About Physical and Virtual memory.

[salf]

Well, im not a computer guy, and neither a MAX expert so maybe im gonna say and ask something trivial for some of you, but here it goes:

 

Its my understanding that the Physical memory is the amount of RAM i have installed, so if i have 512 MB, thats the max. amount of P. Memory i could reach, and that the Virtual memory is the one that is created by Windows (with the use of Hard DIsk space) when it lacks of Physical memory to complete any given task.

 

Is that right?

 

Well, if thats right, now comes the question:

 

Ive noticed that MAX sometimes uses 164 of P. memory and 368 of V. memory, and when that happens ( i mean when the P. memory is lesser than the V. memory) it takes a lot of time to render a scene.

 

I wonder why sometimes MAX uses so little P. memory if i have 512 MB RAM?

 

Without running any other applicattions that could be taking away memory.

 

Is there a way i could set a minimun amount of P. memory used by MAX whenever is running?

 

Thanks.

[Magrão]

wow man! i want to try answer your question but i dont speak english very well.

 

i normally do, i put into therefore min e max filed, my used memory * 3,

after i did this, i didnt have more problem with it .

 

i dont know if my explanation this is correct, but! ;o)

 

 

bye!

[William Alexander]

Ive noticed that MAX sometimes uses 164 of P. memory and 368 of V. memory, and when that happens ( i mean when the P. memory is lesser than the V. memory) it takes a lot of time to render a scene.

Salf,

 

164 of ram used or avialable? Seems when the available ram gets low like 32% available everything that can be written to disk (virtual memory) will be. Meaning that the Ram is left available to current processing needs only and stores only what data is needed for the most current process. Which means looking up and retrieve written data from the hard drive, also taking up processing time and RAM space. Its kind of exponential increase at this point.

 

Your numbers 164 & 368 equal 532, 512 installed ram and like 16 on board (mobo)? That would not be correct p&v memory. That would be available and used ram resources. Maybe just your numbers, but a little coincidental not to mention this.

 

The best way to overcome the slow down is to ADD Ram. The more data that can be stored in it, while maximum processing is going on, the faster max will render. The greater data written to virtual causes a great deal of read & write from disk taking significantly more time & resources away from rendering. Max and your system have control over the ram resources, from my understanding.

 

 

Should'nt be too far off base.

 

WDA

[salf]

Magrao: i didnt quite understood you.

 

WDA: please dont do math with the numbers i provided, they were purely referential, so they might not be right.

 

What i tried to say is that sometimes the P memory is lower than the V one, and that this happens without runnin any other application that could be taking away resources.

 

Also, the amount of Memory is different at everytime, for example: I render a scene, is see the P memory and V memory values, hit CANCEL.....then hit render again, and teh values are different...why?....if nothing new was done.

 

I could improve by adding more RAM, but even if i do that, i wanna know if i could set a minimun amount of RAM used by 3dMAX only, cuz if I upgrade to 1 gb memory, only for MAX to use only 260 P. Memory, there wouldnt be much of an improve there.

 

Thanks.

[bluetorch]

I can see this post is VERY old and no real answer...

I'm having exactly the same problem but with way more memory.

3dsmax.exe shows in Windows Task Manager:

Mem Usage: 216.084 K (~216 Mb)

VM Size: 4.198.092 (~4 Gb)

 

Why not loaded all (or more) in my physical memory?

 

I'm using Win XP x64 and 8Gb RAM

 

Thanks!

[amer abidi]

I can see this post is VERY old and no real answer...

I'm having exactly the same problem but with way more memory.

3dsmax.exe shows in Windows Task Manager:

Mem Usage: 216.084 K (~216 Mb)

VM Size: 4.198.092 (~4 Gb)

 

Why not loaded all (or more) in my physical memory?

 

I'm using Win XP x64 and 8Gb RAM

 

Thanks!

 

what renderer are you using?

[pradipta]

hi Alfredo, this is what exactly happens to me as well. 3dsmax does not take enough of the physical memory available and goes into using the virtual memory. And this slows down the render process by a good margin. I noticed while using heavy textures and vray proxy mesh 3dsmax tends to use more virtural memory than the available physical memory. I dont know if that is what happens with others also. I am looking for a solution to this

[bluetorch]

vRay v1.50 SP2

--------------------------------

I noticed that I only use 5Gb max (out of my 8Gb) on this render, so I choose not to use any page file (pure 100% fisical memory) and I noticed a speed gain. Now Mem Usage and VM size are almost the same.

I close every software when I render.

[violantelyhappy]

Hi,

 

It is normal that full amount of RAM is not used by MAX since you have behind OS that needs also some RAM. So basically RAM is shared between application (MAX, VRAY...) and your OS meaning that you'll never have 100% RAM allocated for MAX. Also please note that 32bit OS version systems can not utilize more than 4GB of RAM,With this case you'll need to think activating 3G switch or if you want full RAM utilization you need to install 64bit version.