RAM Settings?

[Darby Edelen]

The defaults should work well for you.

Max Mem Usage: 120%
RAM Cache: 60%

With 10GB of RAM you’ll probably want to enable multiprocessing to make the most of your RAM. At the default Memory & Cache settings this should allow you to render using 5 processors (5 frames at once!)

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Itamar Kool]

In the latest update of After Effects CS3 I saw a recommendation to only enable 4 processors of the 8 when you have about 8 gigs of RAM

Kool En De Anderen
MAC Pro 8 core/Kona LHe/Apple FCS 2/Adobe PPCS3/Huge fibrechannel
http://www.koolendeanderen.nl

[Andrew Sobey]

Any idea why you’d want to limit yourself to half the processors? Doesn’t that keep you from using all of your RAM?

[Itamar Kool]

As far as I understand it’s better to have 4 processors using 2 gigs of RAM then 8 using 1 gig.

Kool En De Anderen
MAC Pro 8 core/Kona LHe/Apple FCS 2/Adobe PPCS3/Huge fibrechannel
http://www.koolendeanderen.nl

[Andrew Sobey]

Ok, I’m about to reveal my ignorance here, but aren’t you limited to 3GB if you have multiprocessing off?

I’ve seen that this has been written about quite a bit already on the forums, but I haven’t managed to wrap my brain around it quite yet…

Any good links that could explain this for me?

[Martin Reuben]

Wow – now I’m really confused!

Since I have 10 gig and 8 processors, why can’t I have it all (he asked in a greedy fashion)?

Martin Reuben

http://www.trgstudios.com

[Itamar Kool]

This was in the ‘read-me’ files for the 8.0.2 upodate

# Multiprocessing performance issues with multi-core machines, especially high-end 8-core hardware. When all 8 cores try to render a complex or memory intensive composition with Render Mutliple Frames Simultaneously, the application can become memory starved if each process has insufficient memory. To remedy this, there is a text preference to control the maximum number of cores that Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously will use. Open the text preference file and look in the [“MP”] section for: “MaxNumberOfProcesses” = “0”. “0” is the default setting, which disables this preference setting. For better performance on an 8-core machine with 8GB RAM, for example, change the “0” setting to “4” and save the preference file and restart After Effects. This restricts multiprocessing with RenderMultiple Frames Simultaneously to 4 cores, each getting approximately 2GB of RAM.
# For other performance tips using large dimension or complex compositions, see the “Improve performance” section of After Effects CS3 Help on the Web.

Kool En De Anderen
MAC Pro 8 core/Kona LHe/Apple FCS 2/Adobe PPCS3/Huge fibrechannel
http://www.koolendeanderen.nl

[Andrew Sobey]

There it is. I finally get it. It was the damn readme file, I should have known. Thanks, now I’m going to go impress some friends and co-workers…