Is there a way in XP to allocate more RAM to certain programs, i.e. Blender, to help improve its performance?
XP will give the RAM to the program that is currently requesting it, so the processes that are minimised/inactive will be shunted over to virtual ram.
Your poll needs revising, I have 512mb- does that go under option 3 or 4?
Oops…how would I go about doing that?
fixed it.
and blender will grab as much ram as it needs. the way to give it more ram is to make sure there is always free ram to use, by installing more ram or removing background programs.
Thanks Sam. Ok so even though my video card is only 64MB and I have 752MB of RAM, will the system be able to take advatage of having 512MB more RAM then with what it originally came with? I am using a laptop by the way.
oh, you’re all confused.
Your video card has 64 MB of RAM. That’s for rendering what’s on screen. It doesn’t pour over into system memory or anything like that.
Your main RAM is used by Blender (and the OS, and whatever else is running) to process the program’s data and information.
Non-64bit versions of Windows XP can’t assign more than 2GB to a single app, iirc. That’s what I thought this thread was about when I clicked on it…
and for the record, my main computer has 1 GB, my x86 mac has 512, and my laptop has 64 mb of RAM.
Your what now? Is that one of the developer kits?
If so, how does Blender perform and did you compile it yourself or does it run under rosetta?
@daveman14 like others have said, the system should allocate ram as appropriate but it’s unlikely you will get all of the ram in your computer because the system keeps some for itself.
My OS X system requires about 256MB Ram so with 1GB Ram, Blender gets on average a maximum of 768MB.
Your what now? Is that one of the developer kits?[/quote]
no. long story. 
Your what now? Is that one of the developer kits?[/quote]
probably a ripped off OSX
Alltaken
In the next version of Blender, The minimum memory you should get is 1go to actually feel confortable with all new simulation stuff. like particle, softbody, or even fluid… Using pyODE for Rigidbody also take up memory very fast if you do expansives tasks.
I know because I have 512mo %| , it’s not enough anymore.
Tell me about it! My Alienware has 512, and I thought it was the shizzle until i discovered that my laptop for some unknown reason renders faster, even thought the video card’s have the same amount of RAM…HMMM
Anyone know if it might have to do with the kind of RAM I have?
Nah. It’s probably your processor bus speed.
But why on earth would a laptop (with a Celeron, eww!) render faster than a P4? Yes there is 256 more RAM in my laptop, but don’s laptops always run slower than desktops? Also the laptop is 2.790 Ghz, and the Alienware is 2.6Ghz. I guess thats it…Oh well…
Are you rendering the same scenes with the same settings exactly?
Also, how big is the scene you are rendering and how much faster is the laptop? It could be that you have a scene that is just the right size that it maxes out your RAM on your desktop leading to paging the swapfile but it fits into RAM on your laptop.
I highly doubt that a 2.79GHz celeron outperforms a 2.6GHz P4.
The general rule is that laptops will run slower than desktops but usually you find that comparing them is like comparing different platforms. There are a large number of factors involved.
Also, if your desktop is plugged into broadband, it may be that you have more spyware junk etc. weighing down the desktop.
I have burned my files to a CD that I did on my laptop and then watched to see how it did on the Alienware. Laptop won. I agree, there can not be a way this side of heaven that a Celeron can outperform a P4. No the Alienware does not have Internet, but rather the laptop does lol.
Your what now? Is that one of the developer kits?[/quote]
probably a ripped off OSX
Alltaken[/quote]
nope. case mod.
Your what now? Is that one of the developer kits?[/quote]
probably a ripped off OSX
Alltaken[/quote]
nope. case mod.[/quote]
Ahaha, so it’s just a cosmetic thing. Good idea. That way no one will want to steal it. They’ll just say, nah, it’s just a sh*tty Mac, where’s the PCs at? 
I bet you did it so you can get easy access to the internals right? It’s dead easy to install stuff and now you have a PC inside, there are actually components available that you can install.
Weird indeed. I don’t think it would make a difference because I’m sure the entire scene is loaded into ram but are you opening the blend file from the hard drive or the CD on the desktop machine?
I have very little RAM to spare (128MB) - so what I use is a RAM optimiser - which shuts off unessary processes and helps speed up rendering times - you could some really good freeware RAM optimisers from this site:
(try the search function)
In windows XP, using the Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) you can give processes priorities. I am not sure if this does anything with RAM allocation of just the processor. But i have made use of it and know that they work (was rendering in background while watching a DVD and media player was being a little slow, so i gave it a higher priority).