64 Bit Win 7 - Would I see a benefit with another 4GB of RAM?

[stduc]

Brief System Spec

Mobo P7P55D-E
CPU Intel i860
4 GB RAM

I do a fair amount of image processing using Panorama Factory. I am struggling to understand what Task Manager and Resource Manager are telling me. When doing a 360 degree panorama Resource Manager seems to go to around the 80% mark on Physical RAM and the memory graph in Task Manager reports around 3GB with commit at 3 / 11 (I have an 8GB swap file). Only the occasional Hard Fault is reported.

My question therefore is 3GB swapped out and would I notice a significant performance increase if I doubled my RAM?

 

[DrB0b]

According to anything I can find one Panorama Factory, the latest release is 5.3 which isnt resource intensive at all. If you are worried about overall performance, a decent video card and fast read/write HDD would be a better investment. Granted RAM is alot cheaper than a new HDD, OS install, and/or video card.

Nice Processor BTW

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[stduc]

Panorama Factory consumes RAM according to the image size. Typically a 360 degree panorama based on around 20 images each of 10M Pixels or so consumes a lot of RAM (but how much?) and around 3GB in temporary disk space which you can delete after completing he panorama.

 

[DrB0b]

Do you have a nice video card with some RAM? That would take a load off of the system RAM.

If not I would either go with a midline/upper end video card or go with the new HDD and more RAM.

To answer your original question, will doubling the RAM help(paraphrasing), Yes is the simple answer which Im sure you already knew. It will help some but it will not be an earth shattering amount.

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[stduc]

Thanks for the compliment re my CPU.

I fail to see where video capabilities figure in this. My video card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 240

Whilst building the panorama the video card is idle. As you say - probably I won't get a worthwhile speed up, unless stuff is swapping out to make room for the panorama. So I guess the other question is how can I find that out?

 

[DrB0b]

My mistake, I thought this made 3D models of things out of a series of pictures which would definitely be video card related. After a little more research(my fault), the RAM, Processor, and HDD are going to be your choke points.

Your Video Card and for the most part the motherboard should be ample, barring any defects, for what your are doing.

Hell, right now according to Task Manager, I am using 1.3GB of my 2GB on my work PC just by being on FF with 5 tabs open and Auto it sitting idle.

What we need is a good third party monitoring system, which honestly I dont have right now. Im sure someone will come up with one before I get back Monday, but if not Ill post one I have tried and found.

If you have a good video, motherboard, processor for the task: I would look at the read write speed with something like Bart's HDD Test and see if that is an issue. If not, buying more RAM definitely wont hurt.

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

im guessing its not this i860:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860

;-)

ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[xwb]

Where does panorama Factory get installed? Program Files or Program Files (x86). If it is the latter, it is a 32 bit program and won't benefit from more memory.

 

[stduc]

im guessing its not this i860:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i860

ROFL - obviously not - but hey great find - thanks, I really enjoyed that bit of history.

Where does panorama Factory get installed? Program Files or Program Files (x86). If it is the latter, it is a 32 bit program and won't benefit from more memory.

I'm using the 64 bit version.

 

[vop]

You might want to try loading the following tool (onscreen GADGET) that you can position anywhere on the screen as desired:

http://addgadget.com/all_cpu_meter/

If you right-click on the gadget and select 'always on top', you can actively monitor USED (also % used) and/or FREE RAM.

Vince
ASAP Member (VopThis) - Alliance of Security Analysis Professionals
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[*** If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. ***]