RAM usage at 98% - something not right?

Hi guys-

I am encountering what I perceive as a problem, and can't seem to find any answers online.

I have a city scene with a fly through- it's right under 500,000 polygons, with 1300 materials/textures. When navigating, as well as rendering, my RAM is hitting the 99% mark almost all the time, making impossible to do ANYTHING other than just what C4D is doing at the time. (It's hitting the 80ish mark before rendering- once I turn up AA to 4x, AO and GI using the IR cache, it pegs out to 99%, making the computer useless for anything else other than the render itself)

Is this normal? It seems a lot of people are cramming WAY more into their scene, and with less RAM. I guess I am trying to figure out A: what is Cinema packing into my RAM that is taking up 5.5 GBs, and B: would upgrading from 6 to 12GB be worth the investment?

I am mainly asking because I hate to drop the bucks on the RAM, only to find out this is out of the ordinary. I am used to C4D utilizing 100% CPU, but not my RAM as well...

Thanks for any input/suggestions!

M.B.R.

C4D R12 Studio - I7920 6GB DDR3

I am using 64 Win Ult.

The textures total about 260 MB. (they vary form 80k to a couple hundred k, each).

I found a great deal on another 6GB, so I went ahead and bit the bullet. Should be in by the end of the week, and I'll update once I get it in and re-try this scene.

On a side note, while it didn't fix my actual render issue with the RAM, I switched off OpenGL and it GREATLY increased my view port navigation. (I have 2 x EVGA GTX480s, so I thought the GPU may help...apparently not)

Thanks for the advice, Brian. I'll let you know if it solves my issues.

M.B.R.

C4D R12 Studio - I7920 6GB DDR3

That's what I thought, too... I am going to re-install my drivers, and verify they are the latest certified, just to be sure. I did find it odd that, even if it's only using 1 GPU, it was SO much slower than the CPU in the view port/navigation.

C4D R12 Studio - I7920 6GB DDR3