Bobby,
If CS is any indication CS2 will use more resources and most likely run slower for you. Unless you are working on very large files you may have some other issues. Have you double checked your windows swap file settings?
How large are the files you are working on? My laptop only has one drive as well and I haven’t had any trouble. I don’t have to use Photoshop on it often and if I do I mostly just work on small 5 Megapixel images with a max of 50 layers.
FWIW, I have a little Seagate 100GB USB2 drive that works great with my laptop. The best part of it is that it doesn’t require an external power supply, so it’s highly portable.
My virtual memory settings are as follows:
Total paging file size for all drives: 1536 MB
Memory useage: Adjust for best performance of Programs (instead of system cache)
Processor scheduling: Adjust for best performance of Programs (instead of background services)
Data Execution Prevention is turned on.
Visual Effects Tab: set for "Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer" (it has all the little visual options checked on).
FWIW, System Restore has the disc usage slider set to Max, which is 12% of the hard disc. The status dialog below has C: set to "Monitoring."
In Adobe Photoshop 6.0, I have the following settings for memory, cache and scratch discs: Cache levels are set at 4. Available RAM is 954900K, of which Photoshop is set to use 477450K (50%).
Scratch discs: First is set for "Startup"; others are set at none.
As to the size of files I work on, it varies. Some are lower resolution files on a couple megs big. Others may be billboard designs over 100MB in size. The lag seems to work about the same regardless of file size. It is a lag that doesn’t appear in any other programs however.
I’m also wondering if my McAfee Security Center installation, or anti-spyware tools like Spy-Bot Search & Destroy and AdAware SE could be causing any of the problems. I remember reading a little tidbit about Norton Internet Security causing some swap file issues with Photoshop.
Of those folks out there using external hard discs connected via USB 2.0 or Firewire (my notebook has connections for both), are you getting good levels of data transfer via those connections? I can live with using an external drive for swap disc use if the bandwidth is there to do it. This may also be my only choice since I don’t see any media bay slot-based hard drives on Dell’s website yet for my notebook.
Quick update:
I had the plain vanilla (off the disc) version of Photoshop 6.0 installed on my notebook. I just applied the 6.0.1 updater and that improved the situation quite a lot. I don’t really see any problems of lag anymore.
But I do have another question:
I noticed a 6.0.1 plug-ins update for Pentium 4 processors. My notebook has a Pentium M "Centrino" type of CPU. I’m not sure if its core is quite the same as that of a Pentium IV and if the update applies to this kind of low voltage CPU. Any ideas?
If CS is any indication CS2 will use more resources and most likely run slower for you.
CS2 is NOT CS and to assume that it will be slower would be very wrong.
Ah. I’m going really far back in my memory, but I *think* 6.0 is the version where we had the bug about locking down memory in a slightly funny way that tickled some systems really bad.
The specs for your machine are perfectly fine, I don’t think you need an external hard drive (not with a 72krpm internal). It should handle CS2 just fine (it’s faster than the laptop I develop on!). CS2 is better at memory usage than CS was, and should be faster at doing most things than Photoshop 6.
Can you characterize the performance lags? Is it during painting? Or does it seem like the system is just taking too long to do some things? Have you tried using Performance Monitor to see what things are going on? I always monitor Physical Disk/%Disk Time, Memory/Free MB, and Processor/Processor Time – that’ll let you quickly figure out 90% of the issues.
-Scott
wrote:
Quick update:
I had the plain vanilla (off the disc) version of Photoshop 6.0 installed on my notebook. I just applied the 6.0.1 updater and that improved the situation quite a lot. I don’t really see any problems of lag anymore.
But I do have another question:
I noticed a 6.0.1 plug-ins update for Pentium 4 processors. My notebook has a Pentium M "Centrino" type of CPU. I’m not sure if its core is quite the same as that of a Pentium IV and if the update applies to this kind of low voltage CPU. Any ideas?
Hmm, I think that was 4.0 and we fixed it before 5.0 shipped.
Hi Scott,
I was getting the lag worst on screen navigation and redrawing. For example, I could hit the Ctrl+Spacebar keys to zoom into a layout and then hit the spacebar key to hand-pan around the layout. The system would hang a little just during simple processes like that, even in layouts only a few MB in size. After applying the 6.0.1 updater I don’t get any of the same hassles.
Another process that would cause hangs was manual path drawing with the pen tool. But then that’s another screen redrawing-intensive process. I would use the Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar keys for screen panning and zooming and then use the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys for adjust paths on the fly while drawing with the pen tool. I could be drawing or adjusting a path or hand panning around areas of the path and get lags and temporary hangups. Not anymore after the updater.
Just a shot in the dark: turn Data Execution Prevention off and see if things improve.
Ian,
CS2 is NOT CS and to assume that it will be slower would be very wrong.
I said most likely. It was no more wrong than you saying it will be faster. No one will know until the benchmarks are in. It will depend on which processors CS2 is optimized for as well. It is quite possible that it is exactly the same as CS with a few additions that bloat the install size and memory usage. On the other hand since CS was the first version not to run on the 9x platform they may have made quite a few mistakes that slowed things down and have since been corrected.
Photo,
I was a beta tester… Mac and PC, Single Processor and Dual Processor, ram from 768MB through 6GB. Some things I can talk about, some I can’t or I can just be smug b….d and tell you nothing 😉
Why be smug!
Is there an end date on the NDA or do we have to apply subtle forms of torture (wha-haa-haa)
Ian,
I am aware that you are a beta tester. I also know the trend in most applications. It is still likely that CS2 will run slower than PS6 on that computer. That being said with those system specs there is no way I would limit myself to PS6 when CS2 will run just fine on that system and it is sooo much better.
I like to think that application developers are smart and do full rewrites for better memory management and to take advantage of all the latest processor enhancements. The reality is that the average user doesn’t have a clue what is going on behind the scenes and most programmers don’t have time to trace every piece of old code so they leave them in place and just kill the links. If the user get’s new features they are happy in the bliss of ignorance not knowing that their beloved software company could have spent an extra few weeks optimizing the code for better performance as well.
Kind of like buying a used car that has a beautiful new paint job that underneath is nothing but a pile of rust.
I hope Adobe is takes as much time to rework existing code as they do in adding new features but in the end we will never know.
Deebs,
CS2 is apparently shipping so soon anyone will be able to comment on it.
Groovesome!
I expect a full code rewrite is on the cards anyway with 64-bit happening as we speak (XP 64-bit Pro, Windows 2003 server 64-bit favor).
Maybe the rewrite will be in 64-bit and autotranslated to 32 bit rather than an obverse approach?
It doesn’t take a re-write to go full 64-bit. It also remains to be seen what kind of advantage it is.
Besides, re-writes never work!
(But yes, we do a lot of fixup every cycle).
-Scott
wrote:
Groovesome!
I expect a full code rewrite is on the cards anyway with 64-bit happening as we speak (XP 64-bit Pro, Windows 2003 server 64-bit favor).
Maybe the rewrite will be in 64-bit and autotranslated to 32 bit rather than an obverse approach?
You don’t happen to have Norton anti-virus installed, do you? I seem to vaguely remember that Photoshop 6 is where a Norton issue caused us to reassemble the Type Tool’s font menu every tool switch, which would fit your description of the lags.
Anyway, I’m glad the patch fixed the issue, and Photoshop CS2 would be more than happy on your machine.
-Scott
wrote:
Hi Scott,
I was getting the lag worst on screen navigation and redrawing. For example, I could hit the Ctrl+Spacebar keys to zoom into a layout and then hit the spacebar key to hand-pan around the layout. The system would hang a little just during simple processes like that, even in layouts only a few MB in size. After applying the 6.0.1 updater I don’t get any of the same hassles.
Another process that would cause hangs was manual path drawing with the pen tool. But then that’s another screen redrawing-intensive process. I would use the Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar keys for screen panning and zooming and then use the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys for adjust paths on the fly while drawing with the pen tool. I could be drawing or adjusting a path or hand panning around areas of the path and get lags and temporary hangups. Not anymore after the updater.
Deebs,
If you remember the 16-bit to 32-bit times you know how long something like this can take. I remember brand new dual Pentium pro 200 systems being out performed by single processor Pentium 166 systems on 16-bit applications.
It is safe to assume the most apps will be filled with patches to fumble through 64-bit. A full application overhaul is a major undertaking that won’t happen overnight.
I have the 64 bit XP beta on a test system and it can be quite difficult finding drivers right now. I plan on sticking with XP pro on my primary systems for a while longer. I probably won’t upgrade untill I find myself wanting a lot more speed and more than 3 GB of memory.
Dare I say it?
My next upgrade (on the cards for soon) and I am thinking about the multimedia version of XP rather than Pro or Home versions.
I agree with strategy on 64-bit approach – I will wait and see also
Scott,
Besides, re-writes never work! (But yes, we do a lot of fixup every cycle).
Don’t you mean re-writes are too expensive. The major problem with all the big companies is that they forget where they came from. Just because newer systems are faster and can handle more doesn’t mean that the core application needs to waste resources. If software companies like Adobe and Microsoft optimized the code like they used to for much slower systems while taking advantage of newer processors and more memory I think the results would be well beyond where we are today.
A perfect example can be found in shareware applications. you can find 2 programs that do the same thing. Program "A" is 3 MB and requires an install; Program "B" is 27 KB self contained, doen’t require an install, and has more features.
Adobe and Microsoft are like kids designing their first web site using 1 MB JPG’s and 30 MB MPG’s instead of 30K images and 300K flash animations.
Scott: what, in your opinion, are the fantastic opportunities on offer in proposed merger?
(don’t answer if you do not wish to)
No, I meant don’t work. OK, sure, for tiny little utilities. But beyond a certain app size, it’s just not a reasonable thing to do.
Besides, they’re wholly unnecessary. Especially in the move to 64-bit. It certainly doesn’t take a re-write to take advantage of what AMD64/EM64T offers.
And your guess about optimizing for older processors applying to newer machines isn’t correct; those older optimizations more often than not end up slowing down newer machines. A lot of the old tricks simply aren’t worth doing in newer code anymore because of that. The bottlenecks in machines have completely changed over the last decade; programs have to adapt or risk being way outperformed by the new kid on the block.
-Scott
wrote:
Scott,
Besides, re-writes never work! (But yes, we do a lot of fixup every cycle).
Don’t you mean re-writes are too expensive. The major problem with all the big companies is that they forget where they came from. Just because newer systems are faster and can handle more doesn’t mean that the core application needs to waste resources. If software companies like Adobe and Microsoft optimized the code like they used to for much slower systems while taking advantage of newer processors and more memory I think the results would be well beyond where we are today.
A perfect example can be found in shareware applications. you can find 2 programs that do the same thing. Program "A" is 3 MB and requires an install; Program "B" is 27 KB self contained, doen’t require an install, and has more features.
Adobe and Microsoft are like kids designing their first web site using 1 MB JPG’s and 30 MB MPG’s instead of 30K images and 300K flash animations.
Scott,
Saying it isn’t reasonable and saying it won’t work are two completely different things. It may be easier for me to rework an existing web site, but redoing it from scratch knowing what I know now it would be a much better site in the end. Is it worth it for me to redo it, no. Would it be worth it for someone using the site, yes. No code is perfect and there is always room for improvement.
I see where you are coming from but saying optimization and clean code won’t do anything on a new system is like saying I got a better job so I now need to find a way to spend twice as much on the same things. Having more and needing less leaves more resources where you need them most.
Doing something the right way and doing it the way that makes the most money to show the stockholders results in short time are two very different strategies. Deadline pressures will always cause the end result to be substandard.
I just like to see a product that is at the top of it’s game and I am sorry that just isn’t how I see Photoshop anymore.
wrote:
Scott,
I see where you are coming from but saying optimization and clean code won’t do anything on a new system…
Didn’t say that. I said the *kinds* of optimization done need to be different. Photoshop CS2 is optimized more than ever. Many things are faster. Memory is used more efficiently. Optimization is absolutely critical to keeping the application performing well. And clean code can be put in chunk at a time – a rewrite isn’t required to do that!
Doing something the right way and doing it the way that makes the most money to show the stockholders results in short time are two very different strategies. Deadline pressures will always cause the end result to be substandard.
Different, but not mutually exclusive. And the "right way" changes with time – and is also a matter of opinion.
I just like to see a product that is at the top of it’s game and I am sorry that just isn’t how I see Photoshop anymore.
An interesting opinion. I disagree. I believe most people would. We’ve pushed the limits with Photoshop CS2 – HDR, Vanishing Point, Warping – increased workflow throughput, especially with Camera Raw 3’s filmstrip mode, increased memory efficiency and with Smart Objects and multi layer selection enabling new ways of working, I think people will be able to get more done than ever.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a team as customer focused as the Photoshop team is.
Now, if there are specific issues that are gnawing at your workflow which have engendered your opinion, I’d be more than happy to hear about it. I keep a list, and we were able to clean up quite a bunch this time around.
-Scott
Scott,
First of all thanks for taking the time to address my concerns and perhaps clear things up for some others that may have been seeing an unclear picture as well.
And clean code can be put in chunk at a time – a rewrite isn’t required to do that!
True. A rewrite just makes sure that ALL areas are addressed. It is just easy for some people to forget some things when updating. I am glad to hear that you recheck all the code periodically. Just don’t miss any monkey wrenches 🙂
We’ve pushed the limits with Photoshop CS2… …I think people will be able to get more done than ever.
I agree that the new feature look great. I am looking forward to using them. I am very happy to hear that updates are being made to all the code. My opinion came from the believe that you have had your hands full with activation and new features and haven’t had time to address code optimization.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a team as customer focused as the Photoshop team is.
I don’t doubt that. I have always been please with the forums and the valuable contributions of you Chris and the others.
if there are specific issues that are gnawing at your workflow which have engendered your opinion, I’d be more than happy to hear about it.
I appreciate that. I will be sure to let you know 🙂
Sorry if I was out of line. You have cleared up some of my umm… misconceptions. It is easy to develope an image of the way things seem to be that is way off base. Believe me I am happy to know I was imagining problems that apparently weren’t there.
I’m not too worried about PhotoshopCS running slow on my new notebook PC given some other performance demanding things I’ve done on the machine. Well, that’s provided there isn’t some serious issue that needs patching right away. Perhaps my main area of concern on resources will be how the full creative suite behaves with Adobe Bridge running in the background. My notebook has a fast hard disc and 1GB of memory. That should at least perform at a satisfactory level.
The biggest downside I’ve seen with doing Photoshop work on a notebook –a 200MB billboard layout will heat up your pant legs to pretty warm levels. You’ll have to put the notebook on a table if you don’t want to start sweating.
I’m kind of looking forward to the 64-bit Windows thing. It will be nice to be able to give Photoshop and other demanding, multi-threaded apps more than 2GB of RAM to use.
However, I will not be jumping on board immediately. The version of XP Pro running on my notebook will stay there as long as possible. I may be getting a new desktop machine early next year (those new 65nm process dual core Pentium D processors with 2MB of L2 cache for both cores will be out then). Perhaps at that time going with a 64-bit OS may be more safe.
The problem with upgrading to a 64-bit operating system is you’ll run into compatibility problems in several areas. Lots of Windows apps still use 16-bit installers. Those will not work under WinXP Pro64. The same thing goes with all those device drivers that use a hodge-podge of 16-bit and 32-bit code. The only real safe way for a user to jump into 64-bit computing is with an entirely new system, new periphreals and new software.
I’d advise most people to wait at least 6 months to 1 year before buying a 64-bit Windows upgrade. Perhaps in that amount of time a good number of application installers and device drivers will have been updated.
Bobby,
The biggest downside I’ve seen with doing Photoshop work on a notebook –a 200MB billboard layout will heat up your pant legs to pretty warm levels. You’ll have to put the notebook on a table if you don’t want to start sweating.
Just get one of these <
http://www.laptopdesk.net/laptopdesk2f.php>
wrote:
Scott,
First of all thanks for taking the time to address my concerns and perhaps clear things up for some others that may have been seeing an unclear picture as well.
And I appreciate your willingness to listen to an explanation.
Once you’ve had a chance to play with Photoshop CS2, I’d be happy to hear about it.
-Scott
