Brett,
It may be too early to tell if it’s an issue with 64-bit chips or not; if Chris Cox comes by, he may be able to clear it up, but I think that there probably isn’t a large enough installed user base yet for most users to comment.
Just an opinion.
Thanks – I’ll keep waiting, and hoping.
Brett
We have tested on Opteron and Athlon64 and found no problems.
But we do not support Windows Server.
(and Server 2000 is a bit old for an Opteron)
Hi, thanks for getting back to me.
In the interim I’ve been on the line with Adobe Tech support, and they’ve decided to escalate the case, so they’re a bit stumped right now too.
Server has been working extremely well for me for Pshop7 and with the Opterons in general, and in the meantime I also installed CS(in demo only if that makes a difference, but I don’t think so) on a machine running 2000 Pro, service pack 3. The problem is exactly the same: terminal slowness.
While working with the tech support guy we tried turning the RAM setting in PShop up and down a bit, and found that it starts off much better with the RAM turned down to 50% usage, but then it begins to chug anyway. Anything more than around 55% and it can barely open a file that I can open in under 4 seconds with version 7 on the exact same machine.
Seems pretty weird – so any further thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
B
The only slowness we’ve been able to track down has been due to spyware on the system.
So I have no idea why it’s so slow for you (unless server 2000 has some serious file I/O bugs that Win2K and XP don’t).
Strange then. As noted in my last post, we’ve tried it on a Win2K machine as well, and the problem was identical. These two machines are networked, but other than that they are quite different beasts.
If anyone else stumbles across anything I would love to have the help, and I’ll post whatever I find out through Adobe or my own experimenting in case someone else runs into the same problem.
brett, you’re not going to get better help on this than chris. stick with him. and take a look at your photoshop splash screen and read a couple of the names.
Ah. I thought Chris was just a very knowledgeable user. Forgive my ignorance. I’ll hope that he has some time to help me out then.
Thanks for letting me know.
b
<nudge><nudge><wink><wink>! 🙂
I’ve continued to play around with some RAM settings and such to see what I could see, and found something I thought seemed very odd.
A current project I’m working on, built in 7.01 so far, is a base file size of 64MB, but 233MB in scratch size. That’s when I open it in Pshop7, which takes about 2.3 seconds to do.
If I open it in CS, with the RAM at 75% (versus 95% in 7 which tests the fastest in that version, for me anyway) it took 32.3 seconds, and when opened it said the size was 64MB, with a 932MB scratch size! Quite a difference.
The same holds true if I save it out of 7 as a layered tif as well.
Various RAM settings increase the opening speed – with 50% being the fastest so far (opening at 9.4s). It can barely open it at all if I push the setting any more than 75%. That is odd to my mind, as 7 runs faster the more I squeeze into it, up to the 95% line anyway.
As the machine has quite a pile of memory (4GB) it seems odd that I can only allocate 888MB to photoshop to have it even get close to what I can get out of v7. There was a mention in the readme file that was installed saying that PShop would not run on a machine that has more than 2GB of RAM. Could that be the problem? Obviously that doesn’t seem to apply to the older versions, so maybe that’s a new thing.
Thanks,
b
Photoshop will only use 2 gig of ram (slightly less with program and dll overhead) but plenty of people have reported running (7 anyway) fine in systems w/> 2 gig. you’re not running the system without a windows swap file are you?
also as you’re running server, is it possible there’s some switch to limit memory to any one app? you should be able to set ps to 100% in a system with 4 gig in say xp pro, using 2 full gig for PS and leaving 2 gig for OS overhead and other apps to play in.
No, I’m running with a swap file – just on my C drive, with D as the primary scratch. I myself have been running 7 with more than 2gigs for some time now. My older machine has 3gb, and it was running the same OS, just with dual Athlon chips instead.
As far as I can see there is no switch to limit memory in Server. In any case, I never had the problem before, and I’m able to run v7 up to 98% without any real trouble. Is the memory management different in CS? Am I the only person to have noted any difference in speed on Windows based machines?
As an aside, for those running server (and this may well work with 2000 pro and XP too) something that I regularly do to get a performance boost with Pshop is to change the process priority of photoshop.exe to high or realtime in the Task Manager. There is a notable difference with some functions, and my machine has been totally stable running in realtime for hours on end with 600mb to 1GB files. Just an fyi that you may have been on top of already.
b
I have installed PhotoshopCS on Windows2000 dual P3 machine. Compared to version 7, I have noticed an incredible slowdown in everything from opening files to simple selecting, painting, masking or whatever. I have 1gig of RAM, the scratch disks are both SCSI RAID (27GB and 60GB) with nothing on them, the OS is on a 18GB Ultra SCSI, and all apps are on a different 18GB Ultra SCSI. Version 7 of Photoshop performs normally (much faster than CS). I could understand a slowdown processing 16bit files, but CS is incredibly slow with small (8MB) 8bit files. Something is wrong with it. The rest of the system is behaving normally (fast), as it has for 2 years now.
I guess misery loves company – as I’m glad I’m not the only one noting this problem. I’ve tried two different machines, with different version of W2K, and two different processor sets, and have the exact same problem.
Hopefully tech support will arrive at some solution soon.
For those that are experiencing the Windows 2000 slowdown, can you try to run the application without the MMXCore and FastCore plug-ins? These can both be found in \\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\Extensions
Don’t delete the plug-ins, just move them somewhere so that they don’t get loaded on launch. Let us know if removing either plug-in (or both) helps with the slowdowns you’re seeing.
Also, Darrell, can you post more information about your Windows 2000 system. What is the speed (MHz) of the dual P3 chips in your system? What service pack of Win2k are you running? Etc. We’re working on trying to figure out what’s causing these slowdowns, but have been unable to reproduce the issue on any machine we have (including dual P3, dual P4, dual Athlon, and Opteron systems).
Thanks,
-Adam
Hi Adam,
We tried it – no help at all. Sorry.
Brett, Darrell, et al
Provide the info that Adam (another Adobe Engineer) requested – it is IMPORTANT!
I have posted all that information, in detail, in several replies on this thread. If you need any more please let me know.
b
On my less powerfull athlon machine, CS similarly seems a lot slower than 7 working on the same files. Looks like its churning the disk much more. Hmmm. Its an AMD Athlon CPU @1.8G, 1/2 G ram, 2 disks, win 2000 SP4.
Operating System : Microsoft Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) (Build 2195) Service Pack 4 User : Administrator
Memory in use : 72%
Total Physical Memory : 523760 KB
Available Physical Memory : 142492 KB
———-CPU———–
CPU Speed : 1730 MHz
Nr of CPU’s : 1
Mark – see the Win2K performance thread. There is something going on that Adobe hasn’t been able to reproduce. Photoshop CS performance should be almost the same as PS 7.
I tried this and it doesn’t help.
W2000 sp4 athlon 1200 1.5 gb ram
David
wrote in message
For those that are experiencing the Windows 2000 slowdown, can you try to
run the application without the MMXCore and FastCore plug-ins? These can both be found in \\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\Extensions
Don’t delete the plug-ins, just move them somewhere so that they don’t get
loaded on launch. Let us know if removing either plug-in (or both) helps with the slowdowns you’re seeing.
Also, Darrell, can you post more information about your Windows 2000
system. What is the speed (MHz) of the dual P3 chips in your system? What service pack of Win2k are you running? Etc. We’re working on trying to figure out what’s causing these slowdowns, but have been unable to reproduce the issue on any machine we have (including dual P3, dual P4, dual Athlon, and Opteron systems).
Thanks,
-Adam
Adam,
I’m seeing significantly slower performance with CS than PS 7, running on Win2K sp3, Athlon 1.33MHz, 1.5GB RAM, MSI K7 Turbo MB, Matrox G450 w/latest drivers. I’ve tried moving the two plugins you mentioned, and that didn’t have any effect.
An example of what I mean by slower: Running PhotoKit Capture Sharpener on a 17MB file in PS 7 takes 15 seconds. Running it on the same file in CS takes 35 seconds.
Nick
Hmmmm… save for one post, all AMD chips. Coincidence?
Thanks, Nick.
Adam’s using the info to try and re-create the issue here. We have some suspicions, and we’ll share as soon as we have anything definite.
-Scott
Great – thank you for looking into it.
B
We’ve found a machine here in San Jose that exhibits this behavior.
We’ve also found that disabling Netware Support (from Network Properties) brings the application back up to speed.
If you are experiencing the slowdown, try either temporarily disabling your network connection, or uninstalling your Netware client (you can always re-install it after you verify that it does or does not fix the problem).
Please let us know if disabling network or netware support helps with the slowdowns.
Thanks for everyone’s help with this one…
-Adam
To all, this slow down is not just AMD chips- I am running 2 Xeons 2.2Ghz- 2000 Server- same problems with slow down. Had to go back to PS7. Am I to understand that there may be problems with 2000 server AND the new Server 2003??? (Chris?)
We’ve also found that disabling Netware Support (from Network Properties) brings the application back up to speed.
Adam, sorry to be dense here but where do I find Network Properties?
Just right-click on My Network Places and then right-click again on the Local Area Connection. In that dialog you will find the NetWare support which you can un-check.
Sorry, but on Win2K I’m not seeing a NetWare support option by right clicking on Local Area Connection.
OK, I looked it up and the reason I’m not seeing the option to disable Netware is because it’s not installed.
I don’t see it either. Unless it’s hidden somewhere I don’t think it’s running on my system either b
Running W2K-SP3, Dual 2.2 Intel Chipset, Matrox G450 Dual-Head Video, 1G worth of Memory, 30GB Swap 7200RPM, PSCS installed on Primary HD which is also 30GB 7200RPM with 85% free.
Problems range from loss of tools, slowed response time (i.e. using space bar to use the hand tool and move around an image takes 8-10 seconds to respond in most cases). This also happens when patching…photoshop is not grabbing key commands…Save As takes time to appear, Close (Ctrl+W) not responding most of the time. I haven’t changed any of the keyboard shortcuts.
I’m running PSCS with default settings with the exception of having removed the FastCore (and other above mention plugin) to test the speed and response problems. It did nothing for my system. I had originally turned on History Logging, but turned it off. This did speed up my system some but not nearly enough that I can say Logging was the problem. We don’t use Netware in our Lab so that isn’t a problem here either.
Hope this helps Adobe.
Adam/Scott,
I just tried disabling my network, rebooting, and running the same action on the file I mentioned earlier. No speed difference, still very slow.
Nick
I don’t have netware support installed, so turning it off is not an option; therefore this is unlikely to be the universal cause of the slowdowns.
W2K SP4 AMD 1200mhz 1.5 gb ram Matrox 450 new drivers spybot cleaned
David Madison
Please try temporarily disabling network connections anyway. It may not be Netware specifically, but something funky with networking in general.
-Scott
Scott – no significant improvement on my machine, but perhaps a minor one. Barely noticeable anyway.
b
I noticed an increase in performance. CS Startup went from 12 seconds to about 4-5…it was always taking a while to build a Twain list prior to disabling my nic card. Filter gallery no longer locks up with multiple layers. My keyboard response time is instantaneous for Save As and Close (which almost never worked). I have no problems hiding marquees. The patch tool is faster and using the space bar to access the hand tool was smooth and quick to response as well. After turning back on the card, I’m right back where I started. My response time has dropped again although Photoshop is starting slightly faster at 9 seconds and I get jittering in the hand tool again as well. Hope this helps you guys.
Scott, like I mentioned before, completely disabling my network didn’t help. I just tried it again to be sure. Still slow.
Miguel, PS always takes longer the first time you start it up after reboot. Subsequent restarts are always faster after that, until you reboot the machine. Could this be what you’re seeing?
Yes it could be what I am seeing. But coupled with all the other problems I was having with CS, I wasn’t going to assume anything. I’d did have this start-up issue with 7 as well so I am sure they aren’t related but I wanted to be as thorough as I could.
I’ve yet to work with PSCS much, and hope to get more useful info this weekend, but opening a 1.5 MB JPEG that decompresses to about 20MB took nearly 30 seconds today under PSCS. This is on a dual 550MHz P3 / 1.5GB RAM system running WinXP where PS7 opens the same file in perhaps 5 seconds. It’s really surprising PS CS would be so slow for such a routine task. Background processes include Norton AntiVirus and I do have Norton Protection enabled (both from SystemWorks 2003), so I’ll be experimenting to see if disabling it has a positive impact. I know that was a Norton Protection 2002 problem with PS6 on Win2K, but I’ve never had any problems related to Norton Protection 2003 for PS7 on WinXP.
Regards,
Daryl
Hi Scott,
Disabling network connection does not seem to make any noticeable speed difference.
Doing so does give PS a fit loading because all the network drives that PS seems to think are out there are not. This particular behavior could be something about the File Browser even though I do not have the FB window open or active or in the palette well???
David
David,
Apparently, FB has been banished from the palette well (took me a minute or two to get used to that, not a big deal). Don’t know what that might mean in relation to this problem, though.
Nick
An update…not worth much though. Basically, I confirmed that Norton Protection doesn’t affect PS CS on my WinXP system. However, the same JPEG that opened slowly earlier today was opening within about 3 seconds this evening. So, while uncertain, I’ll attribute the earlier slowness as possibly related to the File Browser caching…if it actually starts doing that upon PS startup without being opened directly. That’s all that comes to mind at least, as I left PSCS open until I returned home from work this evening. I’ve not read all the FB threads or even the user’s manual yet regarding that topic, so I’m just guessing it was the culprit.
Regards,
Daryl
Adam/Scott,
Here’s a more comprehensive list of my system info, copied from PS CS Help:
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118)
Operating System: Windows 2000
Version: 5.0 Service Pack 3
System architecture: AMD CPU Family:6, Model:4, Stepping:4 with MMX, SSE Integer Processor speed: 1328 MHz
Built-in memory: 1535 MB
Free memory: 1271 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 1402 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 75 %
Image cache levels: 4
Use image cache for histograms: No
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\ Temporary file path: C:\DOCUME~1\NICKDE~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
Scratch volume(s):
G:\, 111.8G, 77.5G free
Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set
So, let me be specific here. There are functionality enhancements for FileBrowser that cause it to churn a little more on larger files – it’s generating much better previews than Photoshop 7. Performance affected by this can be tweaked by changing some of the File Browser preferences, especially as it relates to image size and processing in the background.
The issue I believe we are chasing is a very noticable pause when doing certain things – when starting the app, the main window appears, but then it’s 5-15 seconds before the splash disappears. When asking for a new document, it’s 5-15 seconds between hitting OK and the document appearing (for small documents). The symptoms are obvious if you have Performance Monitor up and running – nothing is happening in those pauses, no CPU, no disk.
Slowdowns that don’t exhibit this telltale pause are probably due to other reasons – fragmented or slow disk, a change in scratch settings, setting the memory percentage too high, etc.
So far, the real pause issue does look network related, possibly printer related.
-Scott
I uninstalled the two network printers as well, and this makes no difference. BTW, my office is probably a 15 min drive from Adobe offices, so if your engineers would like to come and see a system exhibiting these behaviors, please do so. That might save us all a lot of time!
David Madison
David – email your contact information to
Thank you!
Just posting to bring this thread back to the top.
Hey Everyone – Happy holidays.
I just wondered if the subject of this thread had been resolved, or if the subject got dropped. I did not hear anything back from Adobe Tech support, and haven’t had much time to chase the issue down – so I’ve just been working away with version 7.
Were any solutions found?
Thanks,
Brett
Some things to try are turn off background file browser processing. Turn RAM allocation down to about 45%. Set cache levels to 6. …
