Answered: Recommended amount of Ram for Quixel DDO?
polycounter lvl 6
Hi,
Just wanted to ask what other users experiences are with Quixel/Photoshop and ram usage?
Having created a few simple DDO projects now mostly using 2048x2048 texture dimensions and i've frequently found my 6Gb of Ram to be borderline insufficient. That is I often find Quixel/Photoshop will slow down as the Windows 7 page file grows, its even be 10Gb on occasion (though not sure why it grows so much) and that is of course on top of Photoshop's own scratch disk.
Now i've known that 6Gb has been too low for a while so have been thinking about adding more, so my question is does anyone have any recommendations as to overall amount to aim for?
16Gb would seem to be a good bet, but as I want to be able to easily multi-task with several programs I'm thinking 32Gb would be best. My only concern is if 32Gb is really overkill, that's why I'd be interested in hearing what other users experiences have been, ideally giving some numbers on typical ram usage when they are creating in DDO.
Thanks.
Just wanted to ask what other users experiences are with Quixel/Photoshop and ram usage?
Having created a few simple DDO projects now mostly using 2048x2048 texture dimensions and i've frequently found my 6Gb of Ram to be borderline insufficient. That is I often find Quixel/Photoshop will slow down as the Windows 7 page file grows, its even be 10Gb on occasion (though not sure why it grows so much) and that is of course on top of Photoshop's own scratch disk.
Now i've known that 6Gb has been too low for a while so have been thinking about adding more, so my question is does anyone have any recommendations as to overall amount to aim for?
16Gb would seem to be a good bet, but as I want to be able to easily multi-task with several programs I'm thinking 32Gb would be best. My only concern is if 32Gb is really overkill, that's why I'd be interested in hearing what other users experiences have been, ideally giving some numbers on typical ram usage when they are creating in DDO.
Thanks.
Replies
Although I agree that on the face of it 16Gb should be fine, its really hard for me to say since I'm unsure what size images or what frequency i'll be creating them. Hence why I was asking and hoping someone might have some ideas of their typical memory usage with more complex DDO projects.
My issue is that i'm not a 3d modeller by trade, but a software developer. However its pretty typical for my clients to dump massive psd's and other assets on me, or for myself to go in and fix or improve 3D assets/textures (either because they are purchased or I can see improvements due to knowledge of the requirements) . I also tend to have to instruct and provide requirements to clients for assets so need to stay up to date with real-time modelling. So while it wouldn't make sense for me to model or texture an asset as its not currently my expertise, it is an area that I have to delve into from time to time and have a decent grasp and ability with.
This is one reason why i've jumped into Quixel as i'm really pushing to get my clients to embrace PBR and improve overall texture quality, meaning I might have to step up and do some of the work on it. As most of my client work is somewhat bespoke I can often push the limits, so 4096x4096 textures would not be out of the question, indeed they may be essential in terms of selling the quality to clients and best of all that quality comes free with Quixel since it requires no additional effort from myself over 2048x2048. Then again sometimes I am limited by specifications such as if producing a tablet app where texture space might be at a premium.
Urgghh as you can tell its difficult for me as I seem to have ended up with client work that covers the entire spectrum of technology and capabilities. So one project I might push out 4096x4096 textures so the quality looks good on 4k displays, then the next project might have to work on an iPad 2
Common sense approach would be to go for 16Gb now then add more later, but from what I can tell these days its very hard if not impossible to simply add memory, you basically end up chucking out all the previous sticks instead. This suggests that I may be better off just going for 32Gb now and avoiding that issue in the future?
This was more the case for first generation SSDs and not true anymore. Plus, if its a small SSD just for scratch disk, it doesn't really matter does it? Sure maybe it burns out in a few years, get a new one at that point.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand
10GB a day for 30 years, will that last you long enough? :poly142:
1. Buy as much RAM as you want now to fill all the slots, then chuck out the sticks later (p.s. I accept leftover RAM donations :P ) when you want to add more.
2. If it's within your means, just max out your motherboard's RAM capacity now and get it out of the way. More is always better!!!!!!!!! See how many exclamations I am using?? Really though, I would rather have plenty of extra overhead instead of realizing later that I'm running up against a wall and then having to chuck the sticks. It is inevitable that over time our workflows will require more and more RAM as we can do more and more awesome-but-complicated things at higher and higher resolutions. How much future-proofing do you feel like doing with your rig? When I built mine 5-6 years ago I got way more RAM than I was ever using at the time, and now I'm to the point where I can push up against that limit.
3. You could buy less RAM now but use larger sticks. Say your mobo supported 32GB max, and had 4 DIMM slots. Thus, it supports 8GB per slot. You could buy 2 8GB sticks now and then add another 2 later if you're feeling a RAM crunch. This way you wouldn't have to chuck any sticks out and you could still max your board out at a later time if you need to. There's a caveat, however; you may not be able to take advantages of dual or tri channel modes with your RAM this way depending on how your mobo is set up. Consult the board's manual or manufacturer's website for more info (website may be better; my board only supported 12 when it first became available but as it matured, BIOS updates enabled higher capacity modules to be used, which of course isn't in my board's paper manual in the closet).
Also yeah, I will mirror the comments about a cheapo SSD for a photoshop-exclusive scratch disk that you don't mind trashing and don't save important data to.
For reference, I run a Win7x64 machine with 12GB of RAM and I don't have issues running PS, DDO/3DO, Maya, Mudbox, Xnormal, Chrome with a dozen tabs, and a rather greedy Firefox (clocking in at 1.5-2.5GB with a jillion tabs open) simultaneously as long as I'm not doing anything too crazy in all of them at once, working with 5-6 2048 map psds. If I have all of those things going at once I might push 90-93% RAM usage and I might consider closing something.
More typically I'll have all of those things minus Mudbox and Xnormal going and hover around the 70-88% mark depending on what I'm currently finagling. If I remove Maya from the picture and focus on the DDO part of the pipeline I'm in the 70-80% range. I haven't tried 4096s yet with DDO but if I were going to be working with that resolution on a regular basis I would personally want 24+GB of RAM.
So I suppose it depends on which programs you want to multitask with.
Thanks for your input.
Overall that sounds exactly the same as myself though with a few different apps. Had to chuckle at your Firefox comment, though I think i'm up to two jillion tabs open across multiple groups
Interesting that at 12Gb, double what I currently have you are pushing near the limit, slightly less if you don't have some apps open. To me that suggests that 12GB is really close to the limit now and thus while 16GB would give some extra head room I'm not sure for how long. Unfortunately the next step up is 32GB, but I guess I could fill whats left over with RamDisks and VM's
Totally overkill but it is nice to see that photoshop can eat 20gb RAM or more and I got plenty of headroom so I can keep multiple assets loaded in my 3D application of choice with that kind of textures loaded at the same time.
I'm doing 4k textures, and only essential multitasking - (Ps 2015.5)+(DDO 2.3.1.) + 3DO for masks / Unity for looks. Skype/browser are closed no problem.
Having funds only for 2 new things. Looking for help for what to prefer:
- 1 stick of 8GB RAM 1333
- 1 samsung 850 SSD 250GB
or- 1 stick of 8GB RAM 1333
- 1 stick of 8GB RAM 1333
I have dual crossed 4gb. So 8gb RAM at the moment. 2 free slots remain.16 GB would be recommended for 4k texturing. 32 GB would be recommended for 8k texturing, including 3D painting in 8k, although a strong GPU is required for this as well.
If so, can we apply to DDO same advices, that we apply to Ps?
Advices I talking about are "Optimize your hardware setup for Photoshop" at Adobe help page.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html#hardware-setup
Kind regards
My biggest DDO project:
and amount of RAM used is 15.4GB. 16.5GB was max, ever.
I've got 24 GB ram total now,
but really I would be better with 16 GB ram total but SSD for Photoshop, like samsung ones.
Because You save textures not in RAM but to disk. And there is a lot of resaving, so you'll need that ability to write textures faster.
Happy holidays!