Archicad & Ram (PC computer) and excessive paging to drive

[Anonymous]

I have noticed that when I am running archicad my computer is swapping files back to the hard drives way too much.

Computer Info:

2 dual core Opteron 270's with 1024 cache each (Think that's the extra ram is),
2 1gig DDR PC3200 sticks, 2 more slots available, total installed ram at present 4353 MB (the motherboard can take up to 8192 MB,
Nvidia Quadro FX 3400/4400
Supermicro H8DCE MB
4 hard drives (no raid), I use 1 10,000 rpm 140 gig Western Digital SATA drive for OS and applications another identical drive for Archicad files/projects.

Windows XP Pro service pack 2 (32 Bit)

Right now I have an archicad 12 file open that is 54,000 KB in size, it has the a terrain/mesh, and pretty extensive modeling, custom windows, cornice moldings, framing components, foundations. (It's a 1900's church that is getting renovations and additions)

Right now Archicad is telling me that it has 2.24 G additional available for use. I just opened a section and memory was paged back to the hard drive 2 minutes later I opened the same section again and again memory was paged back to the hard drive.

I have the virtual memory set to an initial size of 3046 and a max size of 6092 MB. I am wondering if I have my page file settings wrong and that is causing some of the excessive paging. I am going to try letting windows manage my page file size and see if that helps.

After reading thru the forum I've concluded that I need to switch to a 64bit OS. I guess Vista, I got a copy of XP pro 64 2 years ago and gave up on it. I understand from some people on the forum that the availability of Vista drivers is fairly reasonable?

I am going to buy 2 more stick of the same ram to fill the 2 empty slots.

At the conclusion of this long message, my question is why isn't archicad using the available ram? Also from what I've read 2 GB is the most ram archicad can use, why is archicad reporting that more than 2 GB of ram is available. Looking at Windows Task Manager right now, after I opened up the same section again I see that task manager says Archicad is only using 42,000 K of memory.

I would greatly appreciate any advice on this question.

Thanks,
Jack

[Anonymous]

After doing some googling re this matter, it appears that it might be better to set a fixed page size. When windows is allowed to manage the page size, it seems to be constantly changing the size as required which means more HD activity. Right now, I have set a fixed page size on my D drive of 9000MB. It appears that the HD activity has decreased.

[Anonymous]

So what is the final word on this? I wonder know has weighed in on this. Is upgrading to DDR3 RAM a good idea? Can AC use it?

I'd appreciate some advice on this as well as I just had some RAM fail, and am thinking about upgrading.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to set up the computer with 8 gig of ram. My mother board is bad so I'm going to install a new motherboard with dual xeon's. I'm using vista 64 and I have not had any more problems with excessive paging.

[Karl Ottenstein]

LINZ wrote:
So what is the final word on this? I wonder know has weighed in on this. Is upgrading to DDR3 RAM a good idea? Can AC use it?

I'd appreciate some advice on this as well as I just had some RAM fail, and am thinking about upgrading.

DDR3 RAM in a system that supports it is of course superior - one should always install the type of RAM for which the slots and bus were designed. No software is 'aware' of DDR3, DDR2 or whatever RAM - it is only aware of RAM.

As to the page file issue from last fall, the other thing for Windows people to note is that setting up a fixed-size page file works the best when it is not fragmented at all either. This requires having more than one disk or partition. With the page file on the default partition (C: typically), thoroughly defragment the partition on which you want the page file, then got through the steps of setting it up on that other partition, reboot, and go. Insufficient main memory combined with a fragmented page file is a sure way of experiencing poor Windows performance.

Cheers,
Karl

[henrypootel]

Basically, you are running some quite good hardware and a high-end software package on an 8 year old operating system.
The solution is, install Vista Business x64.

As for DDR speeds, just get the fastest your motherboard can handle. Don't upgrade(ie. buy a new motherboard and RAM) just to upgrade RAM speed though. The performance boost will be very minor in comparison to the cost.

If your system is running slow, you need to upgrade the CPU first, Amount of RAM second, and Graphics Card third. RAM speed is further down, along with faster hard-drives and RAID.