Hello friends, I just started using my new AMD computer. My configuration is AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (works at 1.8ghz), Gigabyte Triton K8 Nforce mainboard, 1gb of DDR400 Ram and an Asus Extreme N6600 128bit with 256mb of Ram. Running with Windows XP Pro (32bit). I like this system but however it works too slow on Vue 5 Esprit. And sometimes crashes... Thats not I expected... This 64bit cpu works like my previous Intel Pentium4 2.40 (not hyperthreading). And I am so upset. Renders still took very long time. I am expecting much more performance than my previous cpu. Also I am getting "not enough memory messages" that I never got with my previous system. Any ideas and suggestions are welcome...

Don't feel bad...I have 3.2GHZ processor/4g of Kingston Ram/Nvidia 6800 Ultra & still get OEM messages, that said, I click OK & it trudges along. I will add this was 1 tree at 2746 x 5184(PZ3 import).

Here is the kicker, I can render at the above size in P5 & a bit larger and NOT get any memory errors at all. It appears as though Poser is using all of my available memory where Vue is not. Go figure.

I have to add, I've had no crashes except with rendering at VERY large sizes.

Also, I've read thru various threads(techie sites) & they say as of now, a 64bit processor will run at equivelent of 3.2-3.4GHZ....which is why I have not upgraded to 64bit yet myself. Another note on the memory thing...I upgraded from 2g to 4g. Before I did this I checked with my puter builder to make sure programs would utilize the xtra 2gigs...he said sure. He inists that the 2g restriction is ONLY on WIN apps, such as Word/Xcel...etc. He said other proggies should be utilizing ALL the avail mem. He also, said going above 4g at this time is a waste.

Message edited on: 05/22/2005 13:28

FYI, no application can use more than 2 GB of RAM on WIndows. That's a OS limitation. Thank you Microsoft.

Petshoo..I'm not sure what to believe anymore :(. Our office puter technicians, say what I mentioned above & that was an "urban legend". That said a lot of people & other techies say what you have. Bottom line I guess...I just want the programs to recognize what we put in them, sooner rather than later >:(. Why are the manu. making ALL MB's to handle well over 4G of ram now???? Well they've been doing it for quite some time now. What is PixelArt using??? I know they have HUGE banks upon banks of puters to render, but I doubt they are only using 2g of ram on each machine. Wonder what OS they are using? Sorry for going OT Kerem.

It isn't so much 'urban legend' as lack of clarity. Any application that uses the integrated Desktop Windows memory controls -are- capped at 2gig max address; those apps that have integrated control code that directly accesses the DMA controls can chew as much memory as you have. The 4 gig limit is due to that being the max a 32 bit address bus can access. But a custom coded memory routine can swipe an old trick, and use a set byte from the data bus to break the memory access into banks. At the penalty of adding a lot of non-processing time(comparatively) to set a buffer from the data bus (you've heard of server boards that address 32 gigs? That's how they do it. A simple buffer that reads an output on the lower byte of the data bus. Each line enables the readwrite for one discreet bank The OS's that use more than 4 gig are either some variant of Nix (either U of Li), or MS Server...both of which does the bank address trick.

Good explanation DaleB... DaleB - Do you have Shade??? The reason I ask, is that that Pro version can render up to 22528x22528. Now in Vue, if I render at 2736x5184...I get a warning & continue on, that said if increase my render size to 5184x5184, it's a no go. Now, I can render in segments, but that's a pain & I am having a lot of trouble getting things to proper scale, rendering that way and I do realize this is due to my own ignorance. That said, I need an easier way. Now..by no means am I slamming Vue, I love this program. However I am now seriously considering upgrading to Shade Professional. I need to be able to render larger images, for a project I am working on and the above method is becoming a nightmare, for me anyway. Anyway, now that I'm done whining/blathering...how can ShadePro do this w/out ill affects? Can you tell, I'm somewhat technically impaired LOL

I have Shade Standard; couldn't afford Pro, particularly since I've very much a neo when it comes to actual modelling. With all the Vue stuff going on, I still haven't had time to really sit down and poke at Shade until the light bulb goes on....

LOL DaleB...I can't model worth a rats a$$ as of yet. Hell, I stopped at Chapter 7 until now. I'll say this much rendering an image in Shade @ 4000x4000 - plain white background - plain old white lights renders in a matter of seconds/1-2minutes. Simply I need to render a very large image w/out a lot of fuss & muss.....I see if you have Poser you can get Pro for $699.00(NOT cheap by any means). Could not find anywhere on e-frontier's site about upgrading from Standard to Pro though. I really have no patience for complicated(which should be simple) matters. ~sigh~ In Shade7 Standard max render = 4000x4000.....cripes I just need 2000 extra either way :(.

About those server boards addressing 32 gig: they use Xeon processors, they have a 36 bit data bus (OK, mapped to 32 bit using the switching banks trick, but that's in hardware, not in software). Win32 is limited to addressing 4 GB. The lower 2 GB of virtual addresses are reserved for executables, the next 1 GB is reserved for DLLs, the top GB is reserved for the system. Applications complied with the /3G switch merge the executable space with the DLL space. There's also another neat trick: writing your program as a tiny DLL loader, everything else written as DLLs. That will leave almost a full 2 GB of (virtual) address space for data. I often write my Win32 programs that way. Has another advantage: those DLLs can be called from other proggies too, which makes my applications very scriptable. 64bit CPUs can address 16 terabyte of RAM. At least, the hardware is capable of addressing that much. Current mainboards do not allow the installation of terabytes (and the cost would be prohibitive indeed!). But an Athlon64 CPU can take advantage of 4 GB easily, running Linux64. When the Win64 trial becomes available, I'm definitely going to try it. I've heard some rumours that it allows 32 bit programs a full 4 GB of virtual memory to play in, and I just can't wait to test Vue and Poser on Win64. Now let's hope e-on makes haste with recompiling Vue 5 for Win64! Shouldn't be too difficult.

amd64/x2(or if you prefer the less performing dual core p D)+ win xp pro 64 will let you use alot more then 4 gig of ram even on the desktop, no need to go the xeon/opteron way to get past that hardware limit. obviously vue64 bit isnt out and im not even sure e.on is working on such a version yet. As for performance you do realize that the difference in render times doesnt decrease that much when upping your cpu performance and even tho an amd64 3000+ is a step up from a p4 2400 cpu the difference isnt that big at all, i dont know how you could think that a mere difference in "600mhz" would severly cut your render times. The big step to cut render time when it comes to your cpu is the dual core ones and most preferably the amd64x2 one, they do cut down on render times quite nicely a amd 3800 would also have been an noticable difference but the dual core amd64x2 should be your next cpu step since the difference is quite big in everything except games (unless you would like to play games and work at the same time, in that case the difference is gigantic)

svdl; Just be sure to use a sacrificable test rig for the XP-64, not a mission critical box. MS isn't providing very good tech support, the driver support is =still= pathetic (as in a lot of hardware simply doesn't have one), and some of the Windows services seem to be missing (whether that is good or bad remains to be seen). No 16 bit app will run on XP-64, and the 32 bit apps run in WOW (Windows on Windows), which is basically an emulator, so there will probably be some program slow down due to that.

I'm sorely tempted to try XP-64, and since I have a fairly new system (built Jan2005) with 64-AMD mobo I'm hoping to find drivers for all my stuff. The Windows services missing is interesting - there are some I sure wouldn't miss. Have you tried running it on one of your machines? If you try, I'd sure be interested in the outcome. Meanwhile, until I track down all of my drivers, I'll just keep surfing for all the info I can find. Longhorn is a long way off. 8-)

Testing a new OS? Never on a critical machine. That AMD64 is my fastest workstation, and I've got loads of disk space to install a second OS (still 250 GB free). And all important data has been backed up to my server on RAID1 arrays. Missing services? The only thing I'm concerned about is video, mainboard and network drivers. I don't care about sound. And I'm pretty sure I'd be better off without some services (UPnP and its security risks come to mind...)

I ran the 2nd beta; the only drivers out there were the Nvidia beta Nforce drivers, the beta GeForce driver, and a beta Creative driver for the Audigy. No mouse beyond basic function, -none- of the extra controller chips had drivers, so there was no ethernet, no RAID-JBOD access to any of my hard drives (Gigabyte mobo with a lot of 3rd party chips for extra functions). A VIA mobo with integrated Ethernet -may- have a beta that has the full functions, but I haven't gone digging for it as of yet.... XP-64 was missing Media Player and a lot of codecs, both audio and video (It's built off of Enterprise Server 2003, not 2k-XP. So whatever 2003 lacks, so does XP-64), no Java at all, so you have to search the Sun site for the beta of Java 64. XP-64 may run 32 bit apps, but there didn't seem to be any interfacing for useage of 32 bit drivers in the lack of 64 bit. That's my take one it, for what it's worth.

I appreciate the info. From what you say, it sounds like I'll be waiting (impatiently) for Longhorn. Sad, but true. Thanks for your input.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like XP-64 supports the essentials of my machine (nForce3 chipset, GeForce6800LE graphics card), even though it's still in beta.

I'm running XP Pro 64 on this machine (dual boot with 32 bit). I found drivers for most of my main hardware no problem (Promise Raid has a small glitch that brings up the 'Found new hardware' wizard each time I boot) and the few issues I've got with it while irritating aren't critical at the moment. - Couldn't find drivers for my Brother laser printer or Canon Inkjet, so I have to print from one of the other machines - Wacom tablet drivers cause complete system freeze, so pressure sensative features of tablet are out. - Can't find any 64bit antivirus software, so extra vigilance required against infection (ditto for anti spyware) - Activesync for my PDA requires the version 4 beta, release versions are only partially functional - No driver for my digital camera, but I normally transfer files using a USB card reader anyway. Media Player IS included in the release version and I've not noticed any missing CODECs yet (divx, mpeg2, xvid, etc all work fine out of the box). It also ships with both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of IE and windows explorer, although I've not HAD to use the 32bit versions of either yet. So far non of the mainstream applications I've tried has had any problems. The few issues are with things that try to access hardware driver layer, intall Explorer extensions or control panel applets. My key applications (Vue Infinite, Poser 6, Photoshop CS, Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, Nero 6) and most of the smaller helper utilities I've tried all run as perfectly on x64 as they did on x32. I would advise anyone considering the switch to check out PlanetAMD64.com (even if you have a 64 bit Intel processor) to make sure drivers are available for all your critical hardware. Sometimes the location of x64 drivers is not immediately obvious on the manufacturers' web sites, so a central repository is very helpful (unlike the Microsoft site) -- Mark