is gradle memory increasing with amount of unit tests? (gradle 1.x)

All Tests executed using the Gradle Test task are executed in a seperate jvm and not in the jvm, the gradle build is executed with. So changing values in gradle.properties does not solve your problem. To increase the memory of the Test - JVM you have to configure the Test task.

test{
     maxHeapSize = "512m"
}

hope that helped,

Answer to Dean's issue is in comments.

René