Physical memory and virtual memory usage

[jadedchron]

lower your virutal memory

[gaggle]

I've actually never trusted the numbers the taskmanager and MAX comes with. Mostly because all the computers I've used seems to say that MAX is using, say, some hundred megabytes, and the render-dialog box always claims to be using virtual memory or whatnot. I suppose the numbers ought to be correct, but.. well I don't wanna bother with it.. so.. I just ignore it and put my faith in baby jesus, and his ability to make everything okay :)

That's irregardless of the computer having 512, 1024, or 2048 megs of ram btw, I never see "0" in virtual-ram-useage when rendering I don't think.

If someone has some nifty information on how to "benchmark" your MAX to make sure all is as it should be, I'd be interested in that as well.

[Aggro - Thingy]

Originally posted by jadedchron
lower your virutal memory

SO say if I lower it to 256megs instead of the gig of virtual memory then it will force max to use the physical ram instead?

[Aggro - Thingy]

Originally posted by gaggle
I've actually never trusted the numbers the taskmanager and MAX comes with. Mostly because all the computers I've used seems to say that MAX is using, say, some hundred megabytes, and the render-dialog box always claims to be using virtual memory or whatnot. I suppose the numbers ought to be correct, but.. well I don't wanna bother with it.. so.. I just ignore it and put my faith in baby jesus, and his ability to make everything okay :)

That's irregardless of the computer having 512, 1024, or 2048 megs of ram btw, I never see "0" in virtual-ram-useage when rendering I don't think.

If someone has some nifty information on how to "benchmark" your MAX to make sure all is as it should be, I'd be interested in that as well.

actually if you compare the amount of ram that max is using as a process along with the amount of ram and pagefile taken up it is pretty accurate (most people forget that the process itself uses memory along with "extra" ram being allocated for the rendering).

The reason I'm asking is because I'm sitting here for an hour for a single fram with only 100k polys and I have a athlonXP 2200+ and a gig of ram. Without the light tracer on it take 22 seconds, now that it is on I am barely at the halfway mark and my light tracer settings are very tame (2 bounces, no extra subdivisions, lower than default color bleading).

[jadedchron]

yeah, generally. it also depends on what OS you're running. XP is pretty poor at page file handling and you're better off keepin it set to none. Unless you have like 256mb or ram or something.

[Aggro - Thingy]

Originally posted by jadedchron
yeah, generally. it also depends on what OS you're running. XP is pretty poor at page file handling and you're better off keepin it set to none. Unless you have like 256mb or ram or something.

when I set it at none everything slows down :shrug:

I'll prolly set it at 128 or 256 and restart

EDIT:

XP Pro
3ds max 5.1
1gid ram
Athlon XP 2200+
ATI All-in-wonder 128 pro

[jadedchron]

what are the harddrive specs? have more then 1? space? etc

[Aggro - Thingy]

Originally posted by jadedchron
what are the harddrive specs? have more then 1? space? etc

120gb WD ata133 partition into 3 40gb
1 9gb scsi
2 6gb ata100


this is my render speed:
3 hours 9 Minutes 40 seconds
800x600
AA: Cook Variable 1.85
Light Tracer: 0 bounces 32x32 sample size
2 Spotlights
1 Omni
4 or 5 reflective materials (raytraced)
1 reflective & raytraced & refractive material

100k+ faces

http://66.75.219.34:90/AudiTTSolid08-800x600a.jpg

[jadedchron]

well, i would normally think max would be able to control memory useage within the program, but i couldn't find anything on it. however, since you have multiple hdd's i suggest this:


"This is an incredible tweak that has improved the performance of my system by leaps and bounds...

If you have two or more hard drives, especially if they reside on separate IDE channels, it is possible to Strip the Page File across these two drives. Windows XP has code within it that will enable a RAID-Type Stripping. Therefore, Windows XP will through its internal algorithms place information in the separate drives. By accessing both of the Drives at the same time to read/write information, Windows XP will considerably improve its performance!

Simply go to System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Virtual Memory and assign the page file a size on each drive.

The way I did mine is as follows:

I have two hard drives each formatted with two partitions each. Hence I have a total of 4 Partitions being displayed. On my secondary HD, I created the first Partition and called it my SWAP. Since I have 512 MB of RAM, I created the partition with 1.5 GB. On this partition, I assigned the Swap File of 764 - 1500 MB. On the Primary Partition which Contains my Operating System, I also have a swap file of the same 764-1500 MB.

Try this out my friends. I guarantee you will be impressed with the results. As a comparison, when I had a single partition, one application used to suck 100% of my cpu cycles and my swap file usage jumped way high. Ever since I started the page file stripping, that very same application sucks only 5% CPU cycles!"

[Aggro - Thingy]

thanks, I'll try that right now

[TMortan]

Ouch those render times hurt.

I would go with the no light tracer option. The current light tracer/reflecting set up you’ve shown just doesn’t justify render times over a minute to be honest. There’s just no need for it, you could achieve better results with just the default scanline and a nice placement of lights.

You might want to use light tracer in the end but for right now I don’t see the reason in putting up with long render times.

That’s probable going to be the best way to speed things up, no matter what your memory management says:)

[Aggro - Thingy]

Originally posted by TMortan
Ouch those render times hurt.

I would go with the no light tracer option. The current light tracer/reflecting set up you’ve shown just doesn’t justify render times over a minute to be honest. There’s just no need for it, you could achieve better results with just the default scanline and a nice placement of lights.

You might want to use light tracer in the end but for right now I don’t see the reason in putting up with long render times.

That’s probable going to be the best way to speed things up, no matter what your memory management says:)

yeah, I get 20 second renders when it's off :thumbsup:

I was just checking how the materials will look.

btw, hows my headlight lookin'?

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