how much memory are you using?

[mr.ska]

how much memory are you using?

When I was first testing Alibre, my system had only 192MB of RAM, and I knew that wasn't enough. Now I'm running with 448 (don't ask about the weird numbers, you'd have to ask our IT guy what's going on there), but I'm still having speed issues with Alibre.

Specifically, when I open up an assembly that has perhaps 200 parts in it (only about half of those unique parts, the rest multiple components) my system really bogs down. It gets to the point where I decide to restart to clear my memory, but shutting down Alibre takes upwards of 5 minutes. Is 256 truly a reasonable recommended minimum? What's optimal? How much memory are you using, and how bid are your typical assemblies?

 

[cclark440]

What is your CPU speed, and what kind of video card are you using?

 

[barrykingwill]

I recently went from 512Meg to 1024 and it did not realy make a difference in speed.

I also went from 32Meg Video to 128Meg. Also no notable difference.

However the extra memory was necessary to run Algor analysis and work in Alibre at the same time (quite seemlessly). Not possible before.

 

[swertel]

512 is the minimum. I went to 1024 because when running other apps in the background I would occasionally use more than 512. The way to test how much you need is to open every application that you will ever run simultaneously. Open the task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and click on the performance tab. If the Total value in the Commit Charge box is more than the amount of RAM in your system, then install more.

Also make sure that your page file size is static, not dynamically controlled by Windows - i.e. set the upper and lower values equal. Even though you have enough RAM, Windows still pages some data to disk. You want to make sure that the total combined value of installed RAM and page file does not exceed 4GB. Windows can not control more than 4Gb of virtual memory and will cause errors, even with the /3GB switch.

 

[mr.ska]

Re:

What is your CPU speed, and what kind of video card are you using?

Pentium 4 2.8GHz with an ATI RADEON 9100GP video card with 64MB RAM.

I am also running many other programs in the background: e-mail, browser, sometimes word processing or spreadsheet or Adobe viewer. I only have one computer to work with, I don't think they're going to give me another one just for Alibre. :wink:

 

[barrykingwill]

I would just up your RAM to 1 Gig. Your PC is more than I have, so I cannot see the problem there.

Try to get your IT people to give you a nice round 1024Megs.

 

[Cameraman]

Good tips by swertel . . .

As I posted in another thread, I consider 1GB RAM an absolute necessity for any PC running 3D CAD . . . and from the voting results, it appears that most everyone else does as well.

As noted by barrykingwill, if you run nothing but CAD and eliminate any unnecessary background apps you can probably live with less, but who really works like that? And in any case, RAM is much cheaper than recovering from crashes . . .

Regards,
Greg

 

[redcow]

pentium 4 2.4 ghz
ati radeon 9800xp w/225 mb ram
clocks at over 800 mhz fsb
custom built especially for my cad programs..runs sweet

 

[fiddler]

Hi
I "invested" in a reasonbly good video card (Matrox Parhelia, 128MB) and I'm running 2 screens simultanuosly with the following HW:
1G Ram
2.8MHz intel
Intel MB

and the system is running sweet.

2 screens are just great. Consider this: running the training video on one screen when actually doing Alibre work on the other. Or having a spreadsheet open with all the measurememts required on one screen and drawing on the other.
I could go on.....