big size image. Memory crash

[DriesV]

It's time for many upgrades ... and so it has been for +2j ...
...
I am slowly growing numb of frustration of all those crashes 

Philippe, not kidding on this one.
I was in the same boat for a while +/- 1.5 years ago.
Working with SolidWorks assemblies with hun-dreds of configurations, easily pushing +2GB memory for SLDWORKS.exe alone.
Constant crashes were driving me mad.

I also bumped into Windows 7 64bit implementation reluctance.
What helped me to get a better workstation and modern OS was to make a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Just like I had to make them in college to evaluate the soundness of investments for ALL stakeholders.
I actually made a spreadsheet, comparing the cost of a new workstation (and accompanying load on IT) to the the time I would win working on projects. A week later I was on W7 x64.

I can really recommend doing that. Try to get IT and finance on board from the get-go.
You have to emphasize that YOU are the expert in your domain for your company. Because frankly, IT probably has no clue about what you're doing.
It depends a bit on the company culture and structure too. One advantage I have is that R&D is a relatively small group of people (meaning: not far from being understaffed ). I guess the smaller the team is, the smaller the 'tolerance for wasted time' is. At least that's my theory about it.

In all fairness...and I'll just put it bluntly:
Judging by the work that you do, working with the assemblies that you have...it's a disgrace that you can't work on a modern 64 bit OS. Like you said: the OS is crippling the hardware potential.

Dries

[KeyShot]

Hi Philippe,

It is effects under settings (bloom and vignetting). These require a post-process on the framebuffer, so even if you use exr output they require the full framebuffer in memory, which I think is why you see the memory request when you press the render button.

[PhilippeV8]

Thnx, I will check.

I rarely use those so I doub't they're turned on.  But I will check tomorrow.

(It's 3.33 in the night here ... I'm up cus my youngest won't sleep  )