RAM in Servers?

[frozenwaffles]

Hi, so our V4 R2 serve LT has 4Gb of RAM i believe. Can this be upgraded? I'm kind of surprised that its only 4Gb... i would have thought 8Gb or 16Gb is far more appropriate for a server.... is this correct thinking?

[JustynR]

The Servers only have Windows XP 32bit running anyways...
32 bit versions of Windows can only take up to 4 gb anyways.

What are you running that would need more RAM?
So far as I know, everything that happens inside of PB is done in the GPU anyways - even Particle Generation depends on the Graphics Processing and RAM - not the computer's RAM or Processor.

Is RAM not mainly used for multi-tasking and running large programs? If all you're running is the Server LT Client - I think you'd be fine. Otherwise I'm sure Coolux would have upgraded the Servers for us.

[frozenwaffles]

yeah this is a good point....i forgot about the 32-bit thing....
So i just had two servers playing a 4 projector blend. after a reboot one of them got to a point in the timeline and instead of playing back the content, it just 'played black'!!!!
i jumped around on the time line a little bit and all was well in the coolux world didn't happen again and thankfully the show was 100% perfect.
I'm just trying to work out why this would happen. the file was a 4080pixel by 720pixel mxl 2min animation...

i had top do a lot of 'talking out my arse' to reinstate my client faith in the system. lots of 'what if that happens in the show?' and 'why did that happen?' questions.... unfortunately i did not know the answer to either!

[Patrick Verhey]

Hi,

Justyn is right, PB is manily using the GPU ram for rendering. Not the system RAM.

What you describe sounds like an "impatient error" after reboot. If you start Pandoras Box Manager and Client the system will need some time to load all assets in your project. Regarding the amount of files and their size it might take a couple of minutes. If you have your timeline running during that time a not yet loaded file will not be displayed until it is loaded and you reenter the clip.
As your are talking about a mxl file it most likely looks like the clip had not been loaded.

best regards

Patrick

[frozenwaffles]

Ok so a little bit further to this then... What brand of Graphics Cards do you use/recommend in the servers?
If I wanted to put in a GTX780 card...which brand do I buy? Gigabyte, Palit, etc?

[Patrick Verhey]

Hi,

we do use Nvidia grafic cards in the server. The type depends on the kind of machine, Quad Server will run on other cards than dual servers:

Dual Server: Nvidia GTX 760
Quad Servers: Nvidia GTX 780
and on special requests we also use the Nvidia K5000 for pixel sync.

I hope that helps

bets regards

Patrick

[mayank1418]

Hi Patrick,

What is Pixel sync?

Can we use GTX 760 for dual player PRO outputs with 2 full HD outputs?

Also, how is ZOTAC brand for this card?

Thanks & warm regards,
Mayank Parashar

[Daniel Kaminski]

Hi,

GTX760 will work for 2 HD Outputs

PixelSync or Framelock.
Framelock is needed when using Active 3D or LED Walls that have multiple DVI Inputs.

Using Framelock enables the Graphicscard to Output all the Displays in sync even accross multiple Computers.
Meaning, the V-Sync happens at the same time.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_10794.html

I hope this helps a Little bit.

Framelock is only available with Quadro GPUs.

Daniel