How much ram ??

[Hervé]

Yes, how much ram can you put in a dual AMD 1800 BOXX system ?? I started 2 years ago with 1GB (2x512MB), but becaue of shadow designer 2.0 from 3D Evasion.com being veryyyy Ram hungry, I installed an extra 1GB Ram bar. so I have now up to 2 GB of Ram..!

Ok, when I start, win2000 seams to recognize the Ram, then in LW, when doing statistics (w), it says (after loading my scene...) Ram 1148 MB and page file 3800 MB...

I have about 200 MB images maps, 70 MB objects....

Fact is I cannot render scenes above, let say, 1000 x 800 pixels....

NT europe told me Win 2000 does not work with more than 1GB of ram ; ......?? what ??

.... and so this is the limit ?? when I look my scene 'basically a single poor house with a garden) it does not seams too crowded, I mean I can see some other renders with far more objects, textures and the like... I cannot even put a car in front of the house, or it says not enough memory....

Now if I remove Shadow Designer (I am pretty sure there is an issue with 7.5c...) and try to render again, I can render max size 2500x1800 with about 120 segments.!!!!... that's totally ridiculous and no one including NT seams to have any solutions..... NT keep claiming Boxx computers are so well to run LW, well tell me about.... I did buy this very expensive equipment , thinking I'll be working efficiently with it, but I just have problems and nobody to answer them (that's why I am a little bashing here, which is normal, put yourself at my place....)

I wanted to participate to different stuff, but because of m small renders, ....I cant'...!!! very sad....

Hervé

I called NT Europe, but the cool guy on the Phone just was'nt sure, so NT usa, do you know better? .....

[Mylenium]

Well,

as for mere RAM consumption, everything looks ok. Win 2k Professional can easily handle up to 4 Gig (however, there were problems befor SP 2) so everything should be ok. It will also grab about 300 Meg for itself (even though it doesn't really need them). You will never see your full 2 Gig available to LW - this is technically impossible. You should perhaps try to setup your Windows totally from the start and apply all Patches and ServicePacks to it. There are several smaller patches that deal with AMD processors exclusively even though they are not critical.

I can't help you with your rendering problems, though. I have no clue and from what you tell everything should be ok, also.

Mylenium

[Hervé]

Thanks a lot Mylenium, yes maybe something with the win stuff, but I won't touch it, coz besides the fact that I cannot render more than 1000 pix large, everything runs pretty smooth, so I dont want to do more damage and + I know absolutely nothing for win 2000... It came all installed... so I would be scare to touch it and would not even know where to start...

Thanks again !
Hervé

[Hervé]

just to show you....

[WizCraker]

Have you tried contacting Boxx?

[Aegis]

Mylenium: Are you sure about that? AFAIK Windows only officially supported 2 gigs of RAM with XP.

[Hervé]

I think it only support 1GB of ram (at least that's what Newtek told me over the phone ), even though you see more in the statistics panel in LW... ohhh, and also the page file is NON -0K only when the ram decrease under about 1200 MB, when it's over this number, page file stays 0K, that's why I think the extra 1GB I've installed is not used...

with 1GB, I can render my scene I am working on right now at 800x600, and with 2GB, I can render 900x700, but not more, and with the exact same scene (remark, I 've tested other scenes as well with the same result....

So my OFFICIAL question to Newtek Inc. from Texas is :
(rolling drums....)

"How much Ram does LightWave 7.5c support ?" and "Is there any special something I should do for it to recognize 2GB ?"

Now one for Bill Gates (I should have asked that one before)

"How much Ram does Win2000 support ?"

No, really, I've spend a lot of money for this extra bar, so NT should know about their own software at least....

I remember (not sure though) a render farm with machines with 2 GB ram...

Boxx knows about their machines, but does not know if the apps I am using are using the full Ram... jeezz I thought Newtek and Boxx were kind of partners...

Look the Proton stuff named "Proton visits Boxx" BTW he could have asked....

Well I think I am going to sell it back if it's no use.... but then that means LW is limited...

[Hervé]

Well, I went to the Upgrade site for win 2K, there it found about 34 things to update, should I...? I have service pack 2 apprently, and i says I need service pack3, .... also as for the drivers, it says I need to upgrade to 2942, when the Boxx site has 2832, lost did I say..?

[Darttman]

You should definitley talk to BOXX. Win2k pro will handle 4GB of ram but will the motherboard or bios on that boxx computer handle over 2GIG? If so is the BIOS set properly on it?
Also when using anything greater that 1GIG of ram most manufacturers set up the motherboard to use ECC ( error correction and checking) memory.
Ask BOXX what particular type of memeory to use (brand, type, sixe, specs...)

Other little thing I can think of is look to see if page file is approximately 2 times large than installed physcial memeory as a rule of thumb.

I hope you find a souloution to your problem and post any answers you find ;)

good luck

[bloontz]

I recently bought a Dell workstation and the literature says it can support up to 4GB but only if using non ecc memory. I think it's limited to 2 GB with ecc memory. I only have 1 GB installed so I can't say if it works with LW.

[Hervé]

Ok, this is what Randall from Boxx told me in his mail... ( I hope you dont mind Randall..)

"Hmmm. We’re unsure. I’m fairly sure that lightwave won’t use more than 2 gigs. If the os sees it, the app should be able to use it. have you checked the lightwave support? I don’t believe it’s os related.

Thanks,
Randall Marley
BOXX Technologies, Inc."

So here I am, nobody knows.... maybe I should contact Luxology...

BTW, I am using Kingston registred ECC ram

PS I dont want 4 Gigs, I just want to use my 2 gigs Ram.... is it so complex that even NT itself does not know....


Please NT say something, this is a ridiculous situation....and it make you look.... well... thanks

[Darttman]

Well the main thing I can think of to do here is to nail down exactly how much memory windows OS sees or recognizes. I use SISOFT sandra to look at all the specs on my system (good for trouble shooting.)

Do not forget windows utilizes around 128MB of ram when it is all said and doneso you will always show some memory lost in the overhead.

I know saying this next line sounds bad but.............

Unfortunately you should read up on Win2k and and learn your way around some more. I built my 1st pc 5 years ago all self taught (what a PIA) but now I am grateful I took the time to read and learn form others so I am not at the mercy of bench techs!!!!!

Patience and percerverience is the key here.

You might want to post this problem at http://www.tomshardware.com/ or at http://www.tomshardware.com/ and see what responses you get from some other pc geeks

Hang in there and keep posting

ps; updates from windows are important for security reasons alone. If you are unsure you can uninstall most updates but read the fine print closely. Make sure you have contingency back-up drives in place as nothing is permanent on computers!

Cheers

[Extent]

I wouldn't trust that statistics pannel for system info. I've got 768meg of ram and 3Gig (fixed) swapfile. Checking scene statistics for a simple scene I'm working on reports 5 meg of object memmory, 20 meg for render memmory, and then says my free mem is only 414 meg with 3,447 meg page file. Windows reports that I have 450 meg free (there are other apps running)

so something's wierd with thos numbers

[Lamont]

Have you tried to increase the segments? I know it's a pain, but if you have to do it, then it has to be done.

LW supports whatever windows supports. I reduced my page file to 1gb BTW, and it forced Windows to give the physical memory to other apps (LW and Photoshop).

This is how I solved the problem with 3DS Max crashing after getting to about 1200 mb of system memory.

This is a Windows issue. But that's how I solved it.

A program will not use a full 2gb of ram. As your system increases in usage and stress, opperations increase their need for memory. RAM can get locked up in certain Windows processes, even after the heavy opperations are finished.

[Hervé]

Hey thanks for the nice support....

[QUOTE] LW supports whatever windows supports. I reduced my page file to 1gb BTW, and it forced Windows to give the physical memory to other apps (LW and Photoshop).

This is how I solved the problem with 3DS Max crashing after getting to about 1200 mb of system memory.

This is a Windows issue. But that's how I solved it.


Well I am going to try that right away...

BTW, I have to render it in one segment, coz I am using Shadow designer....
(requires a one sgement rendering...)

Thanks a lot for all this infos...

NT, can you fix the Stats Panel...

[Lamont]

Yeah, let me know how it goes.

[Hervé]

Ok, Lamont I'll let you know later today or tomorrow.... thanks again !

Hervé