Hi folks,

I have a really annoying issue with Poser, which I've had forever, but which is incessantly worsening as I create more complex scenes and use more advanced materials etc. That problem is that Poser seems to hog all of the memory available. Is there a way I can set Poser to use a maximum amount of memory, no matter how much I have available? I'm so tired of waiting for ten hours or more while a render completes and my system gets so horribly slow that it can take over ten minutes just to open a web browser, only to find that I have to tweak the render and, basically, do without my PC for days!

Thanks,

Glen.

Hi Glen

I would strongly recommend add more RAM,more 16GB RAM will worth it in the end as I've been on 16GB previously and then on 24GB and still I've maxed my RAM too,due this I've bought extra 16GB and now I'm running 36GB(4x8GB and 2X2GB,my Motherboard have 6 RAM slots) and I've never been in situation I'm out of the RAM,although in MAX I'm sometimes too close to the 32GB due this I will be upgrading to extra 16GB later this month

And I would recommend to render in separate process which only helps with large scenes there

Hope this helps and good luck

Thanks,Jura

Sounds wierd your computer is pretty beast, at least compared to mine and i dont have any problems with poser. Its very common for me to run 3ds max, poser and PS at the same time and it works quite well. And i only have 8GB memory and an i5 and PS reserve X amount of memory so not a lot left.

How many objects do you have in your scene, when it starts to slow down?

@Glen: Needing to upgrade because your scenes are getting more complex/sophisticated? Welcome to my world! (heh heh).

@Mobster: I have exceeded 64GB rendering (not a problem with a 96GB workstation); if you're using a big enviro with trees, several dolls, and rendering with effects engaged and at large pixel dimensions, yep, the sky's the limit.

Glen, if your renders are approaching the RAM limit and beginning to page file the hard drive, then it would be worthwhile to increase the amount of RAM. Look up the specs of your motherboard to see what the maximum capacity is. You can also lower the render engine's priority, or render in background.

Another thought is to buy a used server blade (or tower), as a render slave, sending your renders off to the slave via Queue Manager. This will only work for Poser Pro, and currently only for Firefly.

While I agree that upping your RAM will certainly help, you may also want to up your power supply unit. Don't know what your PSU is at now, but the more power your ICore7 has to use, the faster it will run too.

Hi folks, thanks for the replies!

I am rendering in a separate process and also rendering in background.

Upgrading the memory would be awesome, but I'm technically homeless at the moment, with precious little money, so I can't do that for a while, at least not until I have my own place to live instead of this crappy shelter for which they charge unreasonable amounts, lol!

Hmmm, Queue Manager has always crashed for me. I have some old PC's which have been given to me from Freegle, Trash Nothing etc, which I took to build a render farm with, but just haven't had the money to make something of (all of them need hard drives and power leads, at the very least). I'm not sure of their specs, but hopefully it doesn't really matter too much, right? If I have, say, four PC's just dealing with renders, they could take a few days to complete renders and it wouldn't hurt too much... or am I totally getting this wrong?

I think my power supply is the best for my spec, but I'll look into it, thanks. My CPU rarely hits the top of the charts, it's usually memory that does that.

As for how many objects are in my scenes... well... lots and lots and lots, lol! Not all the time, there has been a scene where I've had only V4, a chair and a black skydome, using volumetric lighting, and it has still taken ages. The latest scene I'm rendering is in Annie's Attic, which is a loft apartment for my main character, Annie. Anyone who happens to have seen it should know that there are loads of objects in there... she even has onions and a pack of sticky notes! Still not enough though... many women tend to be cluttermonsters, or, at the very least, have some portion of their abode which is cluttered! Needs more clutter! ;)

Cheers folks!

Glen.

RAM and power supply capacity are analogous insofar that if your usage does not overtax them, then increasing them will not give you benefit. My workstations have power supplies of 1,100W or more, but I run two CPUs per chassis, extra fans, and liquid cooling for some things.

If your memory usage is pegging, then that is your performance bottleneck. How many RAM slots do you have? Are they all occupied? What type of memory is in them?

If you don't know the type of memory, you can go to Piriform.org and download the free Speccy (CrapCleaner and Defraggler are also good). Install and run Speccy, and it will give you the specifications. This is the summary for my little midtower workstation Urania:

Urania uses DDR3 with 9-9-9-24 timing. There's more specific info needed before matching memory sticks, so I expand the RAM heading...

Urania's type of DDR3 is more specifically PC3-10700. That's registered (server) memory. She has six DIMM slots; all of them filled with an 8GB DIMM. When adding memory, you need to match the DDR type, the PC3-12800 or other type, the timing (9-9-9-24, e.g.), and the clock speed (667MHz). If replacing all of the memory, you may have several options which are available; there will usually be about four different clock speeds to choose from, and many server motherboards can use either registered or unregistered memory.

If you note the model number of the motherboard, you can go to the manufacturer's website and look up a list of what types of memory are compatible.

====================================

Queue works fine for me. Install/run DLM on each slave; enter the Queue serial (not the Poser Pro serial). The first time you run Queue on slave units, you will need to OK firewall permissions, usually once when Queue first begins "announcing" it's availability over your network, and again the first time it needs to return a finished render pass.

Limitations: Queue will only distribute complete frame passes - it does not distribute a single render frame across a network (that's #1 on my Poser wishlist!) Queue is currently only enabled for Firefly.

Still, this can allow you to send off promo/test renders to slave(s), freeing up your main computer. For animations, it's a huge advantage, because the 500 (or whatever) frames will be dealt out among all of your machines. Every time a machine finishes a frame, the master will send it the next frame waiting, until all the frames are completed.

Hi Glen

For yours spec I would say 650W should be good enough and if you have larger then you are OK,I've run 550W PSU with X5675 Overclocked to 4.2GHz easily and I've run 8 HDD plus 2 SSD and two GPU(R9 290X and GTX 560Ti) and with this spec I've never have issue with BSOD etc,later on we are replaced for 750W PSU,but this has been down to the as my friend who bought from me this PC has run two GTX 980Ti

Regarding RAM,if you are hitting actual limit of RAM and then you are swapping the Virtual RAM from HDD then you will and can hit bottleneck which is pretty normal and best way is to upgrade RAM,regarding speed of the RAM,on sever board I would use same RAM and ECC with same speeds,but on normal PC which is OC to moderate speeds,I would go with any RAM,I've run mixed RAM combinations(2X4GB 1333MHz,2X8GB 1600MHz,2X4GB 1600MHz) and never have any issue and my PC has been OC to 4.4GHz and RAM actually run at 1700MHz at 1.65v,,yes is great if you can use same RAM,but sometimes you are listen to marketing stuff which claim mixing RAM is bad,I've run and I'm running now on my PC mixed combination of RAM(4X8GB and 2X2GB ) and PC is stable when I do render with Poser or any other render engine like is V-RAY or Corona Render

Regarding yours scene,you are not alone who likes large scene and in yours case I would say volumetric lighting is killing yours renders and this can be issue with any PC unless you will go route as above seachnasaig render nodes which would speed up yours renders tremendously,I've used few times volumetric lighting in my scenes,but at the end I've abandon that approach,right now I would postwork that in PS or do this render in other faster engine

Good luck there and hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

Adding RAM will certainly help for processing large complex scenes with large texture maps. However, if you real problem is trying to do things like browse the web or run other apps while perform large renders the quickest and cheapest option is to lower the priority of the rendering process. Yo can do this from the Task manager on windows. This will technically make your renders run a bit slower but your browser and other interactive applications will be much faster.

Thanks for the help, folks. A knowledgeable friend helped me to build this, so I'll speak with her about RAM... not that I'm in any position to upgrade at the moment, or spend any money at all on anything other than food and rent.

If you have empty DIMM slots, and if any of those nonfunctional computers have compatible RAM, you can simply cannibalize their memory sticks for your working computer.

Or, someone else may have leftover DIMMs on their shelves.

So, you -or your friend- need to find out:

[ ] How many DIMM slots does your chassis have?

[ ] Are any slots empty?

[ ] What denomination (capacity) are the DIMMs you have? (They may not all be the same)

[ ] What type of memory do you have (e.g., DDR3, PC3-12800)

[ ] What other types of memory will the motherboard accept? (Note the motherboard model number and check the manufacturer's website)

[ ] What is the memory capacity of the motherboard? (This is determined largely by the main chipset, e.g., X58 or Intel 5520)

Hi,

Well, I had a look and I have four slots, of which two are currently free. I know I'm running DDR2 and that none of the other computers even come close to having that kind of RAM, lol, they're so old that I'm surprised they're not beige!

I'll find out the rest of the info when I can. I know the motherboard is an Asus, but that's it at the moment.

Thanks for all your help. :)

Glen posted at 1:20AM Wed, 13 January 2016 - #4248810

Hi,

Well, I had a look and I have four slots, of which two are currently free. I know I'm running DDR2 and that none of the other computers even come close to having that kind of RAM, lol, they're so old that I'm surprised they're not beige!

I'll find out the rest of the info when I can. I know the motherboard is an Asus, but that's it at the moment.

Thanks for all your help. :)

Hi Glen

You don't have DDR2,you have DDR3 if yours spec are in yours signature then i7-4770k using DDR3 RAM not DDR2

DDR2 are very old and they're been mostly found on earlier Core2Duo etc,from X58(LGA1366) series Intel went with DDR3 as AMD too

Just please don't buy DDR2 RAM,they're useless

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

Two empty slots is good news!

When you find out the memory type, post again with the info. Specifically, tell us if it is PC3-12800 or whatever.

Oops! Thank you for the correction, lol! Well, I was going from memory (pardon the pun) and I'm dyscalculic, so I have an excuse... I mix up my threes and twos but I'm good with my p's and q's. XD

I'll look into what seachnasaigh said earlier on and get back to you, thanks! :)

Hi again,

So I've run Speccy and come up with this. I really DO know that both memory sticks are the same, so I've only included the one in this. I'm currently rendering an average scene with no special effects and running Chrome with no problems as yet.

RAM Memory slots Total memory slots 4 Used memory slots 2 Free memory slots 2 Memory Type DDR3 Size 16384 MBytes Channels # Dual DRAM Frequency 801.3 MHz CAS# Latency (CL) 9 clocks RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 9 clocks RAS# Precharge (tRP) 9 clocks Cycle Time (tRAS) 24 clocks Command Rate (CR) 2T Physical Memory Memory Usage 77 % Total Physical 16 GB Available Physical 3.57 GB Total Virtual 32 GB Available Virtual 18 GB SPD Number Of SPD Modules 2 Slot #1 Type DDR3 Size 8192 MBytes Manufacturer Crucial Technology Max Bandwidth PC3-12800H (800 MHz) Part Number BLS8G3D1609DS1S00. Serial Number 2768751185 SPD Ext. XMP Timing table Frequency CAS# Latency RAS# To CAS# RAS# Precharge tRAS tRC Voltage JEDEC #1 444.4 MHz 5.0 5 5 14 22 1.500 V JEDEC #2 533.3 MHz 6.0 6 6 16 26 1.500 V JEDEC #3 622.2 MHz 7.0 7 7 19 31 1.500 V JEDEC #4 711.1 MHz 8.0 8 8 22 35 1.500 V JEDEC #5 800.0 MHz 9.0 9 9 24 39 1.500 V JEDEC #6 800.0 MHz 10.0 9 9 24 39 1.500 V JEDEC #7 800.0 MHz 11.0 9 9 24 39 1.500 V XMP-1600 800 MHz 9.0 9 9 24 1.500 V

All of the machines I have in service use server memory (except for an old Pentium4 desktop which seems to be immortal), but I still have gaming memory and processors on my shelves.

Assuming you're in the US, if you send me a PM with a shipping address (family? friend?), I'll send you a pair of 4GB PC3-12800 sticks. Adding those would give you 24GB total in your computer.

These are 1600MHz, but your system will operate them at 800MHz to match your existing memory. Not a problem.

If not, then check the RAM sticks (DIMMs) in the non-working machines you have to see if there is a match; if so, you could cannibalize the dead box for its memory.

Hi,

Wow, that's such an awesome offer, thank you so much! Unfortunately, I'm in the UK, though.

None of the others have suitable RAM, they're all pretty old... I think the most modern one was shipped with XP, though I can't check right now because they're all packed away.

It would be worth checking the dead boxes, just in case. If the print is too tiny on the sticks, you can compare the placement of the notches. The notches on DIMMs help prevent you from using incompatible memory.

Ok, thanks, I'll give it a look when I can. :)

Hmm - I think Win7 limits all threads to 2Gb RAM. Am I wrong? The way Poser has used memory has changed over the years.

For example, if I understood what I was seeing, my old Poser8 would have 3 'partial-scene' threads running on a quad-core, and the last core was the manager. So while the total load might be 100% at first, usually 1/2 way through the render the CPU load had dropped to 50% or less, as 1 or 2 of the partial-scene threads had completed their section and stopped. No increase in "memory" would fix that! Also, some older version of Poser (non-PRO) limit all threads to 2GB RAM regardless of the Windows version ... so adding more RAM is pointless.

Newer Poser does a better job of keeping all working. For example, at least with PoserPRO2014, all cores keep working, as each is doing small portions of the scene. In fact, I splurged to buy PP2014 (& move to Windows 8) after P8 to gain the larger 64-bit support which allows (as example) any 1 thread to use ALL available RAM. So if you are using an older Poser under Win7 64-bit, you are going to be limited to a few threads max'd at 2GB each, and adding RAM won't help. This was a W7 thing - as even in Windows 7 64-bit, all threads were limited to 32-bit RAM space.

My system is AMD FX-8350 8-core with 16GB RAM. I find the shaders used have the max impact, so for example any scene with glass or glossy-surfaces designed for DAZ renders horribly in Poser - so as example, I select any glass and apply a Poser-friendly 'glass' MC6, and that can EASILY cut 90% of the render time off a stupid scene with a few water glasses on a table!?!?!

You would only encounter a 2GB limit with a 32bit version of Win7; the limit is per process, not per thread. Firefly is a single process, even if it is using 24 threads (dual H/T hex-core Xeons).

Glen is already running 16GB, so the OS must be at least 64bit Win7 Home Premium. If running Win7 Pro (or Enterprise or Ultimate) then that computer -apparently dual channel- would probably max out at 32GB (four 8GB DIMMs). The limiting factor would be the motherboard's main chipset.

Poser, through P6, was 32bit and single-threaded. P7's Poser Pro derivative was 32bit with a 64bit Firefly. It could dice the render up into halves or quarters depending on your processor. After that, all of the Pro versions offered full 64bit (both the studio and the render engine), and rendering was distributed bucket-by-bucket as cores became available.

The limitation you were seeing is due to the single-thread Poser (4-6) or P7Pro (limited to four blocks, I think), not due to 64bit Win7. Another possibility is that you had a 32bit version of Poser installed; rendering would be limited to 2GB even if the machine is 64bit with lots of memory

I have seventeen machines running 64bit Win7Pro (or Ultimate); except for Eir & Kara, each machine has two H/T hex-core Xeons, and I can see all 24 threads pegged during renders. I have exceeded 64GB memory used while rendering. So Win7 can definitely use all of the processor cores and all of the RAM available to it.