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I am still using my one year-old dual G4 1.4 Mac computer with 2 GB of RAM (and looking at the new dual 2.5 G5). After getting my Kodak DCS back for a Hasselblad 555ELD I started using 16-bit imaging on Photoshop CS — and found, of course, that processing of large images (30X30 inches at 360 dpi – about 660 MB) slowed to a crawl. I have my memory usage set to 70%. Using the healing brush to remove dust spots (even CCD imagers get dust) requires about 5 seconds or more per fix.
I opended the little program called "Activity Monitor", it’s in the OS X applications file — under "utilities". Running the monitor allows you to see what your CPU — or CPUs in the dual series — are doing in real time. It makes vertical bar graphs and the green bars go up and down as your CPUs go to work. It is easiest to watch with dual monitors.
It is VERY interesting to watch the bars as Photoshop CS works on my images. The results indicate that there are very few times when the CPUs are working at the maximum levlel. I watch the spinning "beach ball", waiting for an effect, and the CPUs are loafing.
That suggests that something other than CPU size or speed is the limiting factor. My hard drives are 120GB 7200 RPM, and I suspected that writing to them might be the limiting factor. I partitioned one of the drives into 2 partitions: PS Scratch Disk and PS Images. I set the PS preferences to use only the first disk partition for the scratch (clean and reformatted) and then copied my "working image" into the second partition (PS Images. That should cure any problems with fragmentation.
The result? About the same. The spinning beach ball still spins while the activity monitor shows little CPU usage.
I note with some despair that the newest and greatest G5 2.5 still uses 7200 RPM hard drives. Is this the limiting factor? There are (Raptor) 10,000 RPM drives available and I might go that route.
Can someone with a dual 2.0 GB G5 open a big 16-bit file and run the activity monitor??? Are your CPUs really busy all the time??? What is the delay while using the healing brush??
The current speed (or lack thereof) makes for very long days. I estimate that 30% of my day is spent watching some kind of bar crawl accross the screen — or a spinning beach ball.
Let me (us) know what you see.
Thanks
Dick
I opended the little program called "Activity Monitor", it’s in the OS X applications file — under "utilities". Running the monitor allows you to see what your CPU — or CPUs in the dual series — are doing in real time. It makes vertical bar graphs and the green bars go up and down as your CPUs go to work. It is easiest to watch with dual monitors.
It is VERY interesting to watch the bars as Photoshop CS works on my images. The results indicate that there are very few times when the CPUs are working at the maximum levlel. I watch the spinning "beach ball", waiting for an effect, and the CPUs are loafing.
That suggests that something other than CPU size or speed is the limiting factor. My hard drives are 120GB 7200 RPM, and I suspected that writing to them might be the limiting factor. I partitioned one of the drives into 2 partitions: PS Scratch Disk and PS Images. I set the PS preferences to use only the first disk partition for the scratch (clean and reformatted) and then copied my "working image" into the second partition (PS Images. That should cure any problems with fragmentation.
The result? About the same. The spinning beach ball still spins while the activity monitor shows little CPU usage.
I note with some despair that the newest and greatest G5 2.5 still uses 7200 RPM hard drives. Is this the limiting factor? There are (Raptor) 10,000 RPM drives available and I might go that route.
Can someone with a dual 2.0 GB G5 open a big 16-bit file and run the activity monitor??? Are your CPUs really busy all the time??? What is the delay while using the healing brush??
The current speed (or lack thereof) makes for very long days. I estimate that 30% of my day is spent watching some kind of bar crawl accross the screen — or a spinning beach ball.
Let me (us) know what you see.
Thanks
Dick
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