Physical Memory overload

> > > Physical Memory overload

Posted on

Mans reach exceeds his grasp
Member Since: Oct 23, 2007

So I'm sitting in Sonar, minding my own business;

I've got 5 instances of Dimension Pro open and frozen, and 3 tracks of audio, plus a Sonitus Verb and compressor on an effects send. I went to load GigaStudio to use the piano.gig and my brand new computer freezes. I rebooted, reloaded the project and opened the task manager (15 process' running) to find my physical memory down to about 40,000kb (out of 1964528kb) and the page file usage at 1.5GB. Wow.

My question is, if I've loaded instances of Dimension or anything else for that matter in previous sessions, the physical memory it took to load those libraries still being eaten, or should it "dump" after the project has been saved and closed? It seems like anything I load in a project sticks to the physical memory, even after it should have left it. Even if I bounce the synth to a track and delete the synths folder and program from the synth rack, it's still taking up the Physical Memory.

[ Back to Top ]


Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007

Jan 10, 2008 11:10 pm

There's a nice and nifty little RAM freeing tool called RAMpage. It's freeware, and tries to free up and clear up unused memory in RAM. Another thing, would be to Ctrl-Shift-Delete to bring up task manager and check to see if any processes are consuming a lot of ram.

I would think that the programs/effects would unload themselves, and clear the cached data from memory, but removing the tracks themselves might not remove the memory cache. Some software is real good about removing itself, and some isn't. If you suspect that they just aren't clearing themselves, I'd say give RAMpage a try and see if it clears up any RAM being held.

Link: www.jfitz.com/software/RAMpage/

Mans reach exceeds his grasp
Member
Since: Oct 23, 2007

Jan 10, 2008 11:16 pm

Thanks, I'll take a look.

There's nothing running other than basic system-required tasks when I record, or really any other time for that matter. I have 2 GB of ram installed, and 2GB more sitting around, but I should have to run 4GB for such a small task. The workload isn't big enough to warrant the other 2GB I don't think.

I'll give RAMpage a try and see what happens. thanks J

Head Knocker
Contributor
Since: May 20, 2007

Jan 11, 2008 05:43 am

There are a lot of apps out there that don't free up the memory when they are done with it. The coders just don't add in the routines to do it. They are called mis-behaving apps.

Max-Mem or RAMPage will do the job.

With your setup you shouldn't be having physical memory problems.

Mans reach exceeds his grasp
Member
Since: Oct 23, 2007

Jan 11, 2008 02:55 pm

I was thinking I shouldn't be having these problems too. Between the on board video taking 256mb, the Tascam US-144 taking another 256mb and 20$ of my CPU, and the ram it takes to run XP and Sonar, it leaves me with about 1.25 GB of ram, which should still be plenty, especially with the other 2048mb virtual memory. I sense something is amiss here, but I can't seem to figure out what it is.

I downloaded RAMPage, and it seems to have freed it up a bit. I'm about to find out if it helps while using Sonar though.

Update: RAMPage worked a little too good; every time I un-freeze a synth with it running, it dumps the synth or samples right after loading them. :( I have a hard time believing that Sonar 7 PE wont let go of the memory... its got to be something else, but I dont know what. I've got e-mails out to Cakewalk and Tascam to see if they've heard of issues like this with any of their products, now it's just time to play the waiting game.

Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002

Jan 12, 2008 01:07 am

Keith, I don't have any of that happening here at all. When I freeze a synth the memory becomes freed up in moments.

have you grabbed the 7.0.2 update by the way? It fixed a few other issues that you may or may not come across eventually.

Mans reach exceeds his grasp
Member
Since: Oct 23, 2007

Jan 12, 2008 03:13 am

Yeah, I just downloaded the update, thanks for the reminder; I never check my e-mail anymore, so I didn't know.

And I figured out what the problem was; I swapped out my Patriot ram for the other OCZ ram I never put in and it works just fine now. Maybe I got a bad set? I'm not even sure that's possible, but I guess anything is with computers. And before you ask, both the Patriot and the OCZ ram sets are DDR2 PC5400 667MHZ, so it wasn't a compatibility issue. Probably just a freak occurrence.

Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007

Jan 12, 2008 03:50 pm

That could be very possible as well. There's a good RAM testing program called memtest86

www.memtest86.com/

(it's included on my ubuntu linux CD actually)

It takes a pretty long time to run though, depending on how thorough you want to test. And it has to be run from boot. Nice little diagnostic program though.

Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002

Jan 12, 2008 07:07 pm

Ya, I found that cheap ram isn't always good ram. In my case its always been a benefit to use the more expensive ram.

Mans reach exceeds his grasp
Member
Since: Oct 23, 2007

Jan 13, 2008 01:23 am

Thanks J, I'll pop the old ram in one day and run a test to see if it's faulty. For now though, I'm just going to push forward with my project. I'll post my findings when I run it in the future.

Czar of Turd Polish
Member
Since: Jun 20, 2006

Jan 15, 2008 12:13 pm

Yup, OCZ is good ram too.

> > > Physical Memory overload

Related Forum Topics:


If you would like to participate in the forum discussions, feel free to register for your free membership.