Again & again - the RAM thing. Do you really need ur XL ram?

[marne]

Hi everyone this is my first topic in this great Forum,
and I know the RAM thing is really extensively discussed but I'm still wondering...

My Question is: Do you really need your 2GB Ram when working with sketchup?

I was reading so many hours in so many forums how important 2GB of Ram are...
The intention of my post is the following:

Currently i'm working daily on my diploma in sketchup and my Laptop is getting slower and slower, while the model is getting larger and larger. Currently it has a size of 95MB(!) and will end up in 150MB or so. And yes I'm working with many components and groups and hidden layers, of course this helped but still SU gets slower. So i thought as everyone advices, more ram would be a solution, because the installed 1GB may not be enough.
For a student ram for a notebook is expensive: the cheapest 2GB DDR1 will cost 140 Euro (about 190USD).
So i startet monitoring the usage of my ram and my pagefile. And now to the point:

like everone knows in the taskmanager u don't see the "real" pagefile its ram+pagefile!

so i took a tool which differentiates the memory usage. what did i see?
nothing! when i load my big model, listen to winamp and browse this forum windows doesn't put anything in the pf. and i'm still left with 180MB of free ram. Ok, if i additional open photoshop windows starts using the pf, but when working as usual on my model in the swapfile is nothing.

Are 2GB a waste of money or will there be an improvement because of other factors i don't see?

I know a new notebook would be a solution but as long as i'm a student i have to keep this one.
3,06GhZ P4 (HT switched off), 1GB Ram (maybe soon 2?), faster samsung HD and yes i know... an soft overclocked GeForce5350go 64MB - the only thing i'm not able to change

for every one who likes to check his/her "real pagefile"
here is a link to a standalone tool (its only in german but u know the middle bar shows ur real pf usage, the lowest the "taskmanager pf" and the upper one the physical ram.
hp:http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~rosr/husoft/index.html
download:http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~rosr/husoft/downloads/ramman/ramman_m.7z
u may need 7zip to extract the file.

so many thanks guys, maybe u will see that u don't need 2GB?!
and please excuse my english:oops:

[Krisidious]

that file size is huge...

what you need to do is think outside the box with your components...

I'm sure you're using components for things like cars and furniture... but it is also a good idea on files this size to use whole sections or grids as components, and then have a large model made up of those sections, so you can work on them one at a time. and then render the whole file.

then of course there are the optimization tutorails on SketchUcation... turing off materials... and running something like Hijackthis.exe to find out how much background software is running... then there are other important considerations in this formula, like the processor speed and the videocard and the data transfer rate of your harddrive.

your processor seems to be plenty, I would say the video card is hampering you...

besides that, the honest truth is GSU is not made for files of this size, the "engine" cannot handle it. you need something like Autocad or 3DMax to handle models of that size... of course then your model won't be that size...

p.s. I have 2 gigs...

[marne]

thanks for your reply Krisidious,
the hd is the fastest non 7200rpm for notebooks you can get, yes and the videocard may be one of the slowest and is not replaceable
splitting my model in separate sections is a good idea, but the problem is that the terrain is extreme hilly and large, with many buildings, roads, sidewalks on it. thats why i decided to give su a try, because of its great ability to form contours/drape/stamp right in terrain and of course the best of all the soap skin plugin .
before su, i tried land desktop 2006 and it was really pain. because every corner there looks like this:

and this is hard to make "virtual" in my opinion.
i must confess i never used 3dmax, maybe it would have been the better idea?!... now its too late.
so i think i wont buy the ram, except anyone is dissenting or made other experiences by upgrading to more ram?!

thx alot!

[Krisidious]

check out http://www.sketchucation.com/scf/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1259&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

make your terrain one component, then these 1 acre tacks can be each area component... use the 1 acre track, and push pull it up and you can "intersect" them and add the terrain to the components if you wish.

I notice a big change up to 2 gigs... if you can't buy another videocard, I would suggest upping the ram... and remember there are lots of differnt qualities and speeds of ram... you get what you pay for...

[marne]

damn you are so fast!

thank you very much, i will try this afternoon and i will report the "feel" of more ram next week.

[Krisidious]

some one is going behind me deleting my links? who is it?

[Masta Squidge]

Sorry to not be much of a help (as it was already answered) but 200 bucks for 1GB of notebook ram WITH the student discount? That sounds crazy expensive to me.

[marne]

So far... one week with my new 2GB Ram and my much too huge model is over.
and for those who are still doubting to upgrade: the upgrade (in view of sketchup) imho only makes sense if you really have huge file sizes.
when i have a look at the ram-monitor my system still doesn't use more than 700-900MB
of physical ram and it still doesn't write anything in the swap file.
But my subjective feeling is that especially this huge model, which now has 105MB ,
runs much smoother and the commands are responded faster ->
for my issue the upgrade helped a lot!
now a bit fun came back while modelling.
beside i must say, that i have the feeling that the overall performance of my system is increased a bit it boots a few seconds faster and software starts up quicker.
but this is my personal "feel" of it (except of the booting, this is faster 2-5sec, i timed it). of course if u use photoshop and others like it, u will have a big improvement too. beside, the new ram has the same timing like the old one CL2.5.
so if u don't have a huge model and are not sure to upgrade, i would not do it, if u already have a gig installed, the performance benefit for the rest of your system isn't worth the money imho. but i have to say again that for me it was the right decision, thanks Krisidious!!!!

@Masta Squidge,
I'm sorry if i said something which was misleading. please have a closer look at my 1st post:

"...For a student ram for a notebook is expensive: the cheapest 2GB DDR1 will cost 140 Euro (about 190USD)..."

i meant that the price is for 2GB. I already had 1GB (2x512MB) installed, and my / a notebook usually has only 2 slots, so i had to buy 2x1024MB and this is expensive for a student which normally doesn't have a rich filled account. especially if u need DDR1, which is more expansive than DDR2 modules. a ram discount for students would have been great Squidge, but the only student discount i know in germany is for pc-systems and whole notebooks, not for components . i found a hardware dealer around, he sold me the ram for 118 Euro, so he saved the eBay charge, and i saved 8 Euro for the shipping , so it was alright i think.

many thanks for your replies and maybe this post helps others a bit to decide.

[Masta Squidge]

Ooooooh ok, i misread it. You got a good deal then i would have to say.

[Krisidious]

yeah 200 sounds pretty high...

I think I paid 140 for 2 sticks of 1 gig...