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RAM upgrade worth it?

Vesh

New member
I currently have a Athlon x2 3800+, 2GB RAM and Quadro FX540, which runs well.



Would it be worth it to upgrade another 2GB of RAM if I have some spare cash or would the AU$350 spent be hardly noticeable?



Cheers
 
If you are working with large assemblys or complex analysis that uses all of your 2GB then it would be money well spent. An analysis that would take over night to run could be made infour hours instead....

Otherwise I suggest you spend it on XXXX (or perhaps VB ....)
smiley2.gif
 
Overnight!... Not my skill level yet, I cringe about 10minutes!



Regardless, Ive since found that allocating more RAM to do the analysis
has a very large effect on the time, and therefore might aswell get
more RAM so I can allocate more to it, and hence reduce times, even if
it is only by minutes at this stage.



Thanks for the help mate



(XXXX and VB is very tempting though)
 
If the Atholon x2 is UNIX operating system, you probably will get a benefit. If you are using Windows XP, you can't access anything over 3GB, so it probably isn't worth it.
 
Yeah im in XP prfessional.

Nothing over 3GB? Really?



Do you mean when I do an analysis, I can currently allocate a max of 1.4GB, and the remainder is used by XP (600MB).



If I get a total of 4GB, I can only allocate a max of 3GB to Pro/e's
analysis and the remainder is used elsewhere in Windows and other
applications?



Also does Windows 64 let you go over 3GB in 32 bit Pro/e?
 
In my opinion, any RAM upgrade isusually worth it. XP can use up to 4GB of RAM. However, any single application is limited to 2GB out of the box. Setting up WinXP Pro with the 3GB option allows an application to address up to 3GB of RAM. This makes a huge difference for us with our large assemblies.


Keep in mind that the 3GB option can be used even if you have only 2GB of physical RAM. The 3GB option is a 'virtual memory' limit. My workstation has 2GB of physical RAMand the 3GB option. The 3GB option does not make Pro/E faster... it keeps Pro/E from crashing when the xtop process consumes more than about 1.7GB of virtual memory.


Windows 64 virtually erases (for now) the 4GB limitation imposed by 32-bit systems


32-bit = 4GB max (8GB max for some Linux systems)
64-bit = 128GB max physical (16TB virtual)


http://www.devx.com/Intel/Article/27546


-Brian
 
Awesome thanks for that.



So just confirming...



Currently in an analysis I can allocate
maximum 1.4GB physical.

If I have 4GB RAM I will be able to allocate maximum 3GB physical to the analysis?
 
My experience without the 3GB option:
2GB: theoretical limitation per application
1.65GB: Point at which Pro/E (xtop.exe) crashes


My experience with the 3GB option:
3GB: theoretical limitation per application
2.7GB: Point at which Pro/E (xtop.exe) crashes


However, using the standard 3GB option leaves only 1GB of virtual memory for the operating system. It has been documented by other Pro/E users that this is not quite enough in some situations. The solution is to 'tweak' the 3GB option to give back a little memory to the OS like this:


standard 3GB entry in boot.ini file:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Pro std RAM config" /fastdetect


tweaked 3GB entry in boot.ini file:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Pro 3GB-2900" /fastdetect /3GB /Userva=2900


I have found that the latter option works better for me. It gives an extra 100MB back to the Operating System (kernel) which increases its headroom a bit.


Note that your disk and partition numbers may be different than mine...


-Brian
Edited by: Brian_Adkins
 
Cool, I like the idea of raising the xtop crash point too.



How do I increase it to the 3GB option, or where can I read up on how to do it if its a big mission.
 
Monitor the minimum Available RAM and the maximum memory usage of xtop.exe using Performance Monitor



If the available RAM gets low the system will page more frequently
and in this situation adding more RAM will certainly be of benefit. This will also happen if xtop also approaches the 50% limit


Ideally your paging area should ALWAYS be bigger than your fitted RAM and should
preferably be split across two or more physical drives as opposed to across two or more
partitions. The OS has a built in algorithm that allows it to write to
one drive as it contemporaneously reads from the other drive and the
elimination of head seek time is why two physical drives are so much
faster. This also gets around the 4GB file size limit very
easily.



If you are limited to a single partition on a single drive, you can run
more than one paging file to get a paging area larger than 4GB but it
takes a
registry hack to invoke.





DB



Edited by: Dell_Boy
 

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