Hi I have seen many articles on the internet stating that having 12 gig of Ram compared to 6 gig of ddr3 makes no difference.Vue is a monster of a resource hog... maxes out all 8 cores on my i7 pc.

Does Ram have any impact on render times?

Not much, as it's the CPU that does the horsepower.

RAM is used to hold the info for things like displacement, textures etc
if there isn't enough RAM, it's "swapped" to the hard drive, which is slower to work than the RAM.

Very rarely will any of my scenes go over 4 gigs, usually only when there's a bug!
Some scenes though are extremely complex and I have used 6 gigs but it's very rare

however...more RAM = you don'tneed to worry about having to compress jpg files for poser characters etc, for better optimization ;)

this one was the only one I think that really hammered my RAM, lol (I have 8 gigs)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1755936

I wouldn't worry about more RAM unless you ARE hitting RAM limits, you always assume the operating system takes 500 megs of RAM, to 1 gig (currently that is on these kind of systems)
so if you have 6 gigs, and Vue uses 5 gigs a lot, well, more RAM would be helpful
:)

Thanks I think that answered my question I have had so much advice to double up on Ram . Great pic by the way!

Sometimes/prob by mistake I tried to render a 42,000,000 pixel image and it said run out of ram is this prob because it had way to much displacement etc

My pleasure, and thanks :)
displacement uses a lot of RAM ;)

Does it actually use it whilst rendering though ? or just when turning/preparing 3d models pre rendering?

Because I usually have loads of displacement in my scenes so it prob would be worth the extra ram?

All the time, especially at rendering,
displacement is added only WHEN rendering or rendered (it's stored in memory I believe post render to an extent?)

rendeirng is applied, as it's a super bump map effect, when rendering, if you look at a dispalcement item before it'srendered, it'susually smooth or such, when render get applies, it re-calculates the polygons postion as they are now displaced

so say you had a flat cube, it shows as a flat cube in the display, until you render it

I once tried to apply displacements to 2048 terrains. To my surprise, Vue ate all my 8 Gigs of RAM before crashing. In this case, having 12 Gig would not have helped.

For the scene in this tutorial, I first wished I had more RAM. I then decimated the Poser characters (which are barely seen) and removed the complex ecosystem on a large background terrain and it was much easier to handle afterwards.

In my experience, only scenes with large ecosystems and numerous imported meshes can make me hit the limits of my 8 Gigs or RAM. Also, launching the external renderer while a large scene is still open in Vue may make me hit the litmits.

Get all the Ram you can afford for Vue.   It Matters!!!!

Hmmm I never have any slow down at all when moving around my scene everything is as smooth as hell no jolts no nothing. Then I render...... if for example I had a render that is going to take 5 hours and I had an extra 6 gig of ram is it going to be done any quicker? Even if it was an hour quicker it would be worth it, however if we are talking marginal differences there is no point. I found a benchmark list on the internet where they tested 6 gig vs 12 gig of ram on a multitude of apps and games, there was a difference of about .5 % performance increase from having the extra so it recommended not to even bother. I have never seen Vue use all 6 gig of what i currently have either... apart from once when attempting to render a 42,000,000 polygon pic then it said out of memory I would not attempt a render like this anyway unless it took less than 24 hours (which i doubt!)

Has anyone ever moved from 6 to 12 gig and noticed a difference?

In your case it is unlikely that increasing RAM would improve performance. Keep in mind that Windows would use a swap file when it is short of memory and the only way performance could improve would be reduction of excessive swapping. From your information you don't have any swapping going on.
In some applications it could make a difference (like PhotoShop when manipulating huge pictures). In most applications it would make no difference at all. In 3D it is likely that the processor speed would be a far greater bottleneck than a shortage of memory.
I do assume you have overclocked your i7 processor to reasonable levels (they can all be overclocked quite a bit). Pay attention to cooling.

Increasing RAM is spending money that could be spend better on improved cooling (and thus further overclocking your processor).

Loving the answer ! yep have it on 3.4 I think on standard fan would it be better to swap out the 6 gigs i already have of 1333 ddr 3 to 1800 or someething like that ? Because I have overclocked the ram runs at quite a low speed i think....

According to the tests done by Tom's hardware (www.tomshardware.com) the speed indications on RAM are pretty meaningless. Just change the memory timings and voltage to find the highest stable speed. If this is still too low you will have to check the latest tests to see what is currently the best available memory.

Was thinking about water cooling as an alternative. This could give you a further increase in CPU performance (which is what counts most).

Overclocking also usually degrades CPU lifepsan, thus you have GOT to be careful with temperature and have a temperature monitoring program or feature.
I don't think it's worth the risk as I have PCs for many years, but hey, shrug

Water cooling is usually much the superior method but requires very good skills to do it yourself, though it's a hell of a lot easier than it used to be
There's some nice kits for it,  but you also need a good case to get best use, top quality cases come with fittings or features for facilitating watercooling

I've actually seen a PC built using COOKING oil as a coolant, whole damn cases was flooded with cooking oil, worked like a charm but not what you'd wanna do yourself, lol!!!
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/strip-fans,1203.html

Update I bought another 6 gig of ram. Upon rendering a 2,897,000,000 polygon image with 30 odd objects , 4 or 5 ecosystems etc

. No noticeable difference in throwing stuff around on screen.

. Render 1 = 6 gigs of ram = 6.34
. Render 2 = 12 gigs of ram = 6.33

ram usage still no more than 5 gig whilst "throwing things around the screen" (I cannot think of a better term!)

Ram usage still no more than 2.9 gig usage whilst rendering.

So there it is anymore than 6 gig is overkill! My ram is going back ;-) had to test the theory out though.

you really wouldnt want that oil case leaking either...

Your conclusions won't stop me.

Just ordering a new box (for Cinema 4D). This will have 12 gigs of RAM, 4 1 TB disks in a RAID 10 array, i7 950 processor, 2 graphics adapters for 4 monitors. Probably a bit overkill at the moment but should be enough for the next 5 years. Just have to find enough space on my computer desk to put 7 monitors, 2 keyboards, 2 mice and a graphics tablet.

Quote - Overclocking also usually degrades CPU lifepsan, thus you have GOT to be careful with temperature and have a temperature monitoring program or feature.
I don't think it's worth the risk as I have PCs for many years, but hey, shrug

Water cooling is usually much the superior method but requires very good skills to do it yourself, though it's a hell of a lot easier than it used to be
There's some nice kits for it,  but you also need a good case to get best use, top quality cases come with fittings or features for facilitating watercooling

Nowadays overclocking is expected and processors are well protected against abuse. As long as you keep the voltage in reasonable values you won't harm processors. Mind that this doesn't apply to the other components in the computer. So be careful with your memory, your graphics adapter, your north and south bridge.

Water cooling does often create new problems with the cooling of your power regulators (which are close to the processor and are normally cooled by the processor cooling. Water cooling of your graphics adapter only makes sense if you are a big gamer. Water cooling of the other components is generally overkill. Water cooling is expensive and should only be considered when an already expensive setup needs to be pushed to the limit. The actual gains are small.

Quote - Your conclusions won't stop me.

Just ordering a new box (for Cinema 4D). This will have 12 gigs of RAM, 4 1 TB disks in a RAID 10 array, i7 950 processor, 2 graphics adapters for 4 monitors. Probably a bit overkill at the moment but should be enough for the next 5 years. Just have to find enough space on my computer desk to put 7 monitors, 2 keyboards, 2 mice and a graphics tablet.

I hope they do not stop you ;-) ! Let me know if you manage to use more than 6 gigs tho    i7 950 newer version of processor?

I7 rendering is awesome!

No problems passing 6GB here in Vue 7.2.  Simply try importing a Mudbox .obj sculpt and adding some Vue displacement...  Or any high poly object, for that matter.

Vue doesn't handle imported geo very well at all.  But I suppose most of their customers don't use high-poly geometry, either.  It'd be nice, though!  I have some rather decent scenes waiting for Vue 8 or 9 to catch up before I can actually work on them or render them...

Poser imports seems to eat up my ram but only managed 5.5 gig usage so far, I think the key to using more is lots of displacement and objects as you say Mudbox will do it. At current times though I can't justify a render that long! Are you saving your scenes up for later versions then? That is quite a cool idea. I have one animation that is about 500 frames long and ridiculously complex however I don't think I will be rendering it until Vue 10 either

Well I was mostly joking about waiting for later versions...  Waiting for Vue to "figure it out".  Maya does most of what I need to do, and it's not for lack of hardware that Vue chokes up on imported geometry...

Great program, just too buggy for production use.

More bugs than a scabby youth hostiles beds ;-)

More RAM will indeed help with several applications, including Vue. It all depends upon what you are doing and what software. Keep in mind it must be a 64 bit application and 64 bit OS like Windows 7 64 or Mac Leopard to take advantage of the full RAM use.

3DWorld did several comparisons on this a while back, I think in 2008 sometime. Software like C4D often took advantage of as much RAM as it can handle. They also did video card roundup and yes, water cooling kits are fantastic for both CPU and video cards. I always use a quality system somewhere around $700-1000 and do some cool UV and liquid coolant colors. Be sure you know what you are doing and read up on this if it is your first time. You don't want to ruin your computer by having a leak or it not installed right and frying something you think is working.

I run several applications on my Mac under both the Mac OS and Windows 7 RC and know that memory does make a BIG difference. But like I said, it depends on the software or what you are doing in that software that matters to the usage. Personally, I would recommend 10-16GB of RAM for any new system where you are doing a lot of graphic or video work with it.

Best of luck.

Excellent Info thanks a lot. I have not used C4D as yet but may try it soon if I do I will buy some more Ram too. Whats the render engine like compared to Vue? 

Quote - Excellent Info thanks a lot. I have not used C4D as yet but may try it soon if I do I will buy some more Ram too. Whats the render engine like compared to Vue? 

In terms of memory, you may want to read this article. Even though it is Mac related, it is a good general read about memory use in general. Keep in mind that even if an application is 32 bit, you will find more RAM useful if there are more applications opened or processes working in the background.

www.interrupt19.com/2009/06/15/os-x-memory-usage-explained/

forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx

The other article I referenced to show a user of MODO that upgraded RAM found it better as well. There are some good posts in that thread too.

In terms of your C4D question, I am still very much a beginner and could not give you a real firm answer as to which render engine is better. I have played around with it some and found it to be a VERY good program in terms of animating, importing Poser figures with plug-ins, community, etc. The guys over there are GREAT and have even supported both Mac and PC with 64 bit and written their code very well. Personally, I view both Vue and C4D and two totally different applications though. Vue is a superior scene render program and C4D more so for animation and such.

Hope that helps some, best of luck in your work.

yes it does thankyou very much for all your help I think I am going to download a trial of C4D and go from there!

Yeah, vue is way too buggy for production use.  The bugs are infinite.  Not to mention it render so slow.

E-on shot themselves in the foot with latest version and upgrade/maintenance scam.  Everyone is abandoning vue in search of better faster 3d software.  C4d is an excellent option.

Quote - Yeah, vue is way too buggy for production use.  The bugs are infinite.  Not to mention it render so slow.

E-on shot themselves in the foot with latest version and upgrade/maintenance scam.  Everyone is abandoning vue in search of better faster 3d software.  C4d is an excellent option.

Unless you want large amounts of plants without having to model them all individually that is.  C4D is great at what it does but it doesn't do landscapes.

You really need to upgrade your copy of Vue - 7.4 isn't slow at all