allocate more memory?

EGS wrote on 1/14/2011, 9:03 AM
I'm running VMS10 on Windows 7 Pro, with 12GB memory and an Intel i7-930 CPU. During render, I noticed that VMS is using a little more than 2GB of memory, and hits all 8 CPU threads pretty hard. Is there a way to allocate MORE memory to VMS? The render goes pretty fast (about 1/2 hour to render 1 hour of video), but is there any way to render even faster? More memory allocated to VMS perhaps? Thanks !!!

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/14/2011, 10:41 AM
Unfortunately, rendering is a processor-intensive, not a RAM-intensive process. Adding more RAM won't speed it up. It's going as fast as it's going go.

Hi-def video takes considerably longer to render than standard-def video, and some effects and somevideo sources take longer to render than others.
Roberto65 wrote on 1/14/2011, 1:09 PM
What about using some of the 12 GB RAM to create a RAM disk (there are some freeware SW to do this) and moving the temporary work folders to that disk ?
Chienworks wrote on 1/14/2011, 3:41 PM
Vegas Studio is a 32-bit application. As such, it won't make use of more than 2GB no matter what you do.
EGS wrote on 1/14/2011, 8:28 PM
"What about using some of the 12 GB RAM to create a RAM disk (there are some freeware SW to do this) and moving the temporary work folders to that disk ?"

Hmmm ... any other thoughts on this idea?
MSmart wrote on 1/14/2011, 10:52 PM
What graphics card do you have? NVIDIA with CUDA?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=730286
EGS wrote on 1/15/2011, 7:45 AM
My graphics card is a SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5450 512MB. I used this card because the primary use of this computer is Pro Tools (audio), and that app is picky about cards.
Roberto65 wrote on 1/15/2011, 1:18 PM
"What about using some of the 12 GB RAM to create a RAM disk (there are some freeware SW to do this) and moving the temporary work folders to that disk ?"

Hmmm ... any other thoughts on this idea?

=> I will try this when my computer arrives (now it is sailing from Shanghai to Munich, as I just relocated back to EU)
I also have Win7 64bit and I created a RAM disk with some of the 6GB I have.
Despite I am not a super-expert about PC architectures, I still believe that a RAM disk should allow to speed up the execution because the "data pointers" will be relocated by the FAT to this memory space (and this has nothing to do with 2G RAM limitation), which is dramatically faster than a normal hard disk. Then, eveything depends on how Vegas uses the temporary files in the working area, which actually I am not familiar with.
Anyway, when my PC has arrived (if not captured by Somalia or Sri Lanka pirates...) I will report some trials... stay tuned till around mid of March...
Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/15/2011, 2:18 PM
I still say you're chasing the wrong hardware.

More RAM is not going to speed up rendering, if that's your goal.
Chienworks wrote on 1/15/2011, 10:17 PM
Make a RAM disk out of part of 12GB RAM? Hmmm. Let's say you keep 4GB as active RAM, making an 8GB disk. Realistically, how much source material can you fit there? Maybe about 39 minutes of DV or typical HD. I have USB thumb drives and SD cards way bigger than that.

Steve's right though. It's not the hard drives that are the usual bottleneck. It's generally CPU cycles that are holding things up. Even if you could create a RAM drive large enough to hold the project, i wouldn't expect any noticeable increase in rendering speed. In fact, you'd end up wasting a LOT of time copying all the files into the RAM disk in order to use them from there.
john_dennis wrote on 1/16/2011, 8:40 PM
Creating a RAMDISK is analogous to an SSD. Using an SSD doesn't speed up renders enough to warrant the expense for compressed codecs like MPEG-2 and AVCHD.

P.S. I'm still going to buy one to load the OS and launch applications as soom as they get to 500 GB for about $200.