Allocating more than 64GB of RAM (Mac OS)

[Luigi9212]

Hi,

Is it possible to use more then 64GB of RAM on Mac OS?

Best Regards

Luigi9212

[GarryP]

You have posted this in a section of the forums related to the beta software only.

If you are still using the latest beta software then you should look at upgrading the commercial software (already at V2.6.3) as the older beta software might expire soon.

If you are not using the beta software then this should have been posted in the relevant non-beta section of the forums.

No harm has been done, and a moderator can move this thread for you (if necessary) when you tell us which you are using.

[Luigi9212]

I use both versions and non of them is it posible to use more than 64GB of RAM on my mac.

[GarryP]

Since the 2.6.3 commercial release is the same as the 2.6.3 beta you are probably better-off using the commercial release until a new beta comes out as the beta might expire at any time.

If you have the same problem with the beta as with the commercial release then the problem should be reported in a non-beta section of the forums. The beta sections of the forums are for issues which only happen with the beta software and nowhere else.

As for the answer to your question, have you tried to enter a value manually instead of using the slider? (I don’t use macOS, or have more than 16GB of RAM, so I can’t try this myself.)

There’s a chance that the software might not be able to use more than 64GB for some technical reason but I can’t say either way.

[NotMyFault]

 

some UI bugs were fixed which didn’t allow to enter larger values by numeric input.

It is still not clear if settings above 64GB will be actually used.

please share your experience, e.g. screenshot of activity monitor showing actual ram usage.

to get high usage, simply resize an pixel layer, RGB/32 requires 16 bytes per pixel, 80.000px x and y should use about 96GB.

e.g. Create rectangle with grey and 100% color noise. Then resize, and rasterize or merge visible.

 

 

[Luigi9212]

The same panorama uses on my Windows Machine (Affinity Photo V2 & Photoshop) about 176GB of RAM and on my Mac Studio (Photoshop) over 300GB of RAM. 

 

[NotMyFault]

And this after entering higher values in preferences of Photo?
Then Affinity is still capped at 32GB.

[NotMyFault]

I also heavily doubt that Affinity can directly influence physical RAM usage in any way. 
Processes normally yet only access to virtual RAM, and the mapping to physical RAM is 100% under control of OS, including which pages are actually mapped to physical RAM, or swapped out to disk (pagefile.sys on Windows), use of RAM compression (which is used by Mac, Windows 10 and other OS by default since ages). So an app never knows how much physical RAM is used.

Similarly, access to files on storage requires RAM, too, and to avoid slow sequential IO buffers will be used, both on OS side and on app side. Most OS support memory mapped files, again the OS has full control which parts get actually mapped into physical RAM.

I don’t understand why Affinity has any RAM limit in the first place. Today (since 30 years) should use whatever RAM is available, not giving any hard limit. Apps may choose to offer limiting their RAM to let other apps live in parallel, but why having this insane hardcoded  32GB limit?

[Luigi9212]

Affinity is capped in the UI at 64GB

I don't know what happens.

On my Mac Studio I have 512 GB and on my Windows Machine 256GB of RAM