What is your Dragon NaturallySpeaking memory footprint?
Currently, natspeak.exe occupies(as per Mem Usage column of task manager) 450-500 megabytes of memory. The VM Size column of the task manager shows roughly the same size. I am not sure whether I need to be alarmed that something is wrong with my profile or installation that makes natspeak.exe consume so much memory.
It wasn't like this always. Back in the days when I had DNS9 preferred, the memory footprint was only 250 MB-ish. Then I upgraded to DNS10 preferred, then to DNS10 pro, later to DNS10 pro SP1. I don't remember the memory footprint after each of those updates. But finally when I had DNS10 Pro SP1, it hovered around 350 - 400 MB. Yesterday, I purchased say what pro and wrote a lot of commands. Now I see the memory footprint around 500 MB.
I would appreciate if others could share Dragon NaturallySpeaking memory footprint in their computers. Also if anybody has insights into the factors to which the memory footprint may be sensitive to, such as the number of commands, length of the lists etc., please share. Please click on my username in the signature for this entry to see details of my system setup.
vayup wrote: Currently,
Currently, natspeak.exe occupies(as per Mem Usage column of task manager) 450-500 megabytes of memory. The VM Size column of the task manager shows roughly the same size. I am not sure whether I need to be alarmed that something is wrong with my profile or installation that makes natspeak.exe consume so much memory.
It wasn't like this always. Back in the days when I had DNS9 preferred, the memory footprint was only 250 MB-ish. Then I upgraded to DNS10 preferred, then to DNS10 pro, later to DNS10 pro SP1. I don't remember the memory footprint after each of those updates. But finally when I had DNS10 Pro SP1, it hovered around 350 - 400 MB. Yesterday, I purchased say what pro and wrote a lot of commands. Now I see the memory footprint around 500 MB.
I would appreciate if others could share Dragon NaturallySpeaking memory footprint in their computers. Also if anybody has insights into the factors to which the memory footprint may be sensitive to, such as the number of commands, length of the lists etc., please share. Please click on my username in the signature for this entry to see details of my system setup.
vayup,
First, natspeak.exe is not technically Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is only part of it. Actually, natspeak.exe is Dragon's linking loader. It is a control program that searches your system for all the installed application base as well as providing the hooks to any other feature/function that is controlled by DNS. As such, if you just load natspeak.exe by itself, it takes up only about 14 MB.
Second, what you are looking at when you see the memory footprint expand to around 500 MB is natspeak.exe along with MREC.dll (dragons recognizer – speech engine) along with your user profile data, MyCmds.dat, and any of the currently active ActiveX controls needed for dictation and/or standard operations. So, the majority of which are looking at is your user data.
Lastly, the amount of RAM used by DNS has been expanded significantly after version 8. DNS 9-10 will generally use about 400 up to as high as 700 to 800 MB depending upon the version that you're running. For example, DNS 10 Medical will utilize 700+ megabytes. DNS Preferred will generally use about 350 MB. DNS Pro and Legal will run approximately 400 to 500 MB (sometimes more, sometimes less). Nevertheless, the bottom line is that what you're looking at is the total footprint for all of the files necessary to run DNS with your current user profile. Note also that that number can expand as you add commands and/or vocabulary, and/or as the Language Model expands (i.e., adding documents and adapting to your writing style). Nevertheless, what you are seeing is correct for your version of DNS.
Chuck Runquist
Owner, GEMCCON - The Choice of Intelligence
Speech Recognition Consulting and Training
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. - James Thurber (1894- 1961)
Thanks, Chuck. I'm glad that
Thanks, Chuck. I'm glad that the memory usage that I'm seeing is normal for my version.
I am quite surprised at the sensitivity of the memory usage on the number of commands using an exceptionally long list. Once, I created about 10 commands requiring numerical values as arguments. One of them, needed values up to 5000. So I created the list <1to5000>, and then since I was lazy, I used that list for all the 10 commands. The memory usage shot up by 100 MB. I changed the arguments for each commands to a smaller list one by one. The memory usage dropped gradually(pretty much linearly, it seemed). I thought that as long as I have a list being used by at least one command, making more commands using the list must not affect the memory usage, at least not by much (I mean, not linearly). But apparently, I was wrong.