Hey there photoshoppers, thank you for your time. I am currently running a quad-care, 4 gigs, with a nvidia 8800gts 640mb graphics card machine and using photoshop cs4 extended with windows xp 32 bit os.
While photoshop cs4 is fairly fast and responsive, I would like to have it even quicker.
My question is, what would make this happen?
Naturally a faster processor (i7 intel) would assist in this, but I rather not go that route. I would rather go to a 64bit OS and add additional 4 gigs of ram (total of 8). What would your suggestions be?
Add the additional 4 gigs of ram and go to 64-bit xp? 64 bit vista?
Build a new machine with i7 quad cpus, 16 gigs of ram and 64 bit os?
Simply use what I got because there will not be much of an improvement?
I would like to have it run faster without a great deal of reworking the system. Clearly what I am running now is pretty darn fast even though it is a year old since I built it. Thanks for the help.
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For all real world purposes your current machine is as fast as it gets for Photoshop. The Photoshop scripts that some testers use do not resemble real world usage. If you are going to use testing software then you will find that Photoshop speed still scales with raw processor power more than any other variable. Hence if you simply pop in the fastest CPU your motherboard will handle you will get all the speed you can appreciate and save money. In the real world most studies do not show any appreciable speed bump running CS4 under Vista 64, either the 32 bit version of CS4 or the 64 bit version. The latter is compromised by incompatibility with the majority of plug-ins, which may or may not matter to you. The main reason for this is that most of Photoshop is single-threaded: all that data is getting crammed through one processor core, even if you drank the Apple Koolaid and paid an insane amount for their dual CPU space heater. The corollary is that running more than 4gbs of RAM makes no real world difference, regardless of OS, although you may feel better seeing that the extra ram is recognized by Vista 64. You should also realize that running 32 bit CS4 in Vista 64 gains you one extra GB of usable ram that will not likely every be effectively accessed. But its your money . . .
If you are interested in having Photoshop start faster, and open images more quickly, I’d recommend that you RAID up. Keep in mind that you can get half this benefit by leaving Photoshop running, and that once the images are open, you won’t see as much of an improvement in performance.
Re 64 bit, I have an 8 gig four core system and it’s very difficult to coax Photoshop into using more than 3 or 4 gigs of address space, or 25% (one core) of processor. My conclusion from my own limited experiments is that you’re not going to see much, if any, performance improvement with 64 bit or more than 2 cores. Photoshop does not (yet) really use the larger memory space or multi cores for speed increase.
Capacity is a different issue – you’ll be able to deal with much larger images, and more simultaneously open images efficiently, with a minimum of swap activity.
When talking about Core i7 also check up on the motherboard, there are some that don’t like 12gb or more RAM(doesn’t boot up even though it states on the box that it supports it)
I’m not sure I agree with Dave (sorry man); I’d use XP x64 over Vista, (Server 2003 is the same thing) and not upgrade to Windows 7 until it’s at SP2. XP x64 works just fine with Photoshop 4 in my experience having installed both @ several large clients.
The Texas state Senate yesterday gave preliminary approval to a state budget that includes a provision forbidding government agencies from upgrading to Windows Vista without written consent of the legislature.
The artical I read on another website mention that MS built and operates a $500 million data center and some other big building with lots of employes in Texas. Nothing like stepping in the hand that feeds you.
I wouldn’t touch XP64 or Server 2003. The fact that Adobe has zero support for either is enough to stay clear and Vista 64 is just too good once you’ve gotten over the fact that only people who’ve never used it think it sucks.
You won’t find a lot of people that have used it that would willingly go back to XP.
That said, I have played around with Windows 7 and this is a seriously streamlined O/S. 18 minutes to install and ready to go. It’s installed on an older Pentium D machine that I tried Vista on. It’s definitely faster and seem quite stable in the limited testing I’ve done so far.
@Bob Well I have used Vista and it’s not a worthwhile upgrade for the $ if you’re already on x64 or 32 bit XP, (I’ve had no problem getting drivers for commercial applications on Windows 2003). There are a lot of companies that simply refused to pay the upgrade $ to Vista which is the reason that MickeySoft is burning the midnight oil to get Windows 7 ready. I agree with you though about the merits of Windows 7.
Because Adobe doesn’t support an OS doesn’t mean that one will have more problems necessarily with their software — just look at all the problems individuals seem to be having with the supported OSes.
As with any major software/hardware purchase; One should do their homework. I’m surprised at the amount of Creatives that don’t — However that’s good for me as it helps me feed myself. LOL
. . . Vista 64 is just too good once you’ve gotten over the fact that only people who’ve never used it think it sucks.
And there are those of us who listened to those who never used Vista and think it sucks and were just too timid to find out the truth of it on our own. And still would be too timid had not their new machines arrived with Vista installed.
You won’t find a lot of people that have used it that would willingly go back to XP.
@John Joslin That search feature that is native to Windows Vista is available for XP as well. It’s a separate download though — I prefer Google’s desktop search as amazingly it is less resource intensive than MickeySoft’s version. Go figure. LOL
I hear you about having "too many eggs in one basket". One thing I find annoying is when Adobe Bridge has a boatload of new images in it; Microsoft’s Desktop search then chooses to "update" it’s database, right at the time Bridge is also processing them. Annoying to no end. I couldn’t find a switch to turn it off for Bridge; so I disable it (when I remembered to do so b4 firing up Bridge). Google’s Desktop search (for me at least) is somewhat easier to configure and less resource heavy.
