How much RAM for Rendering?

[Allan Chesney]

I do most of my TFP work on a 2gig RAM laptop, but recently I installed it on my older desktop to test out some issues. I did not expect it to run very well, as 512 of the 1 gig RAM had failed and I was waiting for the insurance company to come to the party with a replacement. 

Actually TFP ran OK on 512MB but would not do an Advanced render at all - NOTHING happened. I didn't blame the RAM at the time - until I got the replacement.  Now with 1gig it renders perfectly.  Nothing else was done to the PC, just the RAM was slotted in.  I can't remember now what is recommended but, presumably, 512MB, is not enough for Advanced radiosity rendering to work.  Has anyone else found this?

Allan

[Doug.S]

As I recall I ran FP11 on 512MB for a while, but even without anything else running it ran out of RAM and was using hard disk which was way slow. So I added another 256MB  (now 768MB = ~.75GB total - its my laptop) and now run TFP12 OK and renders OK even with IE running. And I use HA "on" all the time.

I'm using XP.  Vista requires more RAM than XP.