From: Greg Ercolano <erco@(email surpressed)> Subject: [Q+A] Windows XP 32bit renders running out of memory at ~1.5G? Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:09:23 -0500 |
Msg# 1647 View Complete Thread (2 articles) | All Threads Last Next |
> We sometimes get a "Memory use" error from Maya when we run > some large renders. We have 4 gigs on our XP (32 bit) machines, > and rushtop shows we're only using about 1/3 of the memory even > rendering one frame per box, but still the renders crash. eg: >> ==================================== >> Memory use when exception was thrown >> ==================================== >> ==================================== >> 328197 Page faults >> 1607.969 Mb Max resident size <-- 1.6Gig ram use >> 1636.184 Mb Peak total size(Estimated) <-- >> 1364.286 Mb Peak arena size > Why would the render crash if Maya is only using 1/3 of the machine? Windows XP 32bit can't access more than ~1.5G by default, based on its default configuration. This is why folks go with 64bit machines lately. This page for 'blender' describes some technical details on that: http://mpan3.homeip.net/?blendermemory ..these details being relevant to /all/ windows 32bit apps. Nice thing about the above page is it describes the "/3G" OS tweak to the WinXP boot.ini file that apparently lets you raise the process limits a bit (I haven't tried this). If you'd prefer to see the Microsoft docs on this flag, see: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/information/bootini.mspx Microsoft's description of the /3GB flag: "Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers [..and 3D rendering software! -erco] a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be met: the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition, [..] and the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application. Applies to 32-bit systems only." I'm not certain if apps like Maya/Shake/etc meet that last qualifier. Regarding a more technical description of the 4G/2G/1.5G limitations, I like some of the descriptions in this sysinternals thread, which is probably MTYEWTK: http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3013 Long story short, this is a normal per-process limit with Windows on 32 bit machines. The above /3GB flag may help you get a bit more ram per process, but you'll still hit a wall lower than 4G. The only way to get all 4G active is to have more than one render process using the machine at the same time. Or, get a 64bit machine running the 64bit OS with 64bit binaries for the renderer. |
From: Saker Klippsten <saker@ZOICSTUDIOS.COM> Subject: Re: [Q+A] Windows XP 32bit renders running out of memory at ~1.5G? Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:12:12 -0500 |
Msg# 1648 View Complete Thread (2 articles) | All Threads Last Next |
We use the /3GB switch here on some of our render nodes here and Maya 8.5 . The Switch does what it says :) -S On 11/19/07 5:09 PM, "Greg Ercolano" <erco@(email surpressed)> wrote: [posted to rush.general] > We sometimes get a "Memory use" error from Maya when we run > some large renders. We have 4 gigs on our XP (32 bit) machines, > and rushtop shows we're only using about 1/3 of the memory even > rendering one frame per box, but still the renders crash. eg: >> ====================================>> Memory use when exception was thrown >> ====================================>> ====================================>> 328197 Page faults >> 1607.969 Mb Max resident size <-- 1.6Gig ram use >> 1636.184 Mb Peak total size(Estimated) <-- >> 1364.286 Mb Peak arena size > Why would the render crash if Maya is only using 1/3 of the machine? Windows XP 32bit can't access more than ~1.5G by default, based on its default configuration. This is why folks go with 64bit machines lately. This page for 'blender' describes some technical details on that: http://mpan3.homeip.net/?blendermemory ..these details being relevant to /all/ windows 32bit apps. Nice thing about the above page is it describes the "/3G" OS tweak to the WinXP boot.ini file that apparently lets you raise the process limits a bit (I haven't tried this). If you'd prefer to see the Microsoft docs on this flag, see: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/information/bootini.mspx Microsoft's description of the /3GB flag: "Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers [..and 3D rendering software! -erco] a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be met: the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition, [..] and the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application. Applies to 32-bit systems only." I'm not certain if apps like Maya/Shake/etc meet that last qualifier. Regarding a more technical description of the 4G/2G/1.5G limitations, I like some of the descriptions in this sysinternals thread, which is probably MTYEWTK: http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID013 Long story short, this is a normal per-process limit with Windows on 32 bit machines. The above /3GB flag may help you get a bit more ram per process, but you'll still hit a wall lower than 4G. The only way to get all 4G active is to have more than one render process using the machine at the same time. Or, get a 64bit machine running the 64bit OS with 64bit binaries for the renderer. |