Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM

CK
Posted By
Christine_Krof_Shock
Jan 7, 2009
Views
593
Replies
9
Status
Closed
I am running Photoshop as part of the CS4 Suite on a bootcamped intel mac pro towers using Vista Business with 4 gigs of Memory. We are running in 32 bit mode because of the Apple screw up with Carbon 64 so that both sides of the house windows and mac match.

Photoshop is currently only seeing 1639 MB of the RAM instead of the performance on the Mac of about 3000 MB

So does anyone know what is going on here and how I can get Photoshop and or Vista to recognize most if not all of the RAM installed on these machines.

Specs are below…

Adobe Photoshop Version: 11.0 (11.0×20080919 [20080919.r.488 2008/09/19:02:00:00 cutoff; r branch]) Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit
Version: 6.0 Service Pack 1
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:7, Stepping:6 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2 Physical processor count: 4
Processor speed: 2793 MHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 x 4294967296 colors
Video Card Driver: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.11.8048
Built-in memory: 2037 MB
Free memory: 1178 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 1640 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 55 %
Image cache levels: 4

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\ Temporary file path: C:\Users\MGD\AppData\Local\Temp\
Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
Scratch volume(s):
C:\, 349.4G, 324.0G free
Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Plug-ins\ Additional Plug-ins folder: not set

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JJ
Jim_Jordan
Jan 7, 2009
Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit

You answered your question:

We are running in 32 bit mode because of the Apple screw up with Carbon 64 so that both sides of the house windows and mac match

Use Vista 64.
KP
Kwan_Parker
Jan 7, 2009
While Jim’s suggestion is the only solution to addressing all your system’s memory, I am surprised you only have 2037 MB (built-in) memory. Perhaps you are running processes or have devices attached which are eating into your memory by as much as .5 MBs?

I also have 4GBs installed ram. Right off the top, Windows strips 1 GIG to reserve space for Video Cards and other devices. I lose another .5 MB to the system.

This is a well-known limitation of 32-bit systems and like Jim says, there is little to be done except to upgrade to Vista 64. You can remove devices and stop processes and services, but you’ll not ever see . . . at very best . . . 3.5 GBs. (Well, you might by using the /PAE switch, but that is more risk than I’m willing to play with.)

This is what my system looks like:

Operating System: Windows Vista (Ultimate) 32-bit
Version: 6.0 Service Pack 1
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:7, Stepping:7 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2 Physical processor count: 4
Processor speed: 3666 MHz
Video Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Video Card Renderer: GeForce GTX 280/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Drawing: Enabled.
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 x 4294967296 colors
Video Card Driver: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.11.7740
Built-in memory: 2557 MB
Free memory: 1281 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 1640 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 60 %
Image cache levels: 4

Thus far, I’ve not encountered any problem using a 32-bit version. That is partly because I’ve done anything which might cause problems. But, as I do more with the Master Suite I expect that situation to change. Then, I’ll upgrade to Vista 64.

I’m kinda keeping my eyes and ears open about Windows 7. Unless I encounter performance problems, I’d rather wait for the next version. According to rumors, the earliest date would be the end of the year, if not early 2010.
CK
Christine_Krof_Shock
Jan 7, 2009
Problem with Vista 64 is that I am in an academic situation and neither of the Ultimate versions are covered by our academic alliance agreement

So I am stuck with 32 bit Business edition for now until they authorize Ultimate and or a 64 bit Business version of Vista…PAE switch is risky for us also as my IT department doesn’t understand how to support it…

So I’ll just tell the students that gee, guess what, Photoshop currently runs better on a Mac as Photoshop can see all of the RAM unlike windoze where we can only see 1.7…arrrgggh!
BL
Bob Levine
Jan 7, 2009
That’s a load of rubbish…don’t make a fool of yourself.

Bob
JJ
Jim_Jordan
Jan 7, 2009
If you really wanted to get the best performance from a 32 bit Windows system, I’d go with the smaller footprint of XP on that Mac, just as many might prefer Tiger over Leopard. You’ll find few people promoting Vista 32 for optimum performance. Many of us only upgrade to Vista for 64 bit systems. Try turning off the RAM-hungry fluff features like Aero to see if more RAM is available to PS.
CK
Christine_Krof_Shock
Jan 8, 2009
Problem is that our Community College System and IT director has forced our hand with moving to Vista (Hasty La Vista as I like to call it!) as all colleges in the system and all departments have to make the move to one Windows operating system for "efficiency"

So I am stuck with Vista Business 32 for now, we are going to check the processes to see whats going on and where we are losing RAM and I am looking at how to optimize the Virtual Memory for better performance.

John…please share me the secret that you used to get Vista to see all of the RAM…most of my IT people are not Vista Pros and I don’t have a lot of resources to fall back on…
DE
David_E_Crawford
Jan 8, 2009
Christine,

You can set virtual memory to a set size. Right click on my computer, choose properties, then on the left side click on Advance System Settings. The system properties window will pop up. Click on the Advance tab and then click Settings in the performance area. Performance options will pop up. Click on the Advance tab. Look for the Virtual Memory area and click on Change. Look for the drive where you want the paging file to be. Mine is set on C drive on my gaming rig because my games run from D drive. Choose Custom size. Windows will show a recommended size towards the bottom. In my case it is 12285 MB. Then with custom size selected, type in 12285 in both Initial size and Maximum size blocks. Click on Set. Close out of everything and reboot. Doing this, as in XP and Vista, will make your computer run faster and also defrag faster. Your IT people should know this as it is very basic.
CC
Charlie_Choc
Jan 8, 2009
Check out the ‘increaseuserva’ switch in BCDEdit. It will let you increase the amount of memory an application sees, up to 3G.

Charlie…
http://www.chocphoto.com
DE
David_E_Crawford
Jan 8, 2009
Switching from Aero to windows classic will save around 40MB of Ram. But having Aero running on my computer that I use PS CS4 on runs the CS4 software better. Some others on here saw different on their systems. Try both ways.

Run Explorer with run Explorer window in a seperate process "not Selected". Each Explorer window open uses a lot of ram.

Minimise open applications that you are not using. Windows will take back some of this ram for use in other applications.

If your IT people will let you: Go into the Bios and turn off items that you do not use. This will free up address space. But be very careful. But most IT people lock the bios entry anyways!! I just don’t know why…….. lol

Here is a nice website for fine tuning but your IT person may not like it. Use at your own risk as a lot of services are tied in to each other and will cause issues. But there is a lot of items in services that if you don’t use can be turned off thus freeing up address space for ram.
<http://www.blackviper.com/>

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

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