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I'm rendering stuff in 3dsMax. It's taking forever (progress bar is moving ahead...but I really think hours and hours for rendering sample underwater shows something went bad.)

I have 68 tabs open in Firefox.

I have other app's open too.

System is lagging, and I wanted to see how much RAM is being used, and I couldn't believe so little was being used. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit on a i7 system.

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is 3dsMax 64 bit? – Keltari Aug 20 '11 at 21:06
@Keltari, I think it is. How do I make sure? – progtick Aug 20 '11 at 21:11
Whatever you're doing looks like it's CPU bound, are you absolutely certain it's 64bit windows 7? – Col Aug 20 '11 at 21:13
@progtick, not sure. probably in help/about. if its not 64 bit, its not going to use more than 2GB of memory. – Keltari Aug 20 '11 at 21:13
32-bit windows can use a bit over 3G of main memory, but as Windows reports 12G on the task manager ("total" row), it for sure is 64-bit. – Zds Aug 20 '11 at 21:15
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3 Answers

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I'm rendering stuff in 3dsMax

3dsMax uses CPU for rendering, not memory, that's why you see so little Ram being used.
Your system is lagging because 3dsMax is using all 8 cpu's, that's good, otherwise it would take ages to render...
I guess you should let it render during the night when you're not using the computer.

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Click the Processes tab see why. 68 tabs are not important, if these are not memory hungry pages. About rendering; render uses CPU aggressively and creates 2D graphics, however it uses memory step by step during this time.

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what do you mean step by step? – progtick Aug 21 '11 at 3:44
It only uses required RAM to create 2D graphics, not for the entire universe. So rendering size in pixel and model complexity in the "viewport" matter. When it completes a frame, it releases the ram and skip to next frame. – Nime Cloud Aug 21 '11 at 3:53
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up vote 0 down vote

You should be looking into CPU, not RAM.

I have 68 tabs open in Firefox.

That's... A lot! My guess is that it's possible that Firefox is slowing down your 3DS Max Rendering.

So, look into the CPU usage of the different processes.

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I did close firefox by end-tasking it in task manager a few times during the rendering. I got bored and then reopened it. What exactly should I be looking in CPU? – progtick Aug 20 '11 at 21:14
@progtick: See which processes have the most CPU (next to 3DS Max). – Tom Wijsman Aug 22 '11 at 17:09
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