Hi!
I am rendering a short animation but it is taking forever to render. Every frame is 5:42 to render. I have an Athlon FX-55, 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon x850 Platinum. The only thing I am noticing is that while Blender is rendering it is only using about 75 MB RAM. Why isn’t Blender using more? Could there be a problem with my setup or something. The computer is recognizing the 2 GB so I do not know what the problem may be. I would appreciate any info on the matter.
Thank you!
perhaps it only needs 75Mb
Maybe, but it’s taking ages! Would it be faster using more RAM?
if your scene is not very big in itself (not millions of polygons nor big textures) but you’ve activated raytracing, traced transparency or things like that and that you’ve many objects using these tools, then it’ll take a low amount of RAM because there are a low amount of informations to store, but it will take time to calculate your animation because a lot of calculus has to be done (and blender engine is quite a slow raytracer)
ok, maybe I should have turned off raytracing
What resolution are you rendering at? Turning of Raytracing is only a good idea if you don’t need it - don’t forget that you need it for AO, raytransparency, reflections, etc.
And 5 minutes (I suppose) for a frame aren’t that much. Rendering takes some time so you should probably accept that 
Basically, to put it simply, CPU is what speeds up your renders.
However, there are complications. As soon as a greater amount of memory is required than you actually physically have, the computer has to use ‘virtual memory’, whereby your hard drive acts as an extension of the RAM.
This, of course is slow - not only because of the relatively slow speeds of hard drives but also because any data that is required cannot go direct to the CPU but must be swapped into RAM and then operated on.
So, basically, your CPU is the problem. The graphics card has no relevance to rendering. The other possibility is that your RAM is very slow.
Hope that helps!
RAM = storage
If you dont have enough, it slows down because it has to constantly write to the HD (slow). Having more ram wouldnt help, because theres no more information to store.
Ian
Don’t know if it’s worth while for AMD users but there’s a special build of 2.41 for SSE2 users.
I compared it with my other version and it used 100% of my CPU instead of 70%.
It scared the hell out of me and my poor CPU.
P
Running linux? or windows? and a 64-bit build? HT makes a difference, but not all that much. FIVE MINUTES and FORTY TWO SECONDS?! While you might be able to compile it yourself and optimize a few more percentage points out of the OS and Blender, you’re bitching about 6 minutes a frame.
Uhm, I hate to burst your raytracing bubble… that ain’t shit! Sometimes each frame, depending on scene can take 6 hours or more. Small resolution, simple animations can take weeks to render on one computer…
A half-hour, high resoultion, complex, high raydepth (think light bounces) through lots of semi-transparent objects and realtime AO, transparent shadows, and reflections and refractions and bears (oh my!) could literally take YEARS. No, I am not exaggerating. Years. As in more-than-one.
Yes, RAM is important, you could burn up a hard drive’s entire lifetime of use in a few months if it’s scrubbing 24/7 trying to render more than it’s got RAM for. And this will definitely slow down rendering; years become decades - that 0:30:00 raytrace might not finish in your lifetime on a single FX-55.
Now, who told you this raytracing stuff was fast? 
It is not.