenter edition)

Unfortunately, only a few applications can take advantage of that extra GB. Most of them are typical server applications, for instance SQL Server.

Vue is not one of those few. If it's compiled using an MS enterprise edition compiler (which I doubt), e-on could set a compiler switch to enable 3 GB memory use.

Still, having more than 2 GB of physical RAM can be useful; the "extra" RAM will be assigned to other apps and the OS. And what's left goes to system cache.
I've got 4 GB on my Athlon64 system, and Vue can claim a full 2 GB - and quite often has to claim the full 2 GB, my scenes aren't exactly "light".

So upgrading RAM to 3-4 GB can be pretty useful. More than that is a waste of money indeed.

Message edited on: 04/17/2005 21:32

OK. Thank you for your answer. I could follow most of it. I have a Supermicro Workstation you see, that is why it can take so much ram. I always thought that the more ram you have, the more a program would use (if it needed it)without any limits.