Downtown Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 I currently run VW 12.5 on a Intel Mac Pro Quad Core 2.66ghz 2 GB Ram (4x 512mb modules) I want to make my large renders move faster. Would increasing my RAM to 4GB (2 x 2GB modules) be effective? Or does CPU affect the render more? Quote Link to comment
RonMan Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 Memory will improve performance, but not nearly as much as a faster CPU. Get a copy of MenuMeters from VersionTracer.com and turn on the memory monitor. If memory usage goes up while you are rendering or the system does pageouts while you are rendering, then memory will help. Your present system is pretty (OK, very) good. Rendering should be pretty fast. There is a thread here somewhere that discusses improving rendering speed. You might want to look for it. In talks about lights, curved surfaces and a few other things that can really slow down a render. Good Luck, RonMan Quote Link to comment
billtheia Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 You don't need a third-party application to monitor memory - you can use the activity monitor. It even lets you configure the dock icon to show memory, cpu, or network usage. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Dave Donley Posted February 28, 2008 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted February 28, 2008 Hello Downtown: More memory would only help if the application is using more than your installed RAM to complete the rendering. MacOS limits 32-bit applications to about 2.5GB maximum before it starts running out of memory. Therefore it won't help to have more than 4GB of real RAM on your machine, for VW purposes. HTH, Quote Link to comment
digitalendeavors Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Dave, Could you please expand on this? Is VW 12.5 a 32bit or 64bit app and how about VW2008? Would RW have any advantage on a Mac Pro w/ 32Gb of memory or is 4Gb sufficient? Furthermore what is the advantage of multiple cores in VW 12.5 vs. 20008. Is RenderWorks using all the cores and memory available? Quote Link to comment
bonus Posted May 8, 2008 Share Posted May 8, 2008 Increasing your RAM will have some effect, but not nearly as much as switching to VW 2008! There you get at least twice the speed. Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 2008 is considerably faster than 12.5.3 in every respect but especially on the "basic" renders (hidden line, dashed hidden line etc.). VW is 32 bit (wish it was 64) and RW uses all cores but VW doesn't. More memory wouldn't help unless you're running several simultaneous applications that are memory heavy. Ram allocations are supposed to be dynamic in OS X - apps take what they need. There is a noticeable slowdown over time however. As the day does on and you use different programs (VW, Safari, Mail, Photoshop, etc. etc. etc.) they book memory and release it and so the day goes on. Is seems though that the memory allocations get more fragmented and apps hold on to memory they've finished with and this effect continues until things get glacial. Simple cure is to log out and back in again (means quitting everything) which will reset everything memory wise. VW & RW run much quicker so I do this before a major rendering session (animation etc), otherwise use ifreemem http://www.activata.co.uk/ifreemem/ which will do the same thing "live" but best to save stuff first... Charlie Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 Using Filevault security encoding also creates a virtual 'drag" on the entire system until the point at which every resource is consumed including all of the virtual memory space. As Charlie P notes ... a simple Log-out or restart resolves the problem when Filevault notifies the user to dump the tmp files. Standard procedure is to quit all unnecessary applications & processes prior to performing any maintenance or memory intensive procedures like Rendering. Quote Link to comment
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