Enabling more than 2GB memory in After Effects

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13 March 2007 1,571 views 4 Comments

If you are rendering in After Effects and your machine has > 2Gb memory, you can increase the After Effects RAM-usage over the Windows XP limit of 2 GB by changing a simple command in a text file.

If this apply to you, then go on and follow this instruction:

The limit under Windows XP is 3 GB of RAM (per instance of AE). To achieve using more than 2 GB, do this:

1. Choose “Run…” from the start-menu (in windows, or simply hit your windows-key and then R.
2. Simply type the path to the hidden “boot.ini” file, this is normally, C:\boot.ini
3. Press OK
4. Boot.ini opens in notepad. Find the4 line with your default OS, and add the following at the end of the line:

/3GB

5. Close and save …
6. Restart the PC
7. After reboot, start After Effects and go to Edit -> Preferences and choose the “Memory & Cache” settings.
8. Now enable to checkbox to make AE handle the large amount of RAM better. (Prevent DLL Address Space Fragmentation).

When you now render in After Effects (assuming you got enough RAM in the machine) you will see it use > 2 GB in the render queue.

On my machine, I got 3 GB instead of 2 GB by these simple steps :D

4 Comments »

Anonymous said:

Thanks a lot Anders

# 30 August 2007 at 16:02

Anders (author) said:

underbelly.co.nz said…

used to work for me

had to do a re-install of xp-pro

now /3gb just gives me black screen – i know the machine’s running – but nothing on screen…

nb. i installed Microsoft fix: KB890048… and that woked for a while.. but no longer… i suspect some other “hotfix” in the meantime has sunk me…

so back to 2gb… and man it sux

any one got any idea how i might get the /3gb going again?

(dual amd270 [tyan k8we mobo] with 4gb for each dualcore cpu)

December 02, 2007

# 2 December 2007 at 16:02

Anders said:

Hi underbelly.co.nz, I can only confirm that I am currently using the 3GB switch on a brand new Armani two dual-core 3.0 Ghz Xeon in WinXP, using all the latest drivers and updates. Is working fine for me? Would be interesting to hear if anyone else is having the same issue?

# 2 December 2007 at 16:02

Vinyl said:

Good advice, previews run better!

Thx!!!

# 22 January 2008 at 16:03