How much memory is enough?

[Miramonti]

A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?


/edit: She's using photoshop cs2 (which upgrading to seemed to challenge her system much more than cs.)

 

[dguy6789]

In memory intensive programs like PhotoShop, the more memory, the better. But if I recall correctly, due to a limitation in Windows XP, each thread can use only up to 2GB of ram each. There may be a workaround for it, but I am not sure.

 

[Scitex]

2 Gb is enough for most photographers with Photoshop's settings at default. If she ups the number of History states, works with a huge number of layers on big files or stitches big panoramas then more RAM may be in order.

[edit]BTW, Photoshop CS2 running on 64 bit Windows is suppose to be able to utilize 4 Gb of memory. If she's hitting the wall with 1 Gb regularly then she may need more than 2 Gb in some situations. If she's running an older version of PS then she may be out of luck at being able to utilize more than 2 Gb until she upgrades PS and Windows to 64 bit.

 

[cockeyed]

Have her run her sytem normally doing the tasks she does, then press Cntr-Alt-Del to open Task manager. Check the Performance Tab - Commit Charge to see what the Peak memory used was. It is shown in K bytes. If it stays below 1mb, she has enough memory for what she is doing or if it hits 1mb, it would be best to upgrade. The Peak memory used should determine if more is needed, so if a new mobo is installed, I would start out low and keep adding until the Peak does not max out the installed memory.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: cockeyed
Have her run her sytem normally doing the tasks she does, then press Cntr-Alt-Del to open Task manager. Check the Performance Tab - Commit Charge to see what the Peak memory used was. It is shown in K bytes. If it stays below 1mb, she has enough memory for what she is doing or if it hits 1mb, it would be best to upgrade. The Peak memory used should determine if more is needed, so if a new mobo is installed, I would start out low and keep adding until the Peak does not max out the installed memory.

1MB?

 

[Blain]

4GBs should be plenty for her applications.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

<-- 512MB RAM :brokenheart:

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: Scitex
2 Gb is enough for most photographers with Photoshop's settings at default. If she ups the number of History states, works with a huge number of layers on big files or stitches big panoramas then more RAM may be in order.

[edit]BTW, Photoshop CS2 running on 64 bit Windows is suppose to be able to utilize 4 Gb of memory. If she's hitting the wall with 1 Gb regularly then she may need more than 2 Gb in some situations. If she's running an older version of PS then she may be out of luck at being able to utilize more than 2 Gb until she upgrades PS and Windows to 64 bit.

She sometimes can use a ton of histories and layers. (I'm not sure if she ups the default tho.) Unlike me, she actually knows how to get the most out of photoshop. She'd love to be able to do batch processes as well in the background, so a dualcore would probably be nice.

Also, she is using Photoshop CS2. Are you suggesting that she would benefit from Windows 64bit if she has a 64bit processor or dualcore 64? (and if so, does window64 limit many other 32 bit apps, or do the apps just not take advantage of the windows64 advantages.)

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

Which benchmarks better with photoshop cs, intel dualcore or amd dualcore?

 

[Scitex]

Here ya go (I was wrong....looks like 3 Gb is the limit for PS for actual image data)
Not sure about other apps, but I would think they could benefit also, as long as she doesn't run into driver issues. I'm going to get an X2 for my Photoshop box as soon as I can afford it.

 

[imported_Noob]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
In memory intensive programs like PhotoShop, the more memory, the better. But if I recall correctly, due to a limitation in Windows XP, each thread can use only up to 2GB of ram each. There may be a workaround for it, but I am not sure.

Yah WinXP can only read that much RAM. XP64 can read 4GB of RAM though. Not that that much RAM will be needed in a long time for games.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Is there such a thing as too little memory?

 

[imported_Noob]

Originally posted by: thecoolnessrune
Is there such a thing as too little memory?

Yes there is actually, 32MB of system RAM .

 

[fstime]

Photoshop CS works excellent on my a64/1 gb ram, I dont think it could be much smoother, no lag.

 

[Miramonti]

I did some googling and Photoshop CS2 is giving people a lot of headaches with its slowness over PS CS.

text
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Adobeforums are ripe with complaints as well.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: jjsole

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

Which benchmarks better with photoshop cs, intel dualcore or amd dualcore?

AMD. The A64 x2 is the fastest platform available for photoshop, even beating out a dual G5 mac.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

Which benchmarks better with photoshop cs, intel dualcore or amd dualcore?

AMD. The A64 x2 is the fastest platform available for photoshop, even beating out a dual G5 mac.

Thx. If you have a review/benchmark link or remember which site, it may become useful to have at some point.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: BouZouki
Photoshop CS works excellent on my a64/1 gb ram, I dont think it could be much smoother, no lag.

You probably aren't using it seriously with high res images if you think 1GB is enough.

I have an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with 2GB of RAM, and Photoshop CS2 absolutely flies with my DSLR images and medium res 35mm scans (though I'm not heavy into the manipulation aspect with tons of layers and masks). If she's doing much layering and masking on medium or large format drum scans, then without question 4GB should be chosen.

With that said, running XP64 may be a problem if she prints from the same machine that she uses for PS, because 64 bit printer drivers are basically nonexistent at this point (and Epson in particular is being bad about giving ETAs and not keeping them).

XP32 can still handle 4GB of RAM, but an individual process can only have 2GB of that (except in special circumstances). Photoshop can have 2GB to work on images directly, and the rest can be used for your other programs and/or OS disk caching to store part of the scratch file (I do not mean a RAM disk - let the OS handle the caching of the scratch disk on its own).

 

[redhatlinux]

Please, keep the topic of Memory. Real memory, virtual memory, cache memory, general purpose register memory, special purpose register memory. Each entity in the list is some form of 'MEMORY'. Memory, or S-Unit architecture is extremely comlex and itself, pipelined. I only have 1/2 gig on this system, but the 80 gig SATA, screams as a pagefile, yep, thats virtual memory, real memory, see what I mean jelly bean

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: BouZouki
Photoshop CS works excellent on my a64/1 gb ram, I dont think it could be much smoother, no lag.

You probably aren't using it seriously with high res images if you think 1GB is enough.

I have an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with 2GB of RAM, and Photoshop CS2 absolutely flies with my DSLR images and medium res 35mm scans (though I'm not heavy into the manipulation aspect with tons of layers and masks). If she's doing much layering and masking on medium or large format drum scans, then without question 4GB should be chosen.

With that said, running XP64 may be a problem if she prints from the same machine that she uses for PS, because 64 bit printer drivers are basically nonexistent at this point (and Epson in particular is being bad about giving ETAs and not keeping them).

XP32 can still handle 4GB of RAM, but an individual process can only have 2GB of that (except in special circumstances). Photoshop can have 2GB to work on images directly, and the rest can be used for your other programs and/or OS disk caching to store part of the scratch file (I do not mean a RAM disk - let the OS handle the caching of the scratch disk on its own).

Thanks for the feedback. She has an epson 4000 as well. Btw, what video card are you using? Reason why is that some people have issues with cs2 that were aided by changing/upgrading their vid card.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: jjsole
Thanks for the feedback. She has an epson 4000 as well. Btw, what video card are you using? Reason why is that some people have issues with cs2 that were aided by changing/upgrading their vid card.

I am using a Nvidia Geforce 6600, which exhibits a slightly noticeable palette redraw lag, but it's nowhere near as bad as the redraw lag of my previous ATI Radeon 7200. For what it's worth, I loaded the CS2 trial on a Dell P4 workstation with an ATI FireGL V3100, and the lag was just as bad as with my Athlon XP and Radeon 7200 (several seconds to redraw after pressing Tab twice).

I have heard over on the Adobe forums that even folks with Radeon X850's are experiencing this problem in a terrible way; several Nvidia cards are affected as well, and it almost seems to be a crapshoot if your system will be affected or not. If you look for a thread entitled "TroubleShooting PS9 Display Slowness," you'll find 194 (currently) replies about this very issue (I can't link directly because you have to make your own account and sign in before you can access threads there AFAIK). Adobe is working with the video card manufacturers on this, and I'm confident that we'll see a solution sooner (hopefully rather than later).

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: jjsole
Thanks for the feedback. She has an epson 4000 as well. Btw, what video card are you using? Reason why is that some people have issues with cs2 that were aided by changing/upgrading their vid card.

I am using a Nvidia Geforce 6600, which exhibits a slightly noticeable palette redraw lag, but it's nowhere near as bad as the redraw lag of my previous ATI Radeon 7200. For what it's worth, I loaded the CS2 trial on a Dell P4 workstation with an ATI FireGL V3100, and the lag was just as bad as with my Athlon XP and Radeon 7200 (several seconds to redraw after pressing Tab twice).

I have heard over on the Adobe forums that even folks with Radeon X850's are experiencing this problem in a terrible way; several Nvidia cards are affected as well, and it almost seems to be a crapshoot if your system will be affected or not. If you look for a thread entitled "TroubleShooting PS9 Display Slowness," you'll find 194 (currently) replies about this very issue (I can't link directly because you have to make your own account and sign in before you can access threads there AFAIK). Adobe is working with the video card manufacturers on this, and I'm confident that we'll see a solution sooner (hopefully rather than later).

Yep, that's what I'm talking about... I came across that thread earlier...first time in the forums tho and somehow didn't realize it was nearly that long, so I'll go back and read the rest, thx.

What a mess this issue seems to be for so many people. From what I understand cs2 has some really nice additional features tho that make it undesireable to just revert back to cs.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: jjsole

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

Which benchmarks better with photoshop cs, intel dualcore or amd dualcore?

AMD. The A64 x2 is the fastest platform available for photoshop, even beating out a dual G5 mac.

Thx. If you have a review/benchmark link or remember which site, it may become useful to have at some point.

Article 1
Article 2

It's a shame that Apple chose Intel over AMD for their CPUs. It's going to make their laptops incredible, but their desktop line will suffer as a result.

The difference between the Opteron/A64 and the G5 is pretty minimal in Photoshop though; she may still be better off with a Mac just for the other benefits.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: jjsole
A friend who is a professional photographer needs a new computer because her current one max's out at 1gig ram.

But how much memory does she need? She uses photoshop and edits a lot of high resolution photos, so is 'the more memory the better' the case? If she had 4gb, would it benefit her much more than 2gb or 3gb in general, or only in extreme situations?

She sounds like she could use an A64x2 4200+ with 4GB of RAM. Trust me. Read Scitex's post.

4GB of RAM is actually pretty paltry considering what alot of people are doing with digital images these days. What kind of manipulation does she do?

I know that I could easily do with 6-8GB, but I do 3D Studio Max work along with Photoshop.

Which benchmarks better with photoshop cs, intel dualcore or amd dualcore?

AMD. The A64 x2 is the fastest platform available for photoshop, even beating out a dual G5 mac.

Thx. If you have a review/benchmark link or remember which site, it may become useful to have at some point.

Article 1
Article 2

It's a shame that Apple chose Intel over AMD for their CPUs. It's going to make their laptops incredible, but their desktop line will suffer as a result.

The difference between the Opteron/A64 and the G5 is pretty minimal in Photoshop though; she may still be better off with a Mac just for the other benefits.

Unfortunately he hasn't added a pentium dualcore processor to those benchmarks, as well as compared CS or CS2 instead of ps7. Is he hiding something? (j/k ) The xeons look impressive too, dual xeons would be interesting (altho no doubt expensive.)

When you consider apple's bent on branding and image, they must have figured that their machines would be 'sexier' with intel inside. AMD has a great desktop line, altho are significantly further behind intel imo in branding to the general population. Hopefully this will continue to change tho.