Inventor 2013 Pro 64-bit never use more than 2GB of RAM.

[Anonymous]

We have the Autodesk Inventor Professional 2013 64-bit edition installed on 64-bit Windows 7 pro. The problem is the Inventor never use more than 2GB of the installed RAM even though user who is working on this machine says that it needs more memory because is painfully slow while doing memory cost operations.

I have read on this forums that maximum usage of RAM is limited to 2GB but only in 32-bit edition and we have 64-bit for sure. When I open the "information about Inventor" dialog it displays "Autodesk Inventor Professional 2013 64-bit edition" and when I checked in the Windows task manager Inventor.exe process was marked as 64bit also, so in my oppinion there's no way it can be 32bit version.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU

RAM: 24GB DDR3

OS: Windows 7 Professional x64 Service Pack 1

[mcgyvr]

And how much ram is installed in the computer?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/find-out-how-much-ram-your-computer-has

[Anonymous]

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@mcgyvr wrote:

And how much ram is installed in the computer?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/find-out-how-much-ram-your-computer-has

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As I've written above it has 24 gigabytes installed and all of it is "seen" by the OS (I've checked it in Control Panel --> System and in the Windows Task Manager).

[DarrenP]

i noticed you have no service packs installed

try installing service pack 2

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=21702054&linkID=9242019

[dgorsman]

You may want to define "memory cost operations" with a little more detail.  Some things can be made faster, but its usually related to work process rather than RAM.  Dragging a fuel trailer behind a Gremlin won't make it go faster, nor will having a foot-tall stack of paper make it faster to work out a calculation.

[mcgyvr]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@mcgyvr wrote:

And how much ram is installed in the computer?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/find-out-how-much-ram-your-computer-has

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As I've written above it has 24 gigabytes installed and all of it is "seen" by the OS (I've checked it in Control Panel --> System and in the Windows Task Manager).

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Sorry.. Didn't know that part of the post was the machine you were talking about.. 

Also any chance this was a 32 bit OS machine at one time and "might" have the 3g switch turned on? Not sure if thats even possible though..

See what the memprobe.exe application reports..

Its located in the BIN directory where Inventor is installed.

Fire it up and post a screen shot while running a "memory costing operation" 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all suggestions, I'll try to make a use of them and will be back with the feedback soon. @dgorsman  I'll try to find out what the user had on his mind while was talking about memory costing operations. I'm working on a first line support and this is my first touch of this software, so I need to relay on user experience yet.

[mcgyvr]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@Thanks for all suggestions, I'll try to make a use of them and will be back with the feedback soon. @dgorsman  I'll try to find out what the user had on his mind while was talking about memory costing operations. I'm working on IT first line support and this is my first touch of this software, so I need to relay on user experience yet.

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IMO there is a very good possibility this has nothing to do with Inventor.. 

Might also want to run a memtest on the ram.. It could be some bad ram too..  Just pulling at straws..

[sam_m]

Bad memory tends to make a system crash, not refuse to let it allocate its use once Windows has seen it's there.  Not saying it's not worth running memtest, just can't imagine bad memory forcing the system to only use 2gb of 24 instead of showing stability issues.

Could it simply be a case that the work isn't actually memory intensive and it doesn't need to use more than 2GB...

If it's slowing down then just see the cpu use - if it's maxed (remember the majority of Inventor is only single-threaded so will only ever use 1 core - 25% on a quad core, 12.5% cpu use on an 8core etc...) then it's busy thinking and processing and not in need for more memory...

[blair]

Possibly a mem board has not been properly seated and needs to be re-seated and locked into place. Depending on the MoB and Bios it may default back to the first mem board and not look beyond the unseated mem board.

I would look at the task manager and see if you are maxing out your CPU. You could also be pushing other components of your system such as graphics card. Lots of memory doesn't guarantee a fast system, it just means you are not swapping items in memory and your hard-drive.

[Anonymous]

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@Blair wrote:

Possibly a mem board has not been properly seated and needs to be re-seated and locked into place. Depending on the MoB and Bios it may default back to the first mem board and not look beyond the unseated mem board.

I would look at the task manager and see if you are maxing out your CPU. You could also be pushing other components of your system such as graphics card. Lots of memory doesn't guarantee a fast system, it just means you are not swapping items in memory and your hard-drive.

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How could that possibly be when there aren't any stability issues (BSODs, crashes) and the memory is properly discovered by the OS? All other programs are able to use this memory. I belive the hardware is not the issue here.

As to the graphics card now the PC has Nvidia Quadro 600. Is it possible that this a bottleneck of the machine? For me it would be strange if the memory usage was limited by the grapics card.

[mrattray]

Likely the processor is the bottle neck. Unless your user is running complex simulations or working with truly massive assemblies, it's unlikely that more than a couple of gigs of RAM is needed.
I'm working with a fairly large assembly right now, waiting on a rebuild. Task Manager reports 2GB of RAM (of 32GB installed) allocated and 12% CPU used (1 of 8 cores pegged). I think this is the condition your user is seeing.

[mcgyvr]

I can easily see 6G of RAM usage with Inventor.. It happens daily when I have a few top level assemblies opened.. 

What are your "virtual memory" paging file settings?. I have it set to let Windows manage it now. 

[mrattray]

Mine is set to auto as-well. What are you doing when you get to 6 GB? By the way, I didn't mean to imply that usage never exceeds 2GB; just that it's not super common. Some people seem to think that a simple assembly will eat gobs of RAM just because it's CAD.

[dgorsman]

There needs to be a separation between the amount of RAM being used and the (apparent) problem of slowness - one isn't necessarily related to the other, especially if you've got 24 GB installed.  Fixing the slowness won't necessarily result in more RAM being used.

It *might* be the card, but without any details on what is being done to what and how its being done its hard to tell.  I'm still banking on a work process optimization being the cure.

[mcgyvr]

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@mrattray wrote:
 What are you doing when you get to 6 GB? 

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I can just have a few top level assemblies loaded and some parts open,etc.... Maybe doing some raytracing to one or whatever.. Just daily stuff and Inventor will get into the 4-6G usage easily.. 

Heck I've just got one small assembly and 3 parts loaded now and I'm at 1.2G

[blair]

If a Mem board has been unseated, it might as well be completely removed. Some system Bios require certain sockets to be filled if not all are being used. All that will then happen is the system won't see the remaining memory. It won't cause a system to crash or become unstable.

Most likely you just have a slow system or one that has minimum spec's to run Inventor and are hitting the limit on your system.

[BarryZA]

Do you see all your RAM here? All programs/autodesk/tools/task scheduler/settings

[Anonymous]

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@sam_m wrote:

 If it's slowing down then just see the cpu use - if it's maxed (remember the majority of Inventor is only single-threaded so will only ever use 1 core - 25% on a quad core, 12.5% cpu use on an 8core etc...) then it's busy thinking and processing and not in need for more memory...

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@mrattray wrote:
Likely the processor is the bottle neck. Unless your user is running complex simulations or working with truly massive assemblies, it's unlikely that more than a couple of gigs of RAM is needed.
I'm working with a fairly large assembly right now, waiting on a rebuild. Task Manager reports 2GB of RAM (of 32GB installed) allocated and 12% CPU used (1 of 8 cores pegged). I think this is the condition your user is seeing.

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This seem to be the case :). I've asked user to make a screenshot of the CPU usage while doing these "heavy" operations and this is what I got... (attachment). Only one of the 8 threads is being used and this is most likely the reason of the slowness. I should have checked this at first but I though that is obvious for 64 bit software to use all threads (but as it revealed is not).