Very Slow CS2 -- Have I done everything possible?

Please.

I've looked over the two threads on sluggish (mine is really very slow vs. PS7.01, especially in painting the screen) CS2. I've tried to do everything suggested -- all to no help. Can anyone suggest something more (short of a new machine)? Would a faster/bigger video card help? Many thanks in advance.

What I've done: (a) defrag disks (b) reset preferences (c) adjusted PS memory (d) set win paging to 4Gb [2xinstalled memory) (e) latest video card driver (f) hide info pallate.

My machine has four printers drivers: HP LJ1000, Canon i960, 2 virtual drivers. It also has 2 TWAIN drivers.

PS gives the following system info:
Adobe Photoshop Version: 9.0 (9.0x196)
Operating System: Windows XP
Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:15, Model:0, Stepping:10 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, HyperThreading
Physical processor count: 1
Processor speed: 1595 MHz
Built-in memory: 1023 MB
Free memory: 624 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 908 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 66 %
Image cache levels: 6
Serial number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Application folder: G:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\ Temporary file path: C:\DOCUME~1\USER~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\
Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
Scratch volume(s):
Startup, 19.1G, 5.64G free
Primary Plug-ins folder: G:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Plug-Ins\

Thanks.

do you have the info palette open? if so close it and tell us what happens?

Also what type of video card do you have (including the amount of VRAM)?

good point adam, and is the ram shared with system ram?

i'm thinking there could be a couple of points of slowdown and each isn't affecting everyone exibiting problems. might as well try to nail them all.

If you have a 20Gb hard drive, that means a very old one. Current disks are not only larger, but also faster.
(Still 7 ran ok for you, this is just a general remark)

The info palette is closed. It made no difference.

Video card is Nvidia TNT2 M64 32MB AGP.

How do I find out if the RAM is shared? I'd guess not, tho.

The 20GB is old (2001) but is 7200 RPM. The other, never, drive is a 120GB partitioned into a 100GB and 20GB.

After the splash screen the palettes are painted very, very slowly -- over 10 secs. Loading an image takes real time. After closing the image, the navigator, history, and layers palettes blank after 1-3 secs. serially.

Thanks for helping.

How big is your monitor and what resolution are you running it at? 32mb can get eaten pretty fast with a large monitor running at high res. Even if it's not your problem with CS2, I'd think about a new vid card.

18" running at (But it's the same that I ran PS7.01).

Do you think a newer vid card would help?

Thx again.

I'd hang out on the new vid card (unless you really want one for stuff like gaming) until the adobe guys can get a handle on what's going on here. i'm sure they're still trying to figure it out.

Still, a TNT2 is very old... but the speed/age of the videocard never had an influence in earlier versions.

I agree with both those stmts. :)

The slowdown could very well be related to your older video card.

I don't know what to recommend as far as getting a new video card, except to say that it will probably make a huge difference as far as your experience with CS2. Adding another GB of physical RAM probably wouldn't hurt either, but is less important than having better video support.

adam, are you with adobe? your profile doesn't specify so just checking.

thanks, dave

You don't mean you haven't learned the extended credits off yet Dave.

Guys, I am having problems with the speed of CS2 as well... I have a Matrox Millinum P650 (2 months old) dual head card with 64 MB DDR memory and 2 gigs of DDR 3200 RAM... Running XP Pro on a P4 3.0 ghz..

Still have CS and 7.01 on and they fly...

Hopefully someone will come up with an answer...

Thanks,

Al

Yes, I'm with Adobe.

Part of the PS engineering team.

I'm very interested in performance and hardware issues (you can probably tell by looking at my recent posts).

People can send me performance issues directly to my email at adobe by sending it to: first initial, then last name (all lower case) at adobe dot com.

I took the advice about video card, and changed mine with my son's GeForce4 440MX, 128Mb. While still much slower than PS701, CS2 was much better. Now I've purchased a FX5500, 256MB and PS-CS2 is useable -- still slower than PS7 -- but useable. Clearly the minimum for using PS-CS2 is much more than the 16-bit video card as published. (I hope that Adobe amends that.)

My thanks to all of you who helped. I look forward to the solution of the performance questions (and some more of the nimbleness of PS7), so will keep an eye out here. Now to use some of the new features I purchased PS-CS2 for.

Thank you all again,

Rob

Thanks Adam. Good to know. Now i'll have to watch the splash screen again! :)

So is a video card using system memory a good or bad thing when it comes to Photoshop performance?

Gene

I don't think it matters really does it?

Memory stacks can be partitioned just like hard disks - provided the video memory is not addressed by application programs or the OS in an untoward way things should be hunky dory.

Thanks deebs, that clears it up for me :)

So is a video card using system memory a good or bad thing when it comes to Photoshop performance?

it means less system memory available to applications. take that as you will. i'd classify it under "bad".

Thanks Dave. In my case it knocks down my built-in system memory from 512M to 448. 379M is set aside for Photoshop and I set usage to 70%.
My files are < 50M, so that works.

Laptops are great, but you are stuck with whatever they glue inside. :D

Btw, is it just me or do others here use the Windows key + Pause Break to bring up the Windows System Properties box? I think it's a pretty cool shortcut :)

I never touch the windows key. it frightens me. i think it's out to get me... and i think it has cooties. :)

I cross-posted this to another thread but I have a MX440 card like Rob Woods above - and my redraws are just fine. 19" CRT running at 1152x8634 @75Hz. My drivers are not even the latest.

No hesitation, no stuttering, just blink, it's done. Can't be the card.

Nick Rains

I never touch the windows key. it frightens me. i think it's out to get me... and i think it has cooties. :)

They make tin foil key caps for that in assorted colors :D

Have any of you seen reg file in

Goodies\Optional Plug-Ins\Photoshop Only\Optional Extensions\

OptimizeResizeDrawing_OFF.reg
OptimizeResizeDrawing_ON_D.reg

By default, Adobe Photoshop CS2 slows the display of real-time resizing for display adapter cards that are not able to display this redrawing as fast as Photoshop can perform it. To turn off this optimization, run the OptimizeResizeDrawing_OFF.reg file. To reactivate this function, use these instructions to run the OptimizeResizeDrawing_ON_D.reg file.

It worked for me ... it's not lightning fast after merging reg file but is't faster.