3ds RAM usage?

[bm23]

I read that we should have as much RAM as possible to speed up the rendering process. So far, I've only been doing some test rendering (extremely basic, like primitives, some materials, vray fur) and I noticed that my RAM usage is never more than 50% (although CPU usage is always at 100 during render). I have 8gb of DDR3 RAM. My question is, should I get more RAM? What's the normal RAM usage for a complex scene, say, interior scene with furnitures? Money isn't really a problem since RAM is relative cheap nowadays.

If it is of any relevance, my PC specs are
Core i7 870 @ 2.93Ghz
8gb DDR3 1600
GTX 560 OC
120gb Corsair SSD
Win 7 64bit

[Cad64]

Your processor will only use as much RAM as it needs for the job. If it only needs 50% then that's all it's going to use. Buying more RAM won't do anything for you. The extra RAM will just sit there doing nothing while your processor continues to use only 3 or 4gb of what you've got. Wait until you start rendering much larger, complex scenes. If your RAM starts hitting the upper limit, which it won't, then you should start thinking about adding more RAM. But until then, you're fine. Adding more RAM will just be a waste of money.

As a point of reference, I have 12gb RAM in my machine but I have never used more than half, even on very large rendering jobs.

[bm23]

Thank you. That's the answer I was looking for. I've been reading tutorials and watching youtube videos. Some of the PC that was used to render had 16-32gb of RAM so I thought perhaps the usage would increase exponentially as the scene gets more complex

[Cad64]

Thank you. That's the answer I was looking for. I've been reading tutorials and watching youtube videos. Some of the PC that was used to render had 16-32gb of RAM so I thought perhaps the usage would increase exponentially as the scene gets more complex

That may be true, but until you actually start seeing an increase in RAM usage, there's really no need to install more. Unless you've got some extra cash laying around. Having extra RAM never hurts, just in case.