New discovered bugs that may also related to Win 2GB DDR dual channel RAM limit issue!

JT
Posted By
Jeff_Tsai
Jun 12, 2005
Views
250
Replies
4
Status
Closed
My motherboard : ASUS P4P800
Photoshop version : 8.0 (CS)
OS : MS Win 2000

(Sorry, I¡¦m a user from Taiwan, so my English may not be that good.)

My system originally has 2*512MB DDR400 dual channel RAM. Yesterday I upgrade it to add another 2*1GB DDR400 dual channel RAM and now my system has 3GB. And yes, I also encountered the Win 2GB RAM limit problem that was previously extensively discussed by Fred Nirque and Russell Proulx.

Besides, I found something very strange that may related to the problem :

[1].When I set PSCS to use memory approx. less than 1024MB (in fact, 1013MB, 57% on my computer), everything works fine. When I open an Nikon D70 .NEF RAW file by Camera RAW, and set the application status bar to display ¡¥Scratch Sizes¡¦ information, it displays ¡¥Scr:447.6M/986.4M.¡¦

< http://www.wretch.cc/album/show.php?i=AGThinker&b=7& f=o1118567884&p=0>

And my windows task manager displays that Photoshop occupied approx. 213MB/457MB RAM and virtual RAM.

< http://www.wretch.cc/album/show.php?i=AGThinker&b=7& f=o1118567885&p=1>

The only scratch file on my hard disk has size approx. 490MB.

However, when I set PSCS to use memory a little more than 1GB (in fact, 1031MB, 58%) and open the same file again, everything changed dramatically!! Status bar displays ¡¥Scr:1.53G/997.9M¡¦.

< http://www.wretch.cc/album/show.php?i=AGThinker&b=7& f=o1118567886&p=2>

and the windows task manager shows 197MB/1074MB!

< http://www.wretch.cc/album/show.php?i=AGThinker&b=7& f=o1118567887&p=3>

and the scratch file now becomes 1.6GB.

Moreover, before opening any file after launching PS, in the first test, task manager says the PS occupied 114MB/350MB, and in the second test, it becomes 114MB/1073MB.

How could change memory usage in 1% cause PS to behave so different? It eats more 700MB for just launching itself and even more than 1GB for open a document!

[2].Since I have 3GB memory and PS can only use only 2GB, I think its OK to set memory usage to 100% (1777MB on my system) and leave the rest 1GB for OS, PS program & PS plugins. However, my thinking is complete wrong. If I set it 100%, must things (such as Camera RAW) will not work and will produce an out of memory dialog. My OS and other applications only occupies less than 300MB memory according to what my task manager says.

I don¡¦t know whether this also happens on people who also trapped by the Photoshop Win DDR Dual-channel 2GB RAM limit. Maybe you can try it by yourself.

I really hope this can become an direct evidence that this annoying 2GB limit problem is caused by bug in Photoshop, not OS, not hardware!!

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PC
Pierre_Courtejoie
Jun 12, 2005

1)That change is totally normal: Photoshop uses a different scratch file model once you reach 1Gb of allocated ram.
The screen refresh might seem slower, and the scratch file will be bigger, but the actual operations in Photoshop are done faster.

2)No, the fact that windows XP 32bits cannot allocate more than 2Gb to an application, and the fact that plug-ins take their memory from the host application explain that behaviour. It is not a bug, but a limitation of 32-bits operating systems. Switching to Photoshop CS2, a 64bit processor and operating system will allow you to bypass that limit. But drivers for printers, scanners are scarce under that OS.

Hope this helps.
JT
Jeff_Tsai
Jun 12, 2005
Hi, Pierre:

But is the information in status bar correct?

Doesn’t ‘Scr:1.53G/997.9M’ mean that I already ran out of all my physical RAM and starts to use scratch file??

PS Help says :

Scratch Sizes to display information on the amount of RAM and scratch disk used to process the image. The number on the left represents the amount of memory that is currently being used by the program to display all open images. The number on the right represents the total amount of RAM available for processing images
PC
Pierre_Courtejoie
Jun 12, 2005
I wouldn’t worry so much about those numbers. Do a stopwatch test of various operations, and decide what percentage is the fastest for you.
Using Photoshop CS2 speeds up actions replays, too.

Also, changing the number of cache levels can help.
L
LenHewitt
Jun 12, 2005
Jeff,

mean that I already ran out of all my physical RAM and starts to use
scratch file??<<

Photoshop ALWAYS uses the scratch file. In fact the Scratch file is Photoshop’s prime memory. It uses the installed RAM as a cache for the scratch file.

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