I know I will need to upgrade my RAM as I am currently only at 504MB
That’s enough. Lots of folks like lots of ram, but you get more bang for the buck in fast hard drive space with photoshop. I’d buy a fast 2nd (or 3rd) hard drive before upgrading ram.
as for a 16-bit video card, which one has been found best for Adobe applications?
In today’s environment, any video card works well – it’s the drivers that can cause anomalies, and those are rare. PS doesn’t need the 30-d capabilities of gaming, so any decent name brand video card will be fine.
504MB of RAM sounds like a rather odd number…perhaps the result of some on-board RAM integrated with the motherboard (Is this a laptop?)?
Regardless, while I agree with Tony’s suggestion of adding a 2nd hard drive to improve performance, I also think going ahead and maximizing your RAM to a 1GB total would be a smart move, without being all that costly unless you had to replace the existing sticks in order to do so. I think between the O/S itself, PS, and any other apps you might run concurrently, the added headroom is worthwhile.
Regards,
Daryl
Hi Daryl,
No it is a desktop. Actually, I currently have 2-256MB sticks which is actually 512MB RAM, but for one reason or another it shows up on my system stats as 504MB…
Gary, I’d second Daryl’s suggestion. Even if you have to get rid of your 256MB sticks, you can easily put in 1GB for less than $100US. Better still, spend a couple hundred to max out the RAM and put in a second hard drive for scratch disk.
For video cards, I’m a Matrox G550 believer.
Everyone likes a lot of ram. Bang for buck? Hard drive. I wouldn’t bother with RAM. Unless you have the extra dough. Photoshop will be waiting on you, not the other way ’round. Will you be sorry you put more ram in? No. But IMO it’s a fools errand if you’re on a budget.
Bang for buck? Hard drive.
disagree.
<chuckle> Okay. I defer to Dave, et. al. Max out your ram as a priority.
I’m going with Dave on this one.
Bob
I’, gonna split the difference here about memory. If, like my own work, you scan much and frequently have scans from 120 film at 2400 dpi or higher, then the best place to put your money is in the HD, configuring it with a partition which is dedicated to scratch disk, as the first partition on the new HD.
If, on the otherhand, your images are from digicams whose file sizes are around 20 to 40 megs, you might find the ram upgrade to be the place to put your money. It all depends on how soon you need the full application of scratch disk. There are some cautions here as well, since PS uses ram as a buffer but generally, I have found this to be true.
But then, Tony and Dave have been around this stuff longer than I so….?
In your first example, you’ll likely need both. In your second, you might not need either.
Bob
While you have specified your system, you have not specified what kind of work that you do – – so none of our answers could really be helpful. We cannot give real-world system suggestions if we have no idea what your world is.
Do you work only with web graphics? Video? Print design? Are you working full-time on this as an office computer or is this for a part time hobby? etc…
Hi Jim,
Yes this is my main machine and I will be working on it daily, sometimes extensively. I will be working with Photoshop, Illustrator as well as a little InDesign on the side. While I’m sure I will be putting together graphics for a couple of web sites, I will be doing a lot of photo correction as well as design posters. Kind of a full spectrum depending on what a client will need me for at the time. Logos, corporate identity, etc…….
Sounds Like the full monty to me….:-)
RAM–as much as you can afford…just went to 2 gigs and my green guy is now screaming!! also with additional ram you have an easier time working with 2 or more programs open.
On our school machines we only have 495mb of ram and they are now the "Morgan Stanley computers"…they do it the old fashioned way, one program at a time. Everytime we try to open either IDCS2 or IllyCS2 they lock up solid. We are pretty sure that its the low ram that is keeping us from running a second program…
Hard Drive Space–As much as you can afford…last week I saw a 200 GIG disk for under $100! (I’m adding another big drive as soon as I get done with a book I am editing…)
I see now how the congnescenti have moved away from the discussion of how Photoshop works differently than most programs in that it uses HD space more intensly rather than waiting until it maxes out on ram.
Interesting.
Tony is right – and so is Dave!
The case for more RAM
Photoshop CS2 will run happily in 512Mb of ram – so long as you’ve nothing else running in the background and so long as you don’t allocate too much ram to Photoshop.
Quite often when users experience slow-downs, it is because the OS and applications other than Photoshop are stuggling in too little ram. Remember, many filters, plug-ins, and even Adobe Bridge run in the remaining ram which is left after you have allocated a chunk to Photoshop. Even when you save a file in Photoshop, it is actually the operating system which is performing that task.
Clearly if you allocate more than 70% of 512Mb of ram to Photoshop, that will leave Bridge, plug-ins and the like will be fighting over what is left, and Windows will be hammering the paging file.
The case for an additional HD.
A temporary file is created on the scratch disk even when you open up a tiny file. Photoshop’s memory usage goes far and beyond simply holding that file in memory whilst it is being worked upon. Consider the multiple history states it has to remember, let alone the screen redraws at several different magnifications.
Photoshop attempts to maximize its use of the available memory by shunting as much information as possible off to the scratch disk to free up ram for the more memory hungry tasks you are likely to ask it to perform.
Conclusion
More ram will Make Photoshop perform certain tasks much quicker. But don’t fall into the trap of allocating too much in the preferences. The program ships with a default of 55%. If you’ve less than a gig of ram you’d be unwise to raise it above this for fear of starving the OS, Bridge and Plug-ins.
More Hard disk(s) will make Photoshop perform certain tasks much quicker. The scratch disk is vital to Photoshop and it should be located on a different physical drive to that holding the Windows paging file.
Buy a new fast hard disk. Don’t go for the cheapest. Buy one with a decent sized on-board cache. Partition it and use the first partition (the fastest part of the disk) as Photoshop’s Scratch. Don’t use the rest of the disk for saving your work-in-progress, or anything else which will cause disk activity during a phtoshop session.
And it you are concerned about all that emply real estate, condider using the second partition on your new disk for archiving and to store data from from programs other than Photoshop.
Hope some of this helps, and best of luck with your upgrade.
Chris.
Chris quoted:The scratch disk is vital to Photoshop and it should be located on a different physical drive to that holding the Windows paging file.
So if I have my programs on C drive and want my scratch disk to be let’s say on F drive, How do I actually set up my program(s) to read/use a differnt drive? Is it automatic or do I have to set something up?
Thanks!
You set the location(s) of your Photoshop scratch drive(s) from Edit>Preferences.
You set the location(s) of your Windows pagefile(s) from System Properties>Advanced>Performance Options
Edit>Preferences>Plug-ins_&_Scratch_Disks and select from the drop-down list.
Chris.
I see now how the congnescenti have moved away from the discussion of how Photoshop works differently than most programs in that it uses HD space more intensly rather than waiting until it maxes out on ram
not at all. that’s still true, but the more ram you have the more ps can KEEP in ram at any one time and the less data that needs to be kept on the hard drive, regardless of how PS uses the scratch file.
you said biggest bang for the buck, i said RAM. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, imo.
Best value? Currently, hard drive IMO. Time to get another box of cracker jack so i can pick up another 160gig drive. 😉
I guess this can best be summed up as: workflow?
I guess this can best be summed up as: workflow?
no. I don’t think so. try again.
So… 1 gig of ram, and a 20 gig HD? A 160 gig HD with 10% free space? The notion that RAM will be the best bang for the buck is, IMO, dependant on other factors.
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about the user’s system and thus making a recommendation based on that assumption.
Riddle me this batman: you have 512 mb ram, and you have an 80 gig HD with 50% free space, you use photoshop daily and edit 50 images per week that are 25 – 100 mb in size. If you had to choose one or the other, would you opt for maxing out ram or more HD space?
For the record, I wouldn’t. I would rather buy another HD. Prior to my current two 250 SATA’s now I wouldn’t have even THOUGHT of upgrading ram, I wanted the space – sure, after the HD’s, I’d want to optimize ram, but I’m not that bright <smile>.
wanting space (ie for storage as opposed to getting performance out of ps) is a different story than getting the most "bang for the buck". that phrase usually indicates that performance is the over-riding factor.
But don’t you agree that if you have a small (smaller, smallish, small-like) amount of HD space, storing images aside, that you will see a greater performance boost by adding more storage space for the scratch disk?
Given that scenario, "bang for buck" tells me HD space.
No, Tony. Dave’s right. Storage is a different issue than performace. If I had a choice, I’d buy the RAM and a whole bunch of blank CDs.
You’ll get a much bigger performace boost from RAM than a bigger scratch disk.
Bob
You’ll get a much bigger performace boost from RAM than a bigger scratch
That is in direct opposition to what has been discussed in this forum over the past five years, and in fact, contrary to my own experience over the same time frame. And it ignores workflow, type of work, and other hardware factors.
But have it your way – doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care about being right, I’m more interested in the facts. And if both, you and Dave say that it is a fact, I conceed the point, save to say, it is not my experience – and bear in mind that I process a rather large number of images daily. If, on the other hand, it is your opinion, then we have differing opinions based on our experiences.<shrug>
That is in direct opposition to what has been discussed in this forum over the past five years,
no it’s not. all we’ve said is that the hard drive is used as "main" memory and that ram is used as "cache", which is the opposite of the way most other windows programs behave. the more cache the better.
ever see the difference between 2 equally spec’d processors but one has a mongo amount of cache? pentium xeon & extreme edition are 2 examples of this in action. same processor as the standard (say p4) – monster cache.
See post #25
ok. if you have only about 10 meg hard drive space left, yes, update your hard drive first.
<nodding in total agreement>
Bob
golf claps and back slaps and high fives all around! 🙂
10 meg? Sigh.
Dave, so let me get this right. You’ve got 2-256 MB chips, you only have two slots for RAM. You can either buy two more 512 MB chips, or you can buy 1, or possibly 2-1 gig chips.
You can toss the 2-256’ers, and intall 2-512’s or say, a single 1 gig chip, for what? 100 bucks? 150?
Or, you can install a 250 gig 7200 rpm drive (middle of the road in speed), for around 150. And, as a second hard drive, it either goes on an existing controller or a separate one (given that that there’s likely an IDE CDROM, you’d probably put it on the same controller as the existing HD.
So given those two scenarios, including tossing your existing ram to replace it with more, you’re telling me that you get a bigger bang for the buck with ram?
Now lets say you take that route and have a swarthy amount of ram. You are more likely to run into "Scratch Disk Full" regardless of cache size, than you are by having a larger, fast hard drive. And at that point what is your resolution? You have to buy the HD anyway. Now if you have enough HD space that you won’t ever exceed scratch space, then one has to ask if the workflow even demands more ram.
Conversely, if you stick with your existing 512 MB of ram, and have a large fast second hd, what’s going to happen? You won’t run out of space, you will not be waiting on PS, it’ll be waiting on you, and in a WORST case scenario, you may have to close other applications if you want to eek even better performance.
Perhaps by benchmarking the differences, there is reason to prefer ram over HD space; but pragmatically, and financially speaking, the biggest bang for the buck is still in the HD first, then ram.
Tony,
I see your point, but to tell you the truth, if I had a machine with 256 megs of RAM and only 10 megs left on the harddrive, I’d buy a new machine.
How’s that for avoiding the issue? <g>
Bob
How’s that for avoiding the issue? <g>
Artful<smile>.
Personally, even with 10 gigs left on the first HD (not megs), if I’ve got 512 MB ram, I’d go 2nd hard drive in a new york second.
wrote:
10 meg? Sigh.
Dave, so let me get this right. You’ve got 2-256 MB chips, you only have two slots for RAM. You can either buy two more 512 MB chips, or you can buy 1, or possibly 2-1 gig chips.
You can toss the 2-256’ers, and intall 2-512’s or say, a single 1 gig chip, for what? 100 bucks? 150?
Or, you can install a 250 gig 7200 rpm drive (middle of the road in speed), for around 150. And, as a second hard drive, it either goes on an existing controller or a separate one (given that that there’s likely an IDE CDROM, you’d probably put it on the same controller as the existing HD.
So given those two scenarios, including tossing your existing ram to replace it with more, you’re telling me that you get a bigger bang for the buck with ram?
Now lets say you take that route and have a swarthy amount of ram. You are more likely to run into "Scratch Disk Full" regardless of cache size, than you are by having a larger, fast hard drive. And at that point what is your resolution? You have to buy the HD anyway. Now if you have enough HD space that you won’t ever exceed scratch space, then one has to ask if the workflow even demands more ram.
Conversely, if you stick with your existing 512 MB of ram, and have a large fast second hd, what’s going to happen? You won’t run out of space, you will not be waiting on PS, it’ll be waiting on you, and in a WORST case scenario, you may have to close other applications if you want to eek even better performance.
Perhaps by benchmarking the differences, there is reason to prefer ram over HD space; but pragmatically, and financially speaking, the biggest bang for the buck is still in the HD first, then ram.
In the real world where you have other programs using RAM besides PhotoSHop… Memory will ALWAYS improve the speed FAR more than disk space/speed at the low end of the market. Frankly, if the machine only has a 2ghz CPU, there is goind to be a lot of bus contentsion and the CPU always busy, so it’s best to keep whatever you can in RAM. The OPs existing disk could be cleaned up and defragmented, throw in 1gb of RAM and forget all this hard drive business. We’ve been building our own high-performance graphics machines here for years, and RAM is always the most important thing for design work – unless you are doing video, at which point you do need one very large empty high-speed drive too.
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