Hello,

Have a question regarding memory and my Vue Infinite 5 program.

Well my pc is 2.4 ghz
and I have 512k memory installed.. so was thinking, if I add an additional 512k stick of mem
will it greatly improve the performance of Vue 5?

reason I ask is because sometimes it takes ages for things to settle down, for instance: changing the camera location or moving a plane [with loaded eco-system] slows down the program emensly :( 

So should a gig of memory be quite a better improvement as opposed to 512k?

Thanks For any help

• Mad Mike -

Should help a lot - but not as much as 2GB. Some people don't notice that the Vue 5 Infinite requirement states "...512MG of free memory." So if you have 512MB total memory, with Windows and other stuff loaded, then Vue is being pretty much starved for memory.

How you setup your virtual memory is also important:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

Agree with JC. More memory is the single best thing you can do to your computer to use Vue, or any computer graphics program for that matter. And, for standard computers, it is relatively inexpensive, compared to every other piece of hardware. If you can, you might want to look at your motherboard manual to determine how much RAM your computer can support, and in what configurations. (That is, can you have two sticks of 512, and one stick of 1 GB, or are there only two RAM slots, and you must put in either two one gigabyte sticks or two 512 KB sticks?) If you can determine exactly what kind of RAM you have (from reading your motherboard manual, or by opening your case and removing a stick to look at it), you'll find that you can order it online for significantly less money that you'll pay in your local retail store. (Unless you live close to a Fry's Store.) If you live in the USA, www.newegg.com is a good inexpensive source with very reliable and prompt shipping.

Thanks guys

yeah I have 8 memory slots [only 1 being used]

4 for dimm
and
4 for simm

 I have a 512mb stick in the dimm one.

also my motherboard specs indicate I can have up to 2 gigabytes

hopefully I will just get another 512mb stick and hope it works in tandom
with my other 512mb installed.  hope there are no parity issues. my pc was
purchased in 2003... not terribly old pc hehe...but uhm yeah.. and it will be a
present to me.

we do have a frys electronics in the bay area, so I will relay this info to my brother.

and uhm about virtual memory settings.  I use win xp pro ~ what is a good setting?

my hard drives
C: 80 gigs [21 gigs free]
E: 60 gigs [34 gigs free]
F: 40 gigs [12 gigs free]

can I allow xp to swap to another hard drive rather than keep on my boot drive [c:] ?

OK, first - in 2003, there pretty much was just one standard kind of DIMM, an unbuffered ECC type. So, if it is your brother who might be purchasing this for you, you can count the pins or gold teeth at the bottom of the RAM stick for him, he can tell this to the salesman at Fry's or wherever, and you are pretty much likely to get a matching chip. (No parity errors.) (If in doubt, count the number of pins on one side of the notch on the bottom, and then count the number on the other side.) (And, Kingston Economy is a perfectly good DIMM at a reasonable price.) Second, for XP Pro, its probably best to accept the automatic virtual memory settings, - just leave it be. In general, your virtual memory should be three times the amount of physical RAM on your system. XP Pro generally can detect your addition of a new RAM stick and adjust the virtual memory accordingly. A few times when I've built out a new system, it has failed to adjust it, so you might want to check. For your drives, are these three logical drives on a single physical drive, or are these two or more physical drives?

cool thanks for the counting the pins tip, will def help him locate the correct memory.

and uhm about the hard drives.. they are real physical drives. i do not like using virtual cd, or any drive emulators to create drives. 
c: [Samsung]
e: [Seagate]
f: [western digital]

and cool about leaving the virtual settings alone..think I will lol..surely will alow xp to manage it.

Great. More physical drives is an excellent strategy. OK, you probably do not want to "swap" across physical drives. For maximum efficiency, it helps to keep your C: drive as clean and unfragmented as possible. Install most of your programs on a physical drive that is separate from your boot drive, and then keep all your "data" (Vue scenes, etc.) on a third drive. But, for most of us, the greatest gain is to take a look at the "background" processes running, when you have Vue loaded. (That is, hit Cntrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager, and then take a look at the list under the "Processes" tab.) It is very likely that a lot of junk is running that you don't need, when you're running Vue. Some typical stuff might be printer processes, especially is you have a multi-function printer, dumb things like the Windows Messenger Service, and so forth. If I'm doing a big render, I will make sure that I'm disconnected from my internet comm, and go so far as to kill my firewall and anti-virus.) I've got to head to bed now, but if you like, tomorrow, I can return to this thread and show you how to tell what all those cryptic processes are. ????????

You of course can do some tweakings as well - to make Vue perform maybe a little better. Switch off OpenGL and - more important almost - switch off the automatic scene preview (right click on the scene preview window plus setting in the preferences).

I am on Mac so i can't say too much what the process manager shows on Windows. Here on Mac i see how much virtual memory a process uses and see therefore that Vue often goes over 1 GB, especially when rendering.

One day your ship comes in - but you're at the airport.

Well here is how Vue is utilizing my memory

img143.imageshack.us/img143/5940/clipboard01ffftj8.jpg

and here is when I closed Vue.

img291.imageshack.us/img291/1076/clipboarddexxnl6.jpg

Yep I must agree Forester!  I shall keep most apps, music, etc off my boot drive.
for optimum effeciancy.

And yes, I do end most needless apps such as gearsec etc...and I do not possess a printer so that should not ever be worried about. and whoah! you disable your virus protection for Vue?
and yes I disabled windows messenger ages ago.

and ok good night.. yes please, would like to know about the cryptic processes :-)

Ooops sorry..  please disregard the second screenshot. that was taken at a later time. I tried to edit my previous message with the correct screen shot, but now I am unable to.. anywho this screen capture is after I exited Vue Infinite 5

img247.imageshack.us/img247/451/clipboard01ggggac0.jpg

You know, rather than go through the whole list, the easiest way to learn the content of all those background processes is to go to http://www.processlibrary.com that is managed by UniBlue. This is a huge database of known process files with a search engine. You can type in the name of the process or *.dll, and the search engine there should find your process and tell you what it is - who made it, and so forth. There also is a little JAVA applet that can be downloaded from this site, and when installed, used to either identify a process, - or more importantly, you can use it "on top of" your Task Manager to re-assign a priority to any single or set of associated processes in your Task Manager. Its' default setting is to Launch Upon Startup (thereby adding one more background app) but as a Java app, you can just delete it from your desktop so that it doesn't do this. Then, it will still be in your Programs|Startup list for your occassional use. The reason I mention this is that I see you are a Norton user (good!). But Norton necessarily load quite a lot of background processes into Windows to keep you safe. I said I disable my firewall and antivirus when running a Vue render - but only when I've physically disconnected myself from my internet connection, and then I always re-invoke all those before connecting again, of course. In your case, you cannot kill the 7 or 8 'always-on' Norton processes (Norton protects you against yourself by making these processes impossible to delete), but you can change use the little java app from ProcessLibrary to lower their "priority" so that they execute in as few cpu cycles as possible. Of course, you'll want to have no physical connection to your internet while you're doing this, and you'll want to restore the priority of these processes once you've finished with Vue. You can use this little app to lower the priority of other background processes as well, so its worth adding this one more little app to identify, control, eliminate or reduce the priority of a lot of other background processes while using Vue (or in my case, my 3D modelling program.)

Hello again Forester,

Thanks for getting back to me.
and oh my app does that "Taskinfo" it's called and it runs in the back ground, also it loads at bootup time. that is displayed in the screen shots links hehe.. but thanks anyways! always good
t have friends that try to be helpful :-)

and yes I have Norton AV 2007 :-) always have loved using Norton.

well... I guess I will wait it out till Christmas... Install my new memory and let you know how my Vue performance is afterwards :-) wish me luck please hehe.

have a nice night.

• Mike

You too! best regards.