Photoshop runs soooooooooooo slowly

JG
Posted By
Jason_Garth
Dec 13, 2006
Views
394
Replies
11
Status
Closed
I’ve got an Intel P4 3.0GHz with 512mb ram on Windows XP here at home. At work, there’s exactly the same system, but with only 128mb ram and Photoshop runs perfectly, it’d take about 10 seconds to load up and ready to use. Here at home, it takes at least 2 or 3 minutes to load up, and when I try to do anything, the screen goes all white like it’s really busy doing something… so I leave it for a while until the hard drive stops. Then when the hard drive’s not doing anything, I try to use photoshop, but it’s running really slowly and doing the white screen thing.

I can’t figure out what’s causing it, it’s always done this on my computer, although premiere and audition work without a problem.

Any ideas what would cause such a thing to occur?
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BL
Bob Levine
Dec 13, 2006
What version of Photoshop?

Bob
DM
Don_McCahill
Dec 13, 2006
What version of Photoshop

Cause if it is running in 128mb of ram, then it _must_ be an older one.
JG
Jason_Garth
Dec 13, 2006
I’m running CS2 here at home, and at work I think it’s CS. Or could be CS2 with 256mb ram, I don’t remember.. that’s sort of technical stuff I don’t know about.

Tho I think it’s 128mb ram and CS.
BL
Bob Levine
Dec 13, 2006
Then I don’t doubt for one second that it runs slow.

In fact, I’m shocked that it runs at all.

You need lots more RAM. I wouldn’t think to do any kind of serious work with less than 2 gigs. For smaller file sizes you could get away with less.

Bob
L
LenHewitt
Dec 13, 2006
Jason,

Or could be CS2 with 256mb ram, I don’t remember<<

Considering the absolute minimum RAM for *installation* of Photoshop CS OR CS2 is 384Mb, I think you are mistaken about the amount of RAM on your office machine….
JG
Jason_Garth
Dec 13, 2006
Here at work now, and have just had a look to see what it is. I did get it wrong, there’s 512mb here on the office machine.

So the computer here at work is the same as the one at home, apart from here at work there is Photoshop CS and I’ve got Photoshop CS2 at home. But I’m pretty sure back when I used to use CS at home, there was still the problem of running slowly with CS as well.

I have no idea what’s causing it.
CC
Chris_Cox
Dec 13, 2006
"white screen"?

Do you have an older P4 around 3.0 Ghz with Hyperthreading? Try turning off Hyperthreading in the BIOS and see if the problem goes away.
JG
Jason_Garth
Dec 13, 2006
I do have that… I’ll switch that off and see if it helps. One thing that makes me unsure of what’s causing it, is that Audition and Premiere generally work okay. Sometimes they’re a bit slow, but most of the time they work quite well.
CC
Chris_Cox
Dec 13, 2006
They don’t use hyperthreading as heavily as Photoshop does.

And a more recent BIOS may work around the chip defect in HyperThreading. But first we need to see if that is the cause.
JG
Jason_Garth
Dec 14, 2006
Turned hyperthreading off and it works a lot faster than it previously did. I had no idea that would cause such a problem for photoshop.

Thanks 🙂 Much appreciated!
CC
Chris_Cox
Dec 15, 2006
Again, there is a bug in the older P4 Hyperthreaded chips, and more recent BIOS versions patch around that bug.

Photoshop can use threads/multiprocessors pretty heavily, and can trigger the HyperThreading bug because of that.

Now you should see if there is an updated BIOS for your system. If so, it may patch around the processor bug and let you turn Hyperthreading back on.

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