Ok, e-on tech boys are now saying I can't use the Poser shader tree because I don't have enough RAM [2 Gig], they deny that's what they're saying, but in effect that is their response to a another support ticket.
They're saying there is no memory issue anymore because it was fixed in the last update so all my OOM messages are due to my pc not having sufficient RAM!
Now I could go down the route of getting our trading standards guys involved but I can't be arsed because, well what's the point, it would take years and Vue 10 would be out by then!!

Anyway Rant over, here's my question:
If I buy 2 new 1 Gig sticks and upgrade my system to 3 Gig will that be enough??
I currently have 4 slots each with 512 Meg in.
Alternatively I'd have to buy 4 new sticks of 1 Gig and upgrade to 4 Gig in one hit. [costly]
So is anyone running Vue6Inf with 3 Gig and can you use the Shader tree please?

Or should I just wait until January 2008 when I can prolly upgrade to an all singing, all dancing 64 bit system with 8 Gig RAM???

Opinions are highly sought please!!

I'm using 4g on XP32 & get no OOMs when using PST. Then again I rarely use it, but when I have I've had no issues. 

I'm running XP with 2 gigs and I can use the poser shader tree alright.
Bear in mind that there is no need to go over 2.5 gigs really, since XP 32 bits can't address more than 2 gigs per application.
Maybe your ram is faulty here, maybe you should only have 2 sticks of 1 gig, unless your ram is dual memory, in this case it works with 4x512 better than only 2x 1gig.
Or maybe your video drive is a tad too old? Mine has 512 megs (new), and it does make a huge difference in handling textures compared to previous machine.

Unfortunately, they are probably right.

Windows XP is taking a lot of memory on its own (Vista needs 2G just for the system !).

If you have Vue open with a scene loadd and you are using the poser shader tree, you are effectively opening poser in the background on top of Vue.

With 2G, you will run out of resources quickly.

I have 3G and I rarely see OOM messages. 4G would work even better.

Remember that under 32 bits, any application in windows can only use 2G at a time. So if you have 3G, in theory, that allows Vue to use 2G (the limit) and windows / poser would share the remaining 1 G.

Well I'm running XP home and my graphics is an Nvidia 7300 gs with 512 RAM so it's similar to yours Bruno which is odd!
I mean I "can" use the shader tree but I have to purge memory constantly.

I've done a check and my background stuff is using roughly 500 Meg of RAM which leaves just 1.5 Gig for Vue, so if I put another Gig in, Vue should then have 2.5 Gig to play with, right! 
So would 2.5 Gig be enough to not have to purge all the time or is there still a reason why vue isn't freeing the memory, why can't they automate the purge memory thing!!!??

Are you running in the Classic Mode?  Do you have all of the themes, bells and whistles turned off for XP, especially the Visual Effects.  Control Panel, System Properties, Performance, Settings, Performance Options, Visual Effects.  Disable all of the Effects.  Classic View and disabling Visual Effects can get you 5 to 10 percent resources back.

Select the Vue exe file and change the compatibility setting and Diasable Themes, which will also calm vue down. 

If it keeps up, then check the version number of your video card, 97 series is the most stable.  Try another version of drivers your card will support. 

keenart: seeing as you're here, what spec would you recommend for a complete pc upgrade please?

thefixer I just built a pc with Intels Dual Core e6600 2.4 ghz with XP 32 bit using 4 gigs of ram of which windows is seeing 3 of it.
  I have a few scenes that choked with my old pentium system but loads faster and I can work with it now.
  I am still getting very low resourses with OEM error but havent crashed yet.  Got down to 15
% resourses and purged memory and only got back to 25%.   This tells me no matter what system you build there is till memory and resourses with Vue the Program.

keenart helped me with my system and if e-on will get those memory and resource leaks fixed I think I can now use Vue. :)
 

Quote: if e-on will get those memory and resource leaks fixed 

Yea, that's the point though Iloco, they've told me they are fixed and there aren't any memory leaks now!!!

So I have to decide to try more RAM now or wait until next year and bag a whole new system with 8Gigs in so I don't have memory issues!!!

With WIN XP32 Windows is recognizing. 3.4G of my 4.  I know in Vue5I(can't say now cause I'm not getting the same info as I did with 5)That Vue was using all 4 when it could.  The oom errors gave me this info.  For example Vue would say " you need 3.5(insert any number over 2 up to & over 4) and you only have 2 would you like to continue.  I would say yes & vue would happily contine on.  In further testing, I upped the ante...Vue said you need 4.5 to render, I would continue & it would crash since I only have 4.  I hope I'm explaining myself properly.

In addition, until EON fixes all this turning off the camera preview & unchecking showing decimated mesh(under display option) greatly improved my resource issues.  If I had these on I wouldn't have been able to do the last few pics I have done.

Why do I get low resources on scenes that vue 5 will work with and can keep adding but vue 6 will not do it .  Getting down to 15% and Oem message tell me something is leaking by the bucket fulls.
  I dons't buy it if they said memroy kleaks and resources are fixed.  :)

Well, although frustrating, I would wait a little longer and see if e-On is going to put out a newer patch, give them another month to fix the problem, before you invest in a new system. 

Debbie hit on something that could be of concern, and that is the sharing of system memory by the video card. Almost all cards now share the system memory, even though they have onboard memory. Microsoft on the other hand, writes drivers for those cards that do not use this shared video with system memory. So what do they know that they are not telling us? Could this be an additional source of our troubles? So maybe it is worth trying the Microsoft drivers as apposed to the Video Cards drivers??? They only support OpenGL 1.0, MS’s version is 1.1.

Boards with 4 gigs and above seem to function without problems or relatively few problems. Still 32 bit can use up to 3.2 gigs of memory, so Vue should be slow but not crashy, unless they still haven’t figured out how to manage memory threaded allocations. And, there is nothing you can do about that, except wait on e-On to make the right move. You can read about this and Compilers and all of that stuff at Intel.

In addition, it depends on the board you like, because I have seen cheap boards function as well as high end boards. I like Tyan, but they are out of my price range now, so went with ECS, and was amazed how stable this board was, and at $99, %40 off I am happy. 

Basically you want a board with the latest in ACPI, if you ever want to upgrade to Vista.

ASUS is the popular board right now, and almost all of the major companies are using them as OEM.

An E6600 Duo Core 1066 mhz if you can handle the price.

DDR II at half the speed of the CPU is acceptable 533 or 667 mhz, or 800 if you can afford it.  I bought two sticks in pares of 667 for $79.00 recently.

A video card 7800 should be good enough to work with this system, or an 8800 if you want to run DX 10 3D games.  Remember the driver issues NVidia is trying to resolve.

Before you do that you might also check the thread out about the new NVidia drivers. They have new betas for XP, and 2000 as well, and they might solve some of the problems you are having, although they do use shared memory. You can always uninstall them if not.

Thanx for the advice Keenart, appreciated!!

"Or should I just wait until January 2008 when I can prolly upgrade to an all singing, all dancing 64 bit system with 8 Gig RAM???"

That is the way to go for vue and many other 3D memory hungry applications....I have been using XP 64 for over 2 years, I have 3 hard drives and 3 system for multi boot, including XP 32 and Vista ultimate 64...I stay with xp 64...I currently have 8 GIGS of ram(1066) on a Q6700 overclocked Quad...Very few problems with vue, and no memory problems.
Good luck

Thanx dsr207, appreciated, I prolly will wait I think!

e-on should put a notice for everyone to upgrade their computers before buying vue 6 inf.  None my other programs require that much for them to work.   Something is amiss somewhere and I sure hope they get it fixed for the slower class of cp users who don't have all those exspensive upgrades just to make one program work.      I can see the loyal hobbiest are being forced out of 3d because of wht is required to run the applications. :)

Quote "That is the way to go for vue and many other 3D memory hungry applications....I have been using XP 64 for over 2 years, I have 3 hard drives and 3 system for multi boot, including XP 32 and Vista ultimate 64...I stay with xp 64...I currently have 8 GIGS of ram(1066) on a Q6700 overclocked Quad...Very few problems with vue, and no memory problems."

Super rig you got there :)

That said I have a large amount of apps(3d) & none come close to needing those kind of requirements not even close(I don't game).  We should all not be expected to have avid gaming setups to run an app. It's insanity. IF in FACT that's what needed to run Vue fluently they need to update their requirements page ASAP.  from 4g required to 8G recommended.

I totally agree...It shouldn't be a requirement, but sadly, in vues case it is...They should change the  recommendation as you suggested or fix it...That said, for many 3D apps, it's a huge bonus to have all the memory you can afford...And 64 bit systems will use all of it....

Sadly enough if EON would just fix the :cursing: leaks one wouldn't need 8g of ram and one wouldn't have to turn off 70% of the features to get it to work properly.

Thats nice if you got plenty money coming so can do it at the drop of a pin but a lot dont have it to throw away especialy when its a hobby.
  If e-on would fix the memory and resources issues a lot that slike to use vue would not have to worry about upgrading to something a lot can not afford.

 I see a lot of pictures in the gallerys that are made with Vue 5 because I am sure they  might do it only as a hobby and thats all they need.
  This will be my last upgrade to Vue if it requires all this memory and high end computers to be able to run it.    Nothing else I have requires it.  :)

Well, that recent build helped me a lot, can load several poser figures inw ithout the damned hting crahsing.

however, i still get one odd glitch: unless I turn to wireframe or reduce the display, I still get problems where the "axis" handles cannot be used ot move objects in 1 or 2 viewports, GRRRRR!!!!!
-nvidia 6600GT card, WinXp Home, 2 gig ram, 2 HDs.

Things I've found in general to help are:

1. I use Registry Mechanic, windows ends up makign a total kludge of your registry and cuases havoc. this proggie helps a lot.

2. I have seperate art and game/browsing PCs. this helps too, WIndows makes a mess with Documents and Setting storing too much crap, and bogging things down.

3. Kill, burn destory Norton AntiVirus, omg, what a piece of poo that has become, NOTHING caused more mayhem than that, bar couple of games who's insane secruity systems probably lead to the death of 3 hard drives of mine (Star Force, what garbage, literlaly wrecked folk's systems.)
   Dunno what Norton did, but last 18months / 2 years, it's just totally degraded any Pc it's in, so got rid of it once and for all.

;)

silverblade33,

Curious, what version of drivers are you using for the 6600GT, and does it use Shared System Memory?

Let's see
Amd 4200 1gig 4200 mem 256 mg card and i can render large scenes in poser, cararra, studio, bryce which will crash vue out.
Vue  was never written to use poser but when they started trying with poser 5 and 6 took them ages to get vue working as best they could with poser imports.
Vue 6 is badly programed and instead of writing vue 6 from scratch to work with poser from outset, they did vue then added poser on top and if you complain to much on this message board.
You either get moderator pulls post and some peeps screaming your post down then phoning e-on to say.
We did it we protected ya again, vue 6 esprite is atrocious and their one reason only they letting peeps download 6 in ect LE.
Forget the crap oh need win 64 50 gb mem ect as vue should have been programed from start to use memory properly, it dont matter how many patches out.
Vue 7 will have to be writen with poser included from start to sort out Lot's problems and i can put 1 more gig mem in comp and have not installed xp 64 on other partition yet.
For small poser scen in vue 6 and with terrain if it dont crash vue is fantastic but until eon program next one properly we will see same fault's.
vue 6 eprite cheap cut down version of inf and let's say lots of people who got esprite were screaming holy murder that they wasted their money.
I expect this post to be pulled or slagged off then those people who do it phone up thier pay masters at e-on and say we protected you again.
E--on have message board's covered with helpers to crucify post's that really slag them off, and you may protect e-on on message board's, but message has spread in the street.
Vue 6 was badly programed and that's it and if people relay hammered them in message board's and on tv computer shows they wold panic, as vue is a superb program but they should have taken time to implement poser into it.

they say 4gig of ram is the sweet-spot. Well fixer you are lucky - at least you're not crashing on importing poser people like I amwith the latest 291551 build. Love esther

Jugoth - let's see...

Vue was one possibly the first third party programs to feature Poser import. This was the main reason why I switched from Bryce to Vue around the time of Vue 4. I don't know of any other software who had that level of integration at the time.

In your list of software who can handle large Poser scenes (excluding Poser since it is their own content), neither Bryce or Carrara are using the Poser SDK to import Poser content. That integration is not easy to accomplish but eventually it will allow to do much more than alternatives (such as using the poser shaders).

Ok... so Vue has bugs.. so does 99.9% of complex software written over a long period of time. Not every company has the funding and the capacity to promise a software for years and deliver it when it is completely ready (how long have we heard about terragen 2 for example ?).

Memory leaks are not like plumbing. In modern software, you can't always trace back every possible interactions between components and find the source of a leak. Leaks have to be proven, with repeatable situations and extensive testing to even be sure where they happen in the first place. 

Looking at the gallery, it seems to me people are doing quite well with such an 'atrocious' software :) Maybe I am missing something...

You could say I am defending Vue again. I could reply I am doing my job as a mod to bring some perspective to extreme views. I will repeat it again, e-on is not my pay master and I do not have a direct phone line to let them know each time I do my job here.

FYI;

Have been doing a lot of testing behind the scenes with Vue to see what other than the Poser Shader Tree is knocking down Vue. 

Of primary concern are the newest features, Displacement Mapping, Subsurface Scattering, and Volumetric Materials.  Vue normally needs 1 gig to function at normal levels.  However, when you add the above newer features, Vue requires about 1.5 to 1.7 gigs of ram to process these higher functions for a 15 million hard ploy scene, not including eco polys. 

That has proven to be a problem for Vista, which typically uses about 450 to 960 megs for system resources, because of the SuperFetch algorithm.  And, to add, NVidia and the other graphic card companies have started allocating System Memory as much as 25% of your Ram to use with their video cards, further reducing the efficiency of the System, and aiding in instability, which could typically leave you with less than 900 megs of usable Ram.  You cannot turn the Video card Memory Allocation off, it is hardwired into the software.  If your system will tolerate the change, you can go back to drivers that do not share memory.  Or, you can get around this problem by using a Memory Manager that can reclaim Ram, such as SuperRam or TweakRam.  Vue will hiccup for a moment or two and then finish processing when these Managers are active in the background.

Good news for Win XP enthusiasts, in most cases as long as you have minimal apps running, and like the Classic look, your system should leave about 1.7 gigs free in a 2 gig system. 

Therefore, when using the higher demands, have at least 4 gigs of memory to adequately process Vue’s requests, and other than bugs, the software should perform for you without a lot of trouble. 

Quote - Well I'm running XP home and my graphics is an Nvidia 7300 gs with 512 RAM so it's similar to yours Bruno which is odd!
I mean I "can" use the shader tree but I have to purge memory constantly.

I've done a check and my background stuff is using roughly 500 Meg of RAM which leaves just 1.5 Gig for Vue, so if I put another Gig in, Vue should then have 2.5 Gig to play with, right! 
So would 2.5 Gig be enough to not have to purge all the time or is there still a reason why vue isn't freeing the memory, why can't they automate the purge memory thing!!!??

Okay, here's some advice from an old computer tech.  500 megs of RAM being used by the backround stuff is pretty high.  I'm running a fully loaded laptop with only 512 RAM (shared with Video).  Typically my background apps run between 250 and 300 megs, and I need to cut down on some of them.  You've basically got far too many background apps running.  Also, another thing  you can try is to raise your virtual memory settings on your pc - it'll run very, very slowly because the system is using part of the harddrive as memory, but it helps get rid of the out of memory errors.  To be honest, I don't bother with the Poser shader trees.  I can do much better by editing the textures in Vue because I have more control.

Hope this helps,
Darkwolf

I rarely use Vue these days but am slowly getting back into 3D. My dilemna has been when to upgrade my 'old' AMD 3200 1GB system and to what. This thread has answered a lot of my questions before I asked them. Separate boxes for admin and art with the latter having quad core running XP 64 seems to the best solution currently at least for my way of working.

Meantime, Keenart, you're a star. I thought I'd done all I could to turn off XP's useless flashy stuff via TweakUI but your advice to change the Control Panel setting and switch to classic view has given me back about 5% resources. Also everything seems neater and easier to find. Cheers!

Mark

I recenty had a VUE problem trying to render larger complex images with 5 poser characters and other stuff in the images with Vue but found a solution for my case.  I thought it was a memory problem because I could not render larger images.  Additionally, my system would also crash after doing several renders of the same image, as though VUE was snowballing away my memory.  However, I found it was not memory in my case but was an accumulated rise of temperature in my CPU; which I was able to fix.  Check out my thread below:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2705718

Good story. I had a similar issue a while ago, with low performance on a CPU that should have been good. It turned out that my power supply was maxed out and I had to replace it for a more powerful one in order to get the performance I wanted.

Can anyone recommend a good antivirus program?  My Norton subscription just expired.  I always had to shut Norton down to render.  I'd like a program that doesn't interfere with Vue!
Thanks!
Peggy 

AVG is one that dont interfere in background.   I am using pc-cillion and it seems to work ok. :)
  I never did like Norton for a virus scan.    Just my opinion. :)

I have AVG on two computers and pc-cillion on 3. :)

I switched from Norton to PC Cillin as well. Best thing I did for a long time.

I have AVG professional and IMHO it's the best I ever had but my Mother In law has pc-cillin and she finds that really good too!!

Footnote: I will never ever have Norton on my system again, EVER! I've said why before so won't bore you all again except to say it's crap!

If you want a clear view of what's running on your box and what resources it's hogging, download and run Process Monitor.  I've been an AVG AV fan for years although I'm not so keen on the firewall.

Cheers,
Mark

I have had more problems with memory running Vue 5 Infinite than I had previously had with Vue 5 Espirit.  Although I had occassional crashes previous with a systems with less resources, slower processor, and less ram I am cautiously optimistic now since I've redone my Windows.   I will try to import lower polygon with lower res maps in the future.  I will also try to save my figures as VOBs.

Carrara, for some reason, does not seem to be plagued by these sorts of issues.  It imports figures with very high res maps without problems.  If Carrara improves it's plants and atmospheres in the next release it will really give Vue a run for it's money.  Carrara's plants aren't very real looking--okay for is distance but not for close ups.

Vue 5 Inifinite won't import anything from Poser 7, so I guess I will have to reinstall Poser 5 or 6 to use my Poser stuff in it.

I'd love to go to 64 bit, but not all of my hardware is 64 bit compatible.

Tomsde

Vue is ported, not a true windows program and Carrara is, that is the main difference between the two.  I have Carrara also and agree with your assessment.  Bryce 6 looks pretty good, so it will be interesting to see how the team redoes Carrara.  With Mark still hanging around, I think the possibilities are good for a nice remake.

If your memory problems are sever get a memory manager, they are pretty cheap like SuperRam or TweakRam.  Either of these managers will recover the memory you need to get you through the lean times.  They can also be set to recover a minimum, or recover when Ram falls to a certain levels and are very usefull.  I have two gigs of fast Ram and have to use one or I would never get anything remdered.

Quote -
If your memory problems are sever get a memory manager, they are pretty cheap like SuperRam or TweakRam.  Either of these managers will recover the memory you need to get you through the lean times.  They can also be set to recover a minimum, or recover when Ram falls to a certain levels and are very usefull.  I have two gigs of fast Ram and have to use one or I would never get anything remdered.

Would you recommend one of those memory managers over the other?

keenart: Iloco said you helped him with a new pc spec. If I send you a PM would you look over one for me and give me your opinion please!

I really don't have a problem with any of my other 3D applications, in fact I rendered a 4000 x 2500 px picture in Poser on the highest quality settings in about 10 minutes.  That would have taken all evening or all night with my old system.

I used to have a memory optimization program, but I hadn't really seen any increase in performance so I uninstalled it.  That was some time ago.  I also had System Mechanic which was supposed to cure memory leaks and deframent the ram.  

I may try to up my ram, it is an XP 32 bit system.  I've read that you can activate the 3 gigabyte switch in XP and make it accept that much--I also understand that it can't use more than 3 gigs or handware drivers would start having issues.

Tomsde
The 3 gig switch is a bit touchy, better to upgrade ram if you can.  I listed the URL's in a previous post, but am old enough I forgot which one.  You can go to Microsoft and get the info on the 3 gig swtich in the Knowledge Base, and how to set it up.   You might want to do a little search on the Web and get some other reactions from other users on this switch.

Kepplock
For a simple interface with only  a couple of settings, SuperRam and price are easy to work with.  TweakRam is a better product and can give you more options and a quick recover Ram button.  I would say that no memory manager has the capability to significantly increase perfromance in any of the current OS's.  In the old days yes, but not today with all of the fast access hardware.

Typically my use of the memory Manager works this way.  I have duo cores, and when Vue is going to crash, it only uses 40 to 50% of the CPU rather than the 100% it should use, and all of the memory, instead of 5 to 10%, until it crashes.  

So, I set the mem manager to recover and free extra Ram when My CPU usage falls below 60%, and my Ram resources fall below 512 Megs. This resource monitoring is by the system, and not Vue, which never gives an accurate accessment.   When I run Vue and the app begins to fail, it hits the settings cap and TweakRam stops all activity, recovers the Ram necessary for Vue to continue, and I do not suffer an OS crash, which would happen otherwise.  

I keep TweakRam reduced to the Start Bar, and do not run the app unless I have Vue running.  It is well worth the investment to me to be able to get my work done, instead of nursing system crashes, which by the way has not happened since I began using the mem managers.  These apps are also nice if you are a gamer and have system crashes because of unrecovered memory use.  

Check out the web sites for the apps and see which you like.  There are others good managers, but these are simple and easier to work with, and do not have a lot of usless and expensive bells and whistles.

thefixer
Yes, send a PM, be happy to help.

Quote - e-on should put a notice for everyone to upgrade their computers before buying vue 6 inf.  None my other programs require that much for them to work.   Something is amiss somewhere and I sure hope they get it fixed for the slower class of cp users who don't have all those exspensive upgrades just to make one program work.      I can see the loyal hobbiest are being forced out of 3d because of wht is required to run the applications. :)

I just pop in and read on this issue once in a while to see how things are going... I TOTALLY agree with iloco!! It's just TOO ODD that ALL my programs, including hoggy photoshop and vue 5 infinite are running SUPER FINE with my two gigs of ram and my current ram heavy video card...why on earth should I purchase more ram and/or a new machine just for ONE program?!  It makes no sense! 

I took vue 6 OFF my machine and have been playing in vue 5 i since...and have much less stress... I see some top quality vue-ers doing the same thing- going back or staying with the tried and true! Sure my vue5 will still lock up when I stuff it full of complex figures/maps - even when I take the time to make a vob of all my "imports".... but at least it works! With my vue 6 I can't have even ONE figure without the thing acting like it weighs a thousand pounds ! and yes yes yes... I have all things turned off, disabled etc... and still the funny looking thick red mesh of my "wire frame" object is like it's sticking to the ground... argh!

I am working on another split water scene and having the greatest time (in vue 5)... : D  Just sorry I did pay out the huge bucks for 6 before reading up on user's comments... oh well LESSON learned for the last time!

Lyne

Quote -
Kepplock
I keep TweakRam reduced to the Start Bar, and do not run the app unless I have Vue running.  It is well worth the investment to me to be able to get my work done, instead of nursing system crashes, which by the way has not happened since I began using the mem managers.  These apps are also nice if you are a gamer and have system crashes because of unrecovered memory use.  

Thanks for the response, it seems like a small price to pay for a performace boost even if it is a slight boost.

message from e-on:- if it is indeed an overheated processor issue, the whole system should freeze, not just Vue.

You might want to consider Panda.  They have a complete internet security suite available commercially (which includes antivirus & a very good firewall) -- plus you can do a full in-depth virus scan of your entire system online for free.  But be forewarned: the in-depth virus/spyware scan is very, VERY thorough -- and it can take a considerable amount of time to complete.

http://www.pandasoftware.com/

The commercial version of the software is much faster, of course.  And it actually fixes the problems that it finds.  The free online scan merely identifies problems -- it doesn't fix them.

Panda has caught several viruses & intrusion attempts for me -- including stopping spyware from being loaded onto my machine by various websites, etc..  Here's a look at a recent report.

The software keeps a low profile, memory wise.  Which is a big plus to us 3D types.

Norton?  What's that?  Haven't used it in years..........

To solve most unexplained crashes, this is what i do:

1- Start -> Run -> type "msconfig" -> go to "Startup" tab, and uncheck all things you absolutely know that you don't need to startup when your windows starts. In doubt, leave it there (although it can be re-checked if you lack a functionality in some other software). Then, restart and open your software directly (poser, daz, carrara, bryce...) and 50% of the crashes are resolved.

2- Get the DownRezer poser utility (small software available at renderosity), and use it to be able to put more people and clothing in a scene without charging your RAM. Although some people recommend the use of virtual memory, which works fine, it will still slow down your render time. Less RAM used = faster and more stable render, at every level. You shoud DownRez your textures on models too far from the camera to make a difference. 99% of the time, you can't even see the difference in textures unless you move the camera to a model big closeup.

3- Before a serious render, i restart the computer, which now has less stuff that auto-loads, and i do NOTHING else before i render, not even play in the software for adjustments. I do 20 hour renders with complex and polygon heavy files without any problem, now that i lower the system background tasks and DownRez my textures.