One common response from Chris and some others is that "most" users don’t see any slowdown (not counting Healing brush and 16 bit issues at previously posted) I have no way of knowing what "most" is, so I thought maybe a quick survey to get a better guess at what percentage of this forum are seeing a significant slowdown with CS. Please, no rants or arguments in this thread, just let everyone know you you feel CS is slow, or works fine for you. We can all discuss details in other threads.
Also, as an added bit of help for all who *are* having slowness issues. Please state what you did to speed things up.
I’ll start:
SPEED: Slow (x5)
I deal with 3 people for a total of 5 copies of CS on 5 different machines. All are extremely slow at times in CS (My work computer makes large files almost impossible to work with in CS (7 works fine)
WHAT HELPED: Changing Memory Usage to 55% helped, but not as much as I had hoped. I do have Norton and Zone Alarm running in the background for whatever that is worth.
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No slowdown of CS. I have 2 separate hard drives 40G each for scratch disk files. (I don’t use C: as a scratch disk at all.) (I had my 2 former hard drives installed for use as scratch disks in new computer with new hard drives.) I have no problem with speed. Pentium IV, Win XP Pro, 2.2 G ram. I also have Norton Security always running and usually have three Adobe programs open at the same time.
I have NIS and NAV running on both my desktop and laptop and there is no effect whatsoever on the speed of PSCS so I don’t think we should be too hasty in blaming them.
I doubt that this thread is really going to provide any really fruitful conclusions because a lot more info is required for those machines which are experiencing these slowdowns to diagnose what is causing these problems.
Also the user sample from which this "survey" is being conducted will also be weighted towards the negative as, human nature being what it is, the average user who is having no problems is not going to seek out this forum to report that they just love PSCS. In other words, the user sample is not representative. Perhaps if Adobe were to contact all registered users and do a survey that way, then some meaningful results could be achieved.
Having said that I may as well weigh in on the positive side as I’m really happy with CS. I’ve done several real world speed tests of PSCS versus PS6 on my two machines and PSCS is as fast or faster than PS6 regardless of file size. The only operation that PS6 performs faster than CS in my tests is rotating images.
For what it’s worth both have Win XP Home, are not networked, separate scratch partitions bla bla Athlon 2800 1G RAM Pentium 2.4 laptop 1G RAM
With an Athlon XP2500+ and 1 GB DDR RAM with Windows XP, my CS starts as quickly as PS7 used to. I have two HD’s – on the master I have Windows in ‘C’ and the scratch file for CS in its own 5 GB partition. On the slave I have PS CS in its own partition and a 2 GB partition for the Windows page file. With this set-up I very seldom see the CS efficiency drop below 100%. I am also running NAV, Zone Alarm Pro, and AdAware. Roger
Ho – check the OS swapfile/VM settings on XP. I’ll bet they’re set different to Win2K. The optimum config seems to be setting the min and max swap size to about 2x your installed RAM. And make sure the XP volume stays pretty well empty or defragmented.
How about folks who DONT see any significant performance issues/slowdowns (in PS CS vs. PS7) as well as those who DO copy and paste just these few lines from System Info, no need to include long list of plug-ins, (PS Help> System Info) indicating which side they are on.
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: AMD CPU Family:6, Model:6, Stepping:2 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Processor speed: 1333 MHz Built-in memory: 2047 MB Free memory: 1737 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 1778 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 85 % Image cache levels: 4 Use image cache for histograms: No
After re-reading some archive threads I see that very few folks bothered to properly report their system info. I think there is a pattern here (other than your system is hosed or your settings are whacked).
So why not turn this into useful RELEVANT data gathering thread rather than (works/ doesnt work for me) popularity contest.
Your point is well made. This is my WinXP and I have not observed any significant difference between Photoshop CS and 7. In many areas CS is slightly faster and in some PS7 is slightly faster. However, "overall" I would say (I’ve been saying it for 6 months) that CS is slightly faster than PS7. BTW: This box had 2GB of ram in until recently but I transferred 512MB to another that I use for software testing.
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:2, Stepping:9 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading Processor speed: 2667 MHz Built-in memory: 1535 MB Free memory: 1260 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 1402 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 75 % Image cache levels: 8 Use image cache for histograms: No
Edit:
I think the absence/presence of some features in "System Arctitecture" is a KEY area to look at when CS appears slower/faster than PS7.
You INCLUDED your serial number – VERY silly! Aren’t you lucky I’m watching and am a Host!
BTW: your R:/ drive is much too small for your primary Photoshop CS scratch disk – switch them round. You really want the scratch disk to be as big as possible with CS
My situation recently changed, due to a couple of things.
I was running PS CS on an early Athlon 1.33GHz box, Win2K, 1.5GB RAM. I was seeing major slowness in the opening of Nikon RAW files in Camera Raw 2.x, as compared to opening the same files in PS 7 using Camera Raw 1.0. Thomas Knoll noted recently (in the Camera Raw Forum) that the Color Noise Reduction Filter in CR 2.x is "doing more math" and would therefore be slower on machines without SSE2 chips (ie. early Athlons and Pentium III chips). Turning off the Color Noise Reduction Filter cured that problem for me, and I would suggest that anyone using Camera Raw 2.x with those earlier chips do the same. You may be seeing slower than necessary Camera Raw performance and not even know it. (I don’t know what, if any, other filters in PS CS benefit so dramatically from SSE2. Perhaps Chris can elaborate.)
The other thing that changed for me is that I built a new system, based on a P4 2.8GHz chip. As expected, PS CS runs much better on it. I’ve only been able to use it for a few hours (still fine tuning the machine, installing programs, etc.), but at this point I’d say I’m not seeing any significant performance problems. PS CS is very snappy indeed, and as of now there is only one 80GB hard drive in place (two more drives to come, so it’ll probably only get faster when I have some separate scratch space for it to play in).
System specs for the new box:
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:2, Stepping:9 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading Processor speed: 2798 MHz Built-in memory: 2047 MB Free memory: 1693 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 1778 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 50 % Image cache levels: 4 Use image cache for histograms: No
The reason I didn’t ask folks to include all that info was because the thread would get bogged down with far too much information.)-:
There are literally hundreds of possible settings/combos that could be listed that would be relevant to the system/CS speed. But not many people would wade through such a long, technical thread.
If anything I would like to know the file size and number of layers people are working with, since I deal with 500meg files with 30-40 layers I’m sure I see more slowing issues that web designers and home users that use 3mg files with a layer or two.
All that aside, I just wanted a quick yes or no to the slowing issue. The details have been covered over and over on an individual basis, which I feel is better.
From what I have seen here, "most" are happy with CS’s speed, but I haven’t seen the 5-10 angry people from other threads (Raymond McKinley "Photoshop CS memory hog" 5/29/04 7:11am </cgi-bin/webx?13/88>) chiming in here, so I don’t expect this to actually be that helpful as far as percentage of happy/unhappy users goes.
I am shocked at to the amount of memory you guys have setup for PS to use. the only thing that helped me was dropping the usage to under 65% (1.5 gigs installed) why would that be optimum for some but not others?
The reason I didn’t ask folks to include all that info was because the thread would get bogged down with far too much information.)-:
Humor us! Please provide your system specs as outlined in Andrews post – he has a reason for asking!
There are literally hundreds of possible settings/combos that could be listed that would be relevant to the system/CS speed. But not many people would wade through such a long, technical thread.
Yes we know, but humor us!
All that aside, I just wanted a quick yes or no to the slowing issue. The details have been covered over and over on an individual basis, which I feel is better.
When you took your finger of the Post Message button you lost control of this thread – Now humor us and provide the info! Slow or fast don’t mean diddly squat!
If anything I would like to know the file size and number of layers people are working with, since I deal with 500meg files with 30-40 layers I’m sure I see more slowing issues that web designers and home users that use 3mg files with a layer or two.
Some folk working on relatively small files have claimed slow downs. Many folk out there are working with files that make yours look small and they aren’t complaining. So file size on its own isn’t the problem. BTW: don’t assume web designer and home users are immune. You say 30 to 40 layers! What type of layers are you using? Are they 16/8 bit? Is it a global slow down or confined to specific operations/filters?
I am shocked at to the amount of memory you guys have setup for PS to use. the only thing that helped me was dropping the usage to under 65% (1.5 gigs installed) why would that be optimum for some but not others?
Hmm, I thought that was one of things we were trying to establish. BTW: 65% on a 1.5GB box takes you below the magic number (memory allocated to Photoshop is 1000MB or greater) for the larger "Tile Size" feature coming into play. Larger tile sizes would normally be useful when you have lots of ram (also helpful to Multi Processor user). However, "some" have found the opposite. A large number of layers rather than a big file may be the reason you find that dropping to 65% is the optimum. The engineers have already stated that they are working on an update to help reduce the problems that "some" users have reported because of this feature. Note that I wrote "some" meaning that the problem isn’t universal and so any fix they come up with better not screw up systems that are perfectly happy with the larger tile size.
I think the absence/presence of some features in "System Arctitecture" is a KEY area to look at when CS appears slower/faster than PS7.
Can we say SSE or SSE2 here? 😉
I need to point out that I dont see major performance difference between PS CS and 7 for the most part. It is few specific areas where CS bites me in the a** big time.
I wonder how much my non-SSE2 compliant dual Athlons MP have to do with it.
Im also classic case where new Tile Size has opposite to intended effect with large (200-500MB) multi-layered files. Dropping memory allocation to 55% (just below magic 1000MB) cures the problem for me here.
Note that I wrote "some" meaning that the problem isn’t universal and so any fix they come up with better not screw up systems that are perfectly happy with the larger tile size.
I hope that installation of that FIX would be optional. 😉
It looks like Nick found something about from Thomas in the ACR forum. You might want to check there for details.
I hope that installation of that FIX would be optional.
The multiprocessor fix was optional! Why wouldn’t the tile size fix be so as well? It’s already been stated many times that there won’t be a dot release (not that I see a need for one) so that leaves fixes in the form of plugins, etc.
It looks like Nick found something about from Thomas in the ACR forum.
Yes Ive seen that Ian,
Which is why I thought it would be interesting to look at more system data to see if there is SSE2 connection to other (than ACR) CS performance issues.
Which is why I thought it would be interesting to look at more system data to see if there is SSE2 connection to other (than ACR) CS performance issues.
Oh I know why you asked and why I happen to think it was good suggestion, but since all the slow down experts think "we’re" full of crap why should we care. I never had a problem, you know the workaround on your system and Nick has a super-fast new box. BTW: are you still thinking of buying a new super-fast box as well?
I didn’t include Lens Blur and Filter Gallery in my appraisal of CS as these are new features and both are incredibly slow so it’s not just you. Incidentally, they are slower on my Athlon than on the Pentium which may related to hyperthreading in the latter but I’ve not done any quantitative tests. I think these are probably universally slow judging by other threads. Fortunately I never use any of the filters in the Filter Gallery. If I was a Bas Relief freak, then I would probably hate CS.
OK, I’ve been trying to play the moderate here, but I would like to say this: Nothing about my previous machine (early Athlon/PIII variety) changed between PS 7 and PS CS. I asked repeatedly what might have changed in those versions that would have been causing my slowdown in ACR 2.x. I was repeatedly told that it had something to do with my machine. There was, and is, nothing wrong with my previous machine. The problem was that ACR 2.x Color Noise Reduction Filter (which is turned on by default) was optimized for more recent processors. I’ve always considered the various Adobe engineers that visit here to be a sharp bunch (much sharper than me!), but I would have thought that maybe one or two of them could have identified my problem and suggested a solution. Hrrrumph.
Andrew, definitely go for the new box, you’ll like it a lot even though you’ll find it to be the most expensive PS upgrade yet! <g>
Ho, if you do a search, you might find that no, you are *not* inperpreted wrong … no dot release. IIRC, the *only* thing you *might* see will be plugins and not patches.
edit: btw, I find the SSE thing interesting … anyone care to elaborate on just what this means as far as the overall function of the system is concerned? I know my system doesn’t have the more recent "version" of SSE, so I am wondering if I will see the same slowdowns as others?
GH, I had the same problem with Thomas’s remark about SSE2. I didn’t have the foggiest about what it was until I became educated. What I think most people don’t realize is that if they have a PIII or an early Athlon (Thunderbird, Duron, etc.), they only have SSE, not SSE2.
I can only comment on the difference it makes when using Camera Raw. Huge.
You can decode the posts whatever way you choose. There have been others, but it seems to me that folk around here chose to look the other way when they were posted.
humor us! Please provide your system specs as outlined in Andrews post
I’m not at my work Box, but I’ll give it a go from memory…..
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: AMD 3.2 Processor speed: 2600 MHz? Built-in memory: 1500 MB 2700ddr Free memory: ? MB Memory available to Photoshop: 900 MB? Memory used by Photoshop: 60 % Image cache levels: 5 Use image cache for histograms: No System HD 80 gig WD 7200pm PS is on a striped RAID array (2 80gig wd 7200) Swap file in a separate partition on the RAID XP swap file set to Min and Max = 3 gigs on it’s own 5 gig partition on the system HD(some say that is too high)
What type of layers are you using? Are they 16/8 bit? Is it a global slow down or confined to specific operations/filters?
Image layers with masking layers, Hue Sat/Level type layers, Text layers, etc. all 8 bit.
The slowdown comes when opening files. (11 sec in PS7, over 1 1/2 minutes in CS) Also at what seems random, the screen will lock (hourglass spinning)and the pallet’s bar at the top of the windows goes white. (when checking the Task Manager ONLY PSCS is showing any activity) Screen draw gets ridiculous as well. (Matrox AGP 32meg vid card) Just using the hand tool (Pressing space bar) causes the screen to freeze for 5-10 seconds as well. Same happens with magnification, but not always. There are others, but I’m drawing a blank right now.
I always try to have the file browser turned off when working with images, but you can’t turn off the File browser until the image fully loads, so that seems to make everything slow down as well. (A way to turn off the File browser after you click a file to open would sure be nice. like it did in PS7)
When opening files (my biggest gripe of the bunch) the ram seems to fill so fast that it starts writing to the HD almost immediately (even on little (50meg) files. When trying to open another file with one or two already open I can wait over two minutes. (with clients sitting there, wondering how slow I can move since they are paying by the hour)
When looking online for solutions, I have found lots of folks (50? 100?) with the same issues and none of them have found solutions. Just Chris’ vague "Your system is the problem" answers. (Yes, I understand that he has no way of knowing the ins and outs of everyone’s system) but other strange issues I have had seem to have answers. (obscure registry entries to be tweaked. specific old drivers causing problems, new programs replacing older files, etc) yet someone determined the causes of these less prevalent issues, yet I haven’t heard any suggestions to that effect with CS. (just set the preferences correctly and lower the Memory allocation).
I am wondering if I will see the same slowdowns as others?
It’s VERY doubtful that SSE2 is responsible for anything more than a VERY few areas of performance difference between CS and PS7. The specific ACR feature that Nick referred to doesn’t even exist in ACR1 so we aren’t comparing the same thing (I didn’t realize this myself until very recently). If there are other areas that benefit from SSE2 then I would again expect that they have no equal in in earlier versions. According to the blurb Photoshop CS is optimized for PIII’s and higher (PII”s <SSE> aren’t even supposed to be supported). I have no idea what the equivalent AMD processor is. I suppose what I’m trying to say here that SSE2 or lack thereof isn’t a big issue.
(A way to turn off the File browser after you click a file to open would sure be nice. like it did in PS7)
Press on the Alt key when you double click the image.
Text layers
CS has anew text engine so load PS7 images will takes ages to convert when opening. Once open you should immediately resave them.
When opening files (my biggest gripe of the bunch) the ram seems to fill so fast that it starts writing to the HD almost immediately (even on little (50meg) files.
Yep – Tile Size that I mentioned above. Old story and as you see above is being looked into. There are hundreds of posts on both PC and Mac forums explaining that what you see regarding ram isn’t what you think it is. Do a search for Tile Size.
For me the only time I run into slowdowns is when I forget to close font folders when I’m looking for fonts in ATM–I have about 6-7,000 fonts in there. Any improvements I could make would be great!
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:2, Stepping:4 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading Processor speed: 2010 MHz Built-in memory: 1023 MB Free memory: 671 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 933 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 50 % Image cache levels: 4 Use image cache for histograms: No Serial number: Application folder: J:\New Folder\Adobe Photoshop CS\ Temporary file path: C:\DOCUME~1\CHRIST~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s): D:\, 9.76G, 8.00G free E:\, 18.2G, 18.2G free I:\, 58.6G, 55.1G free J:\, 55.9G, 43.5G free Primary Plug-ins folder: J:\New Folder\Adobe Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set Installed plug-ins: Installed TWAIN devices: EPSON TWAIN 5
I work on files 6x3K with 15 semi-full layers. File sizes on disk are 2-300 MB. Minimal filter use, lot of brushes and turning layers on and off.
When I first got CS, it was unusable. There is a problem with the histogram updating after every stroke, causing a delay. Turned off histogram, problem solved (thanks Pierre). But working on the same files as I had been in PS7 made CS take minutes instead of seconds for some operations (opening, rotating, anything having to do with the entire file, it seemed) I went skulking back to PS7, as I could not get work done.
I read with interest about setting the memory to a lower setting, and that helped. I worked that way for a while. I got curious and greedy once more and started toying with the memory again. This time, I could set it to the above figure (%97) and everything is speedy. As far as I know, the machine configuration has not changed at all. I tested a bunch of operations against PS7 and CS was faster consistently. I have no guesses about why this happened.
Machine has 4GB RAM if that makes any difference
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:2, Stepping:7 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading Processor speed: 2790 MHz Built-in memory: 2048 MB Free memory: 2048 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 1778 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 97 % Image cache levels: 6 Use image cache for histograms: Yes Serial number: Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\ Temporary file path: C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled Scratch volume(s):
Thanks for the links… although that’s a little like saying, "thanks for punching me in the nose."
SO, no dot release means having no ability to properly tile image windows (they’re always horizontal and so nearly worthless as to be unusable). A quote re/this issue from the past, "They know about this one and said they’ll fix it asap." Still waiting.
No dot release means no fix for the Save As problem (were there 2 or 3 of them?).
No dot release means JP2 will be so slow that I will die of old age before I actually save a file in that format. Another quote: "There’s a reason the JPEG2K plug-in ended up in the Optional section. The speed is being worked on." By whom? For whom? To be released when?
No dot release means not being able to read the dialog in the dialog boxes because your poor old eyes require you to enable Large Size fonts.
No dot release means having to see "can’t complete your request due to a program error" more than I ever thought I would have to.
No dot release means having the File Open preview fiasco muck things up for another 12 months until CSII comes out?
No dot release means that there were several hundred posts about CS bugs with no merit whatsoever?
No dot release means never having to say you’re sorry.
Hey, I’m probably good for at least 10 more of these but I’ve been up for about 18 hours and I’m ready for some zzzz’s.
BTW: are you still thinking of buying a new super-fast box as well?
Im thinking about it but I dont feel like spending $3-4K on current dual Opteron system (that will probably be obsolete for next version of PS <g>) just to have couple of filters run faster.
Ill probably replace my two MP 1500+ processors with 2800+ but AFAIK they still wont have SSE2 instructions.
CS has already been most expensive PS upgrade. New 80 GB SCSI HD just to accommodate File Browser cache location, 1GB RAM stick, XP pro, not to mention time wasted ripping my box apart looking for whatever the hell was supposed to be wrong with it nothing.
Mick,
I didn’t include Lens Blur and Filter Gallery in my appraisal of CS as these are new features and both are incredibly slow so it’s not just you. Incidentally, they are slower on my Athlon than on the Pentium which may related to hyperthreading in the latter but I’ve not done any quantitative tests. I think these are probably universally slow judging by other threads.
There is slow and then there is SLOOOW. Lens Blur is slow by the very nature of what it does. I also run CS on dual 1GHz G4, which is roughly similar in speed to my dual MP 1500+ Win XP box, Lens Blur runs as expected on G4. It is pretty slow (depending on image size, complexity of Depth Map mask, other settings) but this is nothing compared to my XP box.
Sliders are unresponsive (1 or 2 seconds delay from the time I click on any of them and try to drag until they actually move), It takes forever to apply effect. Again file size and Depth Map make huge difference but believe me what I see on XP machine isnt normal slow.
Nick,
Andrew, definitely go for the new box, you’ll like it a lot even though you’ll find it to be the most expensive PS upgrade yet! <g>
I just did, it holds six beer bottles and works like charm. Can I get you one? 😉
Craig, I whish I could have helped you, but Rob is the one to be thanked! craig mullins "brush strokes cause cursor blips" 11/14/03 4:12am </cgi-bin/webx?14/1>
I hope that the San Jose team won’t rely too much on SSE3 that is in the New prescott processors… 😀
Ho – check the OS swapfile/VM settings on XP. I’ll bet they’re set different to Win2K.
Nope. They are both set to use the same partition of the same SCSI disk, set to the same size. I’ve tried different configurations but nothing helped much. I created a little benchmark to test CS/2K against CS/XP and I found that for some tasks, CS/XP is up to 1.5 times slower than its 2K counterpart. I originally attributed this to the fact that I only have 768Mb of RAM and I am able to dedicate a larger percentage of it to CS when I’m running in 2K (80%) versus XP (60%). However I blew that theory out of the water when I set CS/2K up to use only 60% and it finished the benchmarks in virtually the same time as before. Now I am wondering if CS/XP is not communicating efficiently with its scratch volume… although I’ve moved that around without seeing a substantial benefit. SO, I continue to use 2K for all of my tasks that involve heavy lifting in Photoshop.
The good news vis-a-vis CS and PS6 is that CS/2K is faster than PS6 in all of my benchmarked tasks.
I read an artical back in 4.0 that Photoshop runs best with 80% memory. I stick to that. It works well unless you are running to many applications. Of course 1 gig of ram on a G5 is pretty awesome!
I read a thing on another site where a guy had a massive slowdown when he partitioned his swap file above 60 gigs. CS worked much faster on a 20 gig swap partition.
Does that make sense to anyone, has anyone tried it. I was going to give it a shot, but then I noticed my main swap partition is only 18 gigs in the first place.
I’m still locking up at odd times )-: and today just moving a layer with the move tool took about 30 seconds with the task manager showing PS using almost all the resources the whole time. (4000×6000 pixel image 8 bit with only three layers, one with a mask.)File browser off, All speed setting mentioned on this site are set. (mem %, swap, browser settings, etc)
If there was something odd running in the background making CS slow down like that (e-mail checking, auto download, etc) wouldn’t the task manager show other programs with some activity?
Im thoroughly disgusted with Adobes latest incarnation of Photoshop. I called their tech support to try and see why Photoshop CS runs so slowly. All they said was that my Windows system registry must be corrupt. These guys seem to be pretty good at playing the blame game.
Anyway, I just bought a new (and very expensive) graphics computer. The specs are as follows.
Dell PrecisionTM 650 Windows XP Pro SP1 Dual Xeon 3.20GHz processors 2GB RAM Two 73GB Ultra 320 SCSI, 1 inch (15,000 rpm) Hard Drives nVidia, QuadroFX 3000, 256MB Graphics Card
Guess what? Photoshop CS runs slow on this machine too!!!! Hey Adobe, how much damn money do I have to spend before this software will run like version 7?
This is ridiculous. I suppose Adobe will now tell me that I have two machines with corrupt system registries. Adobe needs to do the right thing and finally admit that something is wrong with this software!
The Adjusted Refresh plug-in addresses the time it takes to visually preview some filter updates in Adobe® Photoshop® CS. This plug-in reduces the size of the Photoshop image tiles. This causes the display to redraw in smaller pieces, reducing the time it takes to see the updated preview. The Adjusted Refresh plug-in will also reduce the initial scratch disk usage after you launch Photoshop. Note that overall performance may be reduced for users with multiple processors or more than 1 gigabyte of RAM.
it’s something on your machine causing the slowdown.
Chris, You keep saying that, but you don’t offer too many suggestions as to what that might be.
I know how tough it is to try to diagnose the millions of possible systems out there, but surly there must be some common issues.
Is there any way to list, say, the top 10 or 20 "system issues" to which you keep referring? My guess is those 10-20 issues would solve the problem for more than half the users experiencing slowdowns.
You have mentioned various PS settings and some swap file stuff, but are there hardware driver issues, or stray files, or nasty programs that keep coming up that may have a common thread?
Adjusted Refresh won’t help overall performance – it can only help the
perceived redraw speed and possibly slow down overall performance.
It improved opening and working on large files TREMENDOUSLY even though I fall into the category thats not supposed to benefit (or actually suffer) from this plug-in. Dual-CPU, 2GB of RAM. I dont see any negative effect but I only had it for very short time so Ill reserve my judgment until I have a chance to work with it for a while.
I asked folks to post their system info in hope of gathering enough data for educated guess but I didnt get enough so lets try a wild one.
Seems to me that folks who dont suffer any performance issues are running systems with SSE2 compliant CPUs. Seems to me many folks who do have performance issues have systems with non-SSE2 compliant CPUs.
Just how much of Photoshop CS is optimized for SSE2? How badly non-SSE2 systems are left in the dust hurt by that?
I have two G5 1.8 DP 2 Gb ram and I have installed Panther and the CS package. I have installed also all the following updates, so my systems are absolutely clean of anything else (no additional fonts, no haxies, no suitcase …). My comment is that Indesign is slow, Illustrator is slow (and it also quits very often), Photoshop is slow. Well, it is hard to accept that the problem is is my computer, as it is in the condition I have found when I bought it … so this would mean that or Adobe or Apple has sold a failure product …
AS a PS user from version 3.0 I for one am thorghly disgusted by the lack of response by Adobe to the problems of memory and paging file usage with CS. Someone at Adobe is either trying to be "cute" with the PF or really dosen’t understand haw to program memory. Adobe has had plenty of time to address this and evidently either dosen’t care to or can’t admit to the problem. (NIH) syndrome. Paul
This still doesen’t solve the fact that PSCS creates a large paging file and than works from the PF. This tells me that the programmer hasn’t learned how to allocate memory before he reads the file. Part of the problem of trying to use "C++" instead of the low level "C" routines for the file & memory handling. There is no reason that I know of that you can’t use at least 2 GIG of memory and load your whole 300 or 400 Meg image into memory at once. Using a Paging file is a kludge unless you are really strapped for memory. I regeraly use in excess of 1 Gig database files and manage to get them all in memory. Of course using assembly at the memory & file level helps. BUT it takes longer to code and eats into the enormous profits Adobe makes. Paul
Glenn – I’ve only given a few dozen ideas about what could be wrong on the users system. See the existing threads. And I’ve already listed the few known causes.
Andrew – It’s hard to put a percentage on the SSE2 code, because so much of the low level code gets used by everything.
sjprg – how many times do I have to explain it? There is no problem with Photoshop CS’s scratch usage. It’s normal. It may not be exactly what you had in previous versions, because it was changed to provide better performance.
And the paging file belongs to the OS, not Photoshop.
The fact that Photoshop needs a scratch file, and how it uses it, have been discussed before – at length. That is also not a problem.
Chris, I am really sorry, but can’t you on the other hand understand that it is sometimes hard to believe for those users who experience some rather odd behaviours of CS, especially next to ps7 doing one and the same thing on one and the same machine faster? I guess you forgot about it by now, but when the CS threads started here I reported my issue of having to wait ages for CS to load up my pattern set and whatnot ( but no optional plugins installed whatsoever)and generally taking a long long time to startup, only to find out after al lot of experementing that CS suddenly loads pretty fast when I set C: ( yes the OS disk/partition) as the scratch disk and no other. ?? one of the most common recommendations of adobe is to NOT use C as a scratchdisk. and then tell me.. how shall I believe that there is nothing odd going on with CS’s scratch usage? and yes.. ps7 next to it did not act that way at all. and don’t get me wrong.. I am not saying you telling lies, I am just trying to explain why it’s just really damn difficult to believe that all is fine with CS and its just our systems.
Julian – yes, but there are always oddities when moving from one version to another. But jumping to conclusions doesn’t help.
Yes, there are some weird things about the scratch disk and certain versions of Windows – but we haven’t found any conclusive information or results. It seems to be random.
As for it not being CS — how many millions of customers are seeing real problems? If the application had real problems, then almost everyone would be seeing it. But they’re not, it’s only a small handfull reporting real performance problems. And most of what we’ve seen about performance problems has been traced to other applications, utilities, hardware, etc.
Chris see.. I do really understand your situation and it must probably be hellish to consider and walk through as many possible user systems as think- and testable, etc.. then again.. you are the one who gets paid for doing that and we are the one who pay for the software to use it and not for having to fiddle around with it. I have a lot of respect for your work and regardless of the problems I think PS was and is a phantastic software and I love it. really. but there are also some flaws that keep me and some others puzzled.I’m not jumping to conclusions.. I wish I had any clear conclusions to jump to 🙂 and honestly a "Yes, there are some weird things about the scratch disk and certain versions of Windows " like just now, doesn’t solve the problem, but it does at least help the feeling of being left alone with the problems, to put it a little melodramatically 😉 what did you mean by "versions" btw.. certain builds of windows?
oh and one other thing I would really love to understand is why the file browser can cause so much performance troubles? I don’t have any of the already well known nasty options enabled and in general avoid to use it at all, but I’d still like to know why I can have a stand alone browser like ACDSEE open on my second screen( even multiple windows) and work fast and smooth, but leaving the CS file browser open isn’t the best thing to do?
versions = Win2K and it’s service packs, XP and it’s service packs (which are different builds)
The file browser can cause trouble because people don’t realize it can work in the background – and it may have a lot of work to do when creating thumbnails.
If it has already built thumbnails and the files aren’t changing, it should be fine to leave it open.
Andrew – It’s hard to put a percentage on the SSE2 code, because so much of the low level code gets used by everything.
OK forget percentages. Are systems with non-SSE2 compliant CPUs simply inadequate to run some CS tasks efficiently, could this be the reason for some of the slowdowns we are seeing?
I was talking about a completely idle filebrowser though. with already build thumbnails. the same folder of pictures left open in ACDSEE,shows considerably less CPU usage. furthermore scrolling through it stutters quite a lot in CS, while it’s very smooth in ACDSEE. but hey… although it would be nice and handy to use the CS native filebrowser, it’s not what I really need CS for and I can live without it. I assume, since you said it’s random, you don’t have a list of the more troublesome XP updates in regard to photoshop CS?
Andrew – no, P3 and older Athlons are still as fast as they were with Photoshop 7.
An idle file browser consumes less than 1% of CPU time (usually close to zero). I only see it consuming measurable time when pointed at a network volume and the OS or server software is being slow getting the directory info.
-I would agree that license manager does not take to much of the memory or cpu time (1,840K)but in my opinion every little counts. It was not there before so it might be just a my perception. -As for tmp – I am referring to the process ~e5d141.tmp – if I set 2 scratch disks I can see it twice and it would vary anywhere in between 680K and 980K – again not much, but still makes me wonder… -As for memory – I have started using film scanner recently (and big tiff files, seen same in version 7 but was hoping that this will be resolved in CS. I am not programmer, however after several years in IT – it looks to me as severe memory management issue. -CS memory is set on 68% – this for some reason seams ok for me and cache levels are 4 -All other apps are closed, all services for antivirus and firewall are stopped.
Again it might be a perception but even if I edit files in 8bit mode looks slower than PS7
thanks for taking the time to reply to the concerns on the speed of CS.
I too am a new user of CS who has found a huge difference in the speed of CS compared to Ver 7. Can you please explain to me why Ver 7 running on the same workstation as CS is much faster? You say that it is most likely the workstation or some other application on the PC that is slowing CS down. Does that mean that CS is susceptible to "whatever" it is and 7 is not? If so, is there a part of CS you can point me to that is different to 7 that will assist me in isolating what "it" is that is causing the problem.
I work with very large files producing images for the advertising industry. Flattened they average 200 to 300mb. I keep my psd files as rationalised as possible keeping them under 2 gb in size whenever I can.
In my company we have 3 workstations and all have shown the same difference between CS and 7. Our oldest workstation is an Intergraph ZX10, Dual 730mhz Intel CPU’s, Win2K SP4, 2GB RAM. Our newest is a Xenon Nitro, Dual 3ghz Xeons, XP Pro, 3 GB RAM. On Thursday 3rd June I installed the new Adjusted refresh extension and on first impressions this has made a huge difference in on screen usability.
Once again thankyou for taking the time to help address these issues, I realise that I fall into that small percentage of users having problems and appreciate your efforts to assist,
Sandy – read the previous threads. So far, people that have looked have found the cause was something on their own machine.
The only real difference is that CS needs the memory percentage set a bit lower than 7 did.
Any new software version will be "susceptible" to things that the previous version wasn’t – due to API usage changes (of which there are always thousands), changes in memory locations (well, everything moves around), and even just changes in the version number (some utilities special case each version of applications).
Thanks for the reminder, but I have read the threads.
Three different workstations. Two different OS’s. Photoshop 7 works fine on all 3. CS is slow on all 3. No other upgrade I’ve installed, From PS4 to 5 to 7, has required me to reconfigure the workstation. But CS is fine, it’s someone elses product upsetting CS.
Hmmmm. I can only conclude that CS just isn’t playground friendly. 😉 It’s a shame, I love some of the new features in CS but it is not practical for me to reconfigure all the workstations in the company just to cater for CS’s quirks.
I’d conclude that some configuration or some other software on your machine isn’t CS friendly.
And the other threads tell you the known problems, and what other sorts of things to look for.
You shouldn’t have to reconfigure for CS, but you do have to find and fix or update whatever is causing the problem to appear in CS. (because most likely it’s causing other problems as well)
Reconfiguring may run deeper into your pocketbook than you care to go. I installed CS on a virgin XP setup (in other words, CS and XP SP1 were the *only* things installed on the computer), and my results were far from impressive. I am left to conclude then that my hardware is faulty since there is nothing wrong with CS.
CS is, in fact, so flawless that there will be no dot release for it. Issues such as those listed in message #36 of this thread are apparently of no great concern to Adobe. I am in the process of drawing up specs on a new box, and the ONLY reason I’m doing so is CS. This is, as has been previously pointed out, the most expensive upgrade ever.
PSCS Win2k SP4 Athlon pr0 2500+ 1.5Gb RAM Windows temp C: Scratch on separate 80Gb hard drive Memory allocation was at 69% (1Gb)
Norton Antivirus runs in BG
The software is killing me in terms of performance and slowness. it creates huge files in my user temp file that I have to manually erase. Compared to version 6.01 I am finding it almost useless as its performance is unacceptable. Even when I run it on its own it hangs continuously. I work on very large files 200-300Mb, this was not a problem before. I’ve gone through this thread and have yet to read any real advice as to what one can do that I haven’t already done except by a new machine and configure it to run PSCS alone. I just installed the new plug-in (notice how its not called an upgrade)so I’m not sure if this will help or not.
Photoshop’s temp files are all deleted when you exit the program or (if you crash) the next time you launch Photoshop.
We have no known causes of hangs other than defective hardware and the occasional user that moves dialogs off the current display (and doesn’t realize it).
You really need to be looking at your machine for the cause of the problems.
Chris – I’ve read the threads and even stitched them together on my machine, as I pointed out.
Are you the mouthpiece of Adobe here on this forum? If so, you might be a shade more receptive to the observations of your core users. I’m one of them, and a huge fan of your company to boot. "Vast majority", even if true, doesn’t concern me. Without changing anything else in my system, I installed CS and saw an immediate slowdown. Thereafter I followed all Adobe’s recommendations vis-a-vis memory, cache, etc. (most of which I’d been doing anyway for years) and I still have a slowdown. I’m at the verge of discarding a product I paid good money for. This should be of concern. If Glenn’s survey is skewed toward those of us who bitch and moan and therefore produces an inherent bias, may I suggest that Adobe send out a survey to all registered users and ask the same question.
Having recently upgraded my machine (new MOBO, new OS, 2 GB RAM), CS was the first thing I installed. I find it runs like a champ. I have no other version currently installed, so I cannot compare directly, but I am quite happy with it.
Apologies, Chris, if my machine is crippling your product. But I don’t think so. I now have both 7.01 and CS on the same computer; all else therefore is equal. Here’s my discovery:
I opened the same file, 109MB RGB PSD, in both versions (not concurrently, of course) and watched the scratch size indicator upon opening, before doing ANYTHING with the image. Both versions are configured the same in terms of memory (75% of 1.5GB allocation), cache (4 levels), etc. etc.
In CS, it reads 805.7M/1.00G. In 70, it reads 199.7M/1.00G.
CS, it seems, requires 800MB to display 100MB worth of image, which means that after the first touch with a cloning brush it’s already chewing into a swapfile. I gotta tell ya, playing around in 7.0 after CS is like opening up the throttle on an empty road after chugging along behind a truck for three months.
I’m in the "vast minority" and have crippling slowdowns in CS, but if you had read anything here and elsewhere on the slowdown you would have seen that 75% is too much memory allocation in CS.
Back that down to 50% or so and you will see an improvement (maybe not as much as you would like, but every little bit helps.)
From other things I have read. The "scratch disk usage" number that used to give you an idea of swap file/Hard drive usage is not the same in CS. I don’t know why it changed so drastically, but Chris will swear up and down that that is how it has always worked. I just accept the fact that those numbers mean nothing now, and look to the "efficiency" setting now. (although seeing it at 19% after just opening an image and doing a small cloning, sure aggravates me).
I’ve still not seen any OS or hardware issues mentioned that solved any high proportion of people’s issues, (other than proper settings) just the constant "it’s *something* in your system", but I keep looking……
CS, it seems, requires 800MB to display 100MB worth of image, which means that after the first touch with a cloning brush it’s already chewing into a swapfile.
It has already been explained in many threads why you see this and that it is a feature of CS that was introduced to help improve performance on computers with greater than 1GB of ram. For whatever reason it appears that on some computers it does the opposite. Adobe have acknowledged this and you should find that the recently introduced Adjusted Refresh Plugin significantly reduces the size of the displayed scratch disk. Even though the info provided with the plugin suggests that use on computers with more than 1GB of ram might suffer it has been found that many actually benefit from its use. If you haven’t already done so it might be worth giving it a try.
chris has also stated there’d be benifits to single processor users who’s chips support hyperthreading (pentium 4’s w/hyperthreading) by installing the new multiprocessor plug in.
Much thanks for the suggestion regarding the Refresh Plugin. I had actually taken Adobe’s advice against installing it on machines with >1GB RAM, assuming it applied to me since I have >1GB RAM.
Makes a huge difference on my minority machine. Mein fuhrer, I can clone!
So is the Adjusted Refresh plugin fixing something on the machine thru smoke and mirrors or is it fixing something in CS? It doesn’t do squat on either of my machines, but neither was slow in CS.
I had actually taken Adobe’s advice against installing it on machines with >1GB RAM
The engineers are just being cautious. Theory says that it shouldn’t really help systems such as yours by much if any. However, reality suggests differently. Many on the Mac forum have found the fix beneficial all round but alas positive communication across the two forums by users is rare and the engineers may well have just forgotten to flag up the positive experiences they’re getting on the Mac side.
I’ll look into copying Adams additional info from the Mac side to here
last time I checked the plugin didn’t have mirrors fitted and smoking is banned in my office/household. Likewise I’ve not seen a PC or Mac with fitted mirrors (I lead a sheltered life).
So I think Chris C must be right when writes "Must be your machine" 😉
In general, CS speed is just fine. My only complaint (also for previous PS versions) is that drawing with the pencil/brush can really be slow. Draw three strokes and it might take the system 15 seconds to catch up. In the mean time, the cursor seems to randomly switch between hourglass and pointer, so sometimes I don’t know whether I need another swipe or the system is still dreaming of future colors. My system is 3.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM, and the most recent resolution is 600 dpi.
Magister – yes, the scratch differences have been discussed to death. That is a performance optimization, not something slowing it down. (and like most people calling it a problem, you’re jumping to conclusions and assigning the wrong causes)
If the Adjusted Refresh plugin has drastically changed real performance, that would indicate that you may have had a disk system problem (because the larger transfers were much slower, even though they transferred the same amount of data). Or it could mean that you didn’t have an overall slowdown, but were just seeing the image redraw in larger pieces and thought it was slower (despite being faster on a stopwatch).
The problem clearly elucidated in my posts amounted to a real, empirical performance decrease in the function of common PS tasks from version 7 to version 8. I live in the real world. I assigned no cause, hoping instead that an Adobe engineer such as yourself would do so. The only conclusion I jumped to was that it would behoove me to revert to a program that worked as fast as I did.
The application of the patch that your colleague Ian urged upon me rectified the performance issue and I am happy.
As an engineer, you may consider the value of remaining more impartial in your assessments, and as a representative of the company whose product this forum supports, you may consider redirecting your confrontational attitude from its customers to whatever really ails you.
The application of the patch that your colleague Ian urged upon me rectified the performance issue and I am happy.
so that means either the trouble is with your hard drive setup, as chris said, or video performace.
you may consider redirecting your confrontational attitude from its customers to whatever really ails you.
I don’t see it like that. I see chris being genuinly helpful in trying to solve the problems here on this board, real or percieved. I think he’s more "direct" – or "terse" – than "confrontational", a defining quality of most engineers I know.
I am bit disappointed that Adobe and Support people representing company in this forum have such attitude towards people having issues with PS CS. I am IT support person myself, worked for Symantec, and now for a One of the banks here in Canada. So far that I can see there is it is "your PC – not PS fault" attitude in all post that I can see.
""I think he’s more "direct" – or "terse" – than "confrontational", a defining quality of most engineers I know." – This must be nice quality internally for you folks – but people here are your customers – not your pears, family members or friends. I understand that you are doing what is necessary for your company, (been there myself) but please try to be less "terse" in doing that
As Dave says, this is a USER to USER Forum, and not a USER to ADOBE forum. When the engineers visit here they are doing so IN THEIR OWN TIME as USERS, albeit rather more knowledgeable users than most of us.
They don’t have to come here – they choose to, and all suggestions here come with a 100% money-back guarantee…
boris – that’s not an attitude. But when the available facts all point to the cause being on the users machine, I’ll say so. If someone has real evidence that the fault is in Photoshop, then I’ll take another look.
I’m a little terse because I’m responding here in the brief moments between compiles, database syncs, etc. I don’t have a lot of time to answer questions.
I want to buy a new system to accomodate Photshop CS. Can you please tell me what I need to buy to get the most performace out of CS? I will be working with 16 bit files of 100 MB on average.
This is what I am considering buying: Intel Pentium 4 3GHz with Hyper Threading Technology, 2GB PC3200 400MHz DDR RAM, 800 MHz Frontside Bus Speed, and Windows XP Home Edition.
Janet, very similar to the system I just built, too. My processor is a 2.8, like dave’s. MOBO is Asus P4P-800E. I believe my earlier slowdowns were caused by my old machine’s P3-class processor (Athlon Thunderbird), which did not have SSE2 architecture.
I believe my earlier slowdowns were caused by my old machine’s P3-class processor (Athlon Thunderbird), which did not have SSE2 architecture.
We need to be CLEAR – your slow downs were specific to small number of areas of which at least one was definitely related to the absence of SSEII in your processor. The fact that we were comparing ACRII with ACRI which doesn’t even have the feature that uses SSEII blurred the edges for best part of 6 months. In other words we were comparing apples to oranges, but we didn’t know it at the time.
OK, fair enough, the slowdown that was hurting me the most was being caused by the Color Noise Reduction Filter in Camera Raw 2. Switching to a P4 (or turning off the CNR Filter) cured it.
However, the other major slowdown that I was seeing from PS7 to PSCS on the same machine (PhotoKit Sharpener plugin) also disappeared when I switched to a P4. That plugin uses a variety of PS CS filters to do its work, and I don’t know to what extent those filters depend on the SSE2 architecture of the P4 chip.
Edit: At any rate, I’m now happy with the speed of PS CS.
That system is all but identical to mine: I had issues initially (in 7.0.1 as well as CS), but if you start straight off by setting your Photoshop RAM allocation to less than 50% in preferences and allocate a large scratch disk (say 10GB) to a non-OS/PS physical hard drive, it should work well.
The info has been posted many times. I’ve answered yours and others questions above and elsewhere and get pretty much zero feedback so how would I know what’s wrong with your machines.
Did you install the Auto Refresh plugin? If so what did it do? If not why not?.
You indicated above that one of your issues was the File Browser not working the way it did in 7 – did you read what I wrote and did it help?
You want examples but we have to drag info out of you kicking and screaming!
You see Glenn I try to help but I can’t read minds and I can’t work in isolation.
I keep looking, but I don’t see any answers, just references to previous answers, which I can’t find )-: I get in an endless loop. That is why I keep asking in the threads I’m in. As you know, threads titled "How to pluck an Albatross" can easily turn into a discussion on Photoshop CS speed issues, but I wouldn’t read that thread unless I got there through a search.
Maybe as an addition to the FAQ? (the CS/OS fixes/trys, not the Albatross plucking instruction)
Did you install the Auto Refresh plugin?
I didn’t at first because I have 1.5 gig ram, but after reading others say it worked for them I installed it. I haven’t had time to thoroughly test/time it, but it doesn’t appear to do too much for me.
Re: File Browser – did you read what I wrote and did it help?
YES! thank you. I didn’t respond to that because I felt that was an actual, operational function, and not a "try this and let me know" type thing.
You see Glenn I try to help but I can’t read minds and I can’t work in isolation.
I understand your frustration, I really do. I feel it toward you guys at times. :-/ I have given extreme details lots of times, but not in *this* thread, so just because you guys have answered a question in another thread doesn’t mean I have read it. I can’t read minds either so I don’t know what I should look for when all I hear is "it’s your system".
I am looking for a new Vid card so maybe their drivers will be happier in CS (any sugesions for a CS friendly AGP card?)
as ian said. it’s impossible to help when we get no feedback about what’s been done and what hasn’t, what worked and what hasn’t. i suggest anyone with an issue needs to start their OWN thread so we can focus on ONE problem system at a time. 5 people saying me too… same problem when the problems may or may not be completely different all with different systems is impossible to figure out.
so just because you guys have answered a question in another thread doesn’t mean I have read it.
then you and others need to stick with YOUR threads until your system is working!
like this? LenHewitt "Tuning Photoshop CS" 2/29/04 3:05am
No, I’m looking for odd issues, not the CS’s proper settings. I don’t have any problems finding the proper settings, it’s what to do when the settings are right and it’s still slow.
Nick, That is the card I was thinking about, I have a Matrox Mystique card now with the latest drivers so I wasn’t sure if I needed different manufacturer for "better" drivers.
Glenn, I’m not familiar with the Mystique. Prior to the G550, I was using a G450 and it worked fine, too. In fact, I can’t tell a difference in the two cards, other than I guess the 550 has more RAM. I recently purchased the 550 to see if my 450 might be causing a problem with my monitor calibration software (not PS-related). The 450 wasn’t the problem. They’re both good cards, in my experience.
Responding to your survey… The main problem I’m having with slowness in Photoshop CS is the File Browser. It isn’t just slow, it is s–l–o–w. I just tried using it one more time this morning. The broswer hung Photoshop and then Photoshop suddenly quit. I’ve followed the suggestions in this thread to no avail. I love the File Browser and am hoping that eventually I’ll hear of a solution.
Size, type and number of files in the folder that cause the problem are prerequisite to anyone being able to offer you help. Likewise your File Browser preferences.
If Photoshop actually quit then one of the files is probably corrupted.
The File Browser is s-l-o-w on my machine even when it displays a small number of low resolution files. I’ve changed my preferences to Do Not Process Files Larger than 50 MB, Display 10 Most Recently Used Folders in Location Popup, and Custom Thumbnail Size 128 px Wide. All Options are turned off except for Allow Background Processing.
Any suggestions on what I should be doing differently?
Sorry, I’ve got to chime in here. In answer to all the above responses, I’ve done all the above. If you do a search on my name you will find that I’ve been posting since late last year when my new computer tripped up in PS7 and then CS. I’ve posted my machine’s specs many times, but again:
Asus P4P800 deluxe board, P4 3.0 H/T, 2GB Corsair TwinX DDR SDRAM (4×512 in matched pairs running as dual channel), 2x 60GB Seagate 7200RPM IDE drives, 2x Seagate 120GB SATA drives configured as RAID 0 through Intel 82801 ER on-board controller, Asus V9500 128MB video, Sony CD R/W, Pioneer DVD R/W. XP Pro on C: IDE Drive 1; XP Page on D: IDE drive 2; PS Scratch on M: SATA RAID 0 array.
To your comment:
"If you find that you need to use 50% ram allocation for Photoshop when you have 2GB installed then something is screwed on your system!"
– I couldn’t agree more, but finding out just what has made my life a misery, not counting the hassle and expense (3x motherboards – Asus, Gigabyte, Asus again, 3x sets of RAM – Kingston HyperX, Kingston VR, Corsair TwinX – before the shop flatly refused to have anything more to do with me.) It has been Adobe’s response/suggestion to wind the RAM allocation back to below 50%, not mine. Fine, that stops the "not enough RAM" halts, but like you say, something is screwed because many others are not having to do this. Then again many others are having to do this, I’m certainly not alone.
I’m not trying to be difficult or a complainer, but I wish that somebody, somewhere in the IT industry, could back off trying to make even more money for a bit and come up with an intelligible CAUSE for the out of RAM messages. And by that I mean a cause with a remedy instead of just supposition and work-around.
My last ditch is going to be to follow Dave’s lead and replace the mobo with an Intel board. My continued reading has indicated there might be a problem with the 865 chipset and dual channel RAM, so I’m saving the bucks for something with an 875 set.
If this fails, I’m done with the Dark Side and the hassle – I’ll be going back to Mac.
FWIW, I’m in the process of putting together another machine to replace my aging Dell box. A friend offered me a deal on an Intel 875PBZ mobo that I couldn’t refuse, and the rest of the parts are on their way from NewEgg.
This box will only have 1GB RAM for the time being, but if you like, I can at least report back here on using CS with that 875 chipset. I do seem to recall, however, that some people around here are using the Intel 875 boards successfully with CS, so I doubt that the chipset is the issue.
The reading I’ve been doing indicates that the 865 chipset is extremely choosey about RAM it is paired with (NOW they tell me!). There has been some suggestion that the 875 chipset is also choosey, but I’m not convinced that this is all there is to it. The components I used are all big-brand mainstream stuff, not Bargain Charlie’s obscure liquidation stock, after all.
At first (like most, it seems), I was quick to blame PS (both 7 & CS), but again there is more to it than that as others are not having any problems with Intel chipsets, P4 & 2GB DC RAM. I’d be very interested to see if you get a similar failing with your proposed setup, because that would turn it all on its head again. Note that Dave’s machine is 865 with 1GB, and he’s not having any of these problems.
Interestingly, pulling out 1 stick to give 1.5GB running as single channel RAM made no difference – I still got the low RAM stops. However, the degree of compatibility testing needed to resolve this is way beyond my resources, though I would have thought it well within the financial capabilities (and responsibilities, in a perfect world) of M$, Intel, Asus, Adobe et al.
Point is that with the exception of a few employees at the coal face at Adobe, there has been absolutely no effort whatever by the aforementioned to do anything at all to resolve the problem for those of us experiencing it. Asus just pointed to an out-of-date RAM compatibility chart that consisted of unavailable sticks, and M$……….well, they believe that the phrase "broken by design" is acceptable to describe product they sell, so asking them to do anything is pointless.
It’s many years since I owned a Mac (I switched to PC because I couldn’t afford a new G3 at the time), but I am now being drawn back to it – at least it is a cohesive design that works out of the box and I do not see Mac users having anything like the trouble that I’m having. There is also just one source for both machine and OS at whose feet to lay the blame should there be problems. The trouble some are having with HP’s intransigence regarding one of their notebooks on a parallel thread on this forum is further convincing me to jump ship again.
Good thing is that I qualify for an upgrade to PSCS from my original Mac PS2.5 disks 🙂 (having already suffered the "cross-platform" extortion to PC years ago 🙁 ).
Just got to get courage to re-mortgage the house to get a G5 now.
Fred.
(Edit: why does 8 (as in PS) translate into a wide-eyed green smiley when posted? Subterfuge?)
The machine that I’m building, other than the Intel 857 mobo, will initially have kind of a hodge-podge of RAM. The guy is also selling me 512 MB of "SpecTek" RAM. Never heard of that brand, so no telling where it came from or how it will get along with CS. It is dual channel, though, and came from a working machine, so I at least know that it was working OK with the 875 chipset. My plan is to get everything put together, install CS and see how it runs. If everything’s OK, I’ll try adding another 512MB stick that was in my Dell machine. Could get interesting, but I’ll let you know what I find out.
will initially have kind of a hodge-podge of RAM. The guy is also selling me 512 MB of "SpecTek" RAM. Never heard of that brand, so no telling where it came from or how it will get along with CS.
I know, it sounds weird. But, this will be a secondary machine that I only use for surfing, office tasks, etc. I rarely will use it for PS, so I can afford to experiment. I bought the mobo, CPU and RAM for $120. If the RAM sucks, I’m still ahead. My main PS machine is workin’ fine, won’t mess with that.
Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:8, Stepping:3 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Processor speed: 751 MHz Built-in memory: 768 MB Free memory: 485 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 698 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 75 % Image cache levels: 4 Use image cache for histograms: No
Celeron 2.5ghz 1.5 G DDR 333mhz ram 200 G drive (1 Partition) 40 G system drive PS CS mem alloc = 80% psd files > 1GB file browser always open (10 G of image files cached) defrag weekly
Zip zip zip – couldn’t be happier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Never had a single complaint on PS CS performance.
Fred, my new machine is up and running. Reactivated XP over the phone, no problem. Of course, I’ll have to wait until Monday to reactivate PS CS (grrr), will report back about its performance when I’m able to.
Fred, CS is now installed and activated on the new machine. I’ve briefly put it through its paces, using typical files (for me) and commands. Everything appears to be working fine, it opens quickly and just zips right along. So I’d have to say that the Intel 875 chipset is not presenting problems, at least not in this set up.
System specs: Intel 875PBZ mobo, P4 2.2Ghz 400FSB, 1 GB DDR266 RAM (75% assigned to PS). At the moment, I’ve got two 512MB sticks in there. Can’t tell you what brand, only that they were purchased with my old Dell machine.
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