Photoshop7, XP and 4 GB RAM

The scratch file is always created – even if it isn’t written to (it has to be allocate so when Photoshop DOES need to write, it won’t fail due to a lack of disk space at a very bad time).

The trick is timing real operations, or checking the efficiency numbers (or just listening for disk activity).

C

Photoshop 7 and CS can only use up to 2 Gig of RAM. This is an OS limitation. Photoshop can’t use the full 2 Gig because the OS needs a little space, and the binaries take up some space, plus address space fragmentation can eat into it pretty heavily.

Chris

In article , Larry
wrote:

Hi,

I changed (upgraded?) to XP Home from Win2000 (because XP recognizes 3,5 GB RAM and Win2000 only 2 GB). I have plugged in 4 GB RAM on the motherboard.
My aim is to get a fast Win machine for Photoshop.

I thought much RAM memory would do it.
I am now not so sure, because of this test:

I opened a 650 MB PSD-file (Background only) into Photoshop.
1.
In Win2000 (1 GB RAM, Photoshop7 uses 762 MB RAM working space):
Photoshop says it uses: ‘Virt 985M/762M’.
In the primary scratch disk there is a temporary file of 198 MB.
Win2k uses 942 MB RAM (Task manager).
2.
In XP Home (4GB RAM, Photoshop7 uses 1777 MB as RAM working space):
(no ramdisk arrangement).
Photoshop says it uses: ‘Virt: 998M/1,69G’.
In the primary scratch disk there is a temporary file of 2 GB.
XP allocates 1,8 GB RAM (Task manager).

What takes down the expected performance upgrade is that XP seems to use two times as much RAM memory and that
Photoshop7 in XP produces a large temporary file on the hard disk.
So in both cases the Photoshop RAM working space seems to be exceeded, and a remainder is written to the hard disk. Even if XP-Photoshop says ‘Virt 998M/1,69G’ it writes a large temporary file to the hard disk.

Any idea why this happens with XP, and any consequences on the performance??

thanks,
Larry

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 02:00:48 GMT, Chris Cox
wrote:

The scratch file is always created –
<snip>

Thanks Jim!

Could anyone please help clear this out a little bit more for me?

XP says it has 3,5 GB memory (Control Panel, System).
I have 4 GB RAM on the mb.
I have given PS 100% of the available RAM, = 1777MB.

So, PS app+working space has got roughly 2 GB.
(Upper? From RAM 1,5 to RAM 3,5?)
And WinXP sure has taken some RAM.
(Lower? From RAM 0 to RAM 1,5?)

some questions comes up:
Given this, is there a possibility to use the extra 0,5 GB on mb which obviously XP can’t use?
IF you would like to create a Ramdisk, how big could it be without eating RAM from the 1777MB given to PS?

I guess the obvious answer to this is: just do it and test out!
OK, I will, when I have figured out how to create a ramdisk… 🙂

/Larry

In article , Larry
wrote:

Hi,

I changed (upgraded?) to XP Home from Win2000 (because XP recognizes 3,5 GB RAM and Win2000 only 2 GB). I have plugged in 4 GB RAM on the motherboard.
My aim is to get a fast Win machine for Photoshop.

I thought much RAM memory would do it.
I am now not so sure, because of this test:

I opened a 650 MB PSD-file (Background only) into Photoshop.
1.
In Win2000 (1 GB RAM, Photoshop7 uses 762 MB RAM working space):
Photoshop says it uses: ‘Virt 985M/762M’.
In the primary scratch disk there is a temporary file of 198 MB.
Win2k uses 942 MB RAM (Task manager).
2.
In XP Home (4GB RAM, Photoshop7 uses 1777 MB as RAM working space):
(no ramdisk arrangement).
Photoshop says it uses: ‘Virt: 998M/1,69G’.
In the primary scratch disk there is a temporary file of 2 GB.
XP allocates 1,8 GB RAM (Task manager).

What takes down the expected performance upgrade is that XP seems to use two times as much RAM memory and that
Photoshop7 in XP produces a large temporary file on the hard disk.
So in both cases the Photoshop RAM working space seems to be exceeded, and a remainder is written to the hard disk. Even if XP-Photoshop says ‘Virt 998M/1,69G’ it writes a large temporary file to the hard disk.

Any idea why this happens with XP, and any consequences on the performance??

thanks,
Larry

"Larry" wrote in message

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 02:00:48 GMT, Chris Cox
wrote:

The scratch file is always created –
<snip>

Thanks Jim!

Could anyone please help clear this out a little bit more for me?

XP says it has 3,5 GB memory (Control Panel, System).
I have 4 GB RAM on the mb.
I have given PS 100% of the available RAM, = 1777MB.
[…]

Larry, I have fussed with XP (and OS-X) and 4gb RAM for some time and learned that with Photoshop (CS) that it’s not worth the effort to try to squeeze any more from the systems with fancy tricks. Give CS 60% RAM at the very most, pare your ancillary processes to the minimum, and live with it until there is a true large-word OS. Then add _lots_of RAM to help with very large image files. But that’s later. Not today (and I remain skeptical regardless.)

At this time, regardless of OS-X or Windows (XP) with CS 1.8gb is all you can really give it. What you really need are _fast, clean discs on separate spools_, a minimum of two separate drives. I use three under XP. A RAM disc will not help you. Even if you had enough RAM to support one (and you don’t and *can’t), under most circumstances – where CS allocates the scratch disc space to RAM and then doesn’t use it – all you get is the brief saving of time when opening the image file.

Our human nature is strange in that the more computing power we have, the larger our images tend to get to soak up all that new power.

* back in the 80*6 processor days I made up a ‘RAM’ drive using a disc-drive controller under RAM chips. Norton saw it as a 64-platter drive. 🙂 Maybe someone today will have the same temerity to do the same with big RAM chips today. I won’t!

In article <080820041900548000%>,
Chris Cox wrote:

The scratch file is always created – even if it isn’t written to (it has to be allocate so when Photoshop DOES need to write, it won’t fail due to a lack of disk space at a very bad time).

The trick is timing real operations, or checking the efficiency numbers (or just listening for disk activity).

C

perfmon.exe will tell you exactly what all the parts of your system are doing, in great detail.

Photoshop 7 and CS can only use up to 2 Gig of RAM. This is an OS limitation. Photoshop can’t use the full 2 Gig because the OS needs a little space, and the binaries take up some space, plus address space fragmentation can eat into it pretty heavily.

Chris

In article , Larry
wrote:

Hi,

I changed (upgraded?) to XP Home from Win2000 (because XP recognizes 3,5 GB RAM and Win2000 only 2 GB). I have plugged in 4 GB RAM on the motherboard.
My aim is to get a fast Win machine for Photoshop.

I thought much RAM memory would do it.
I am now not so sure, because of this test:

I opened a 650 MB PSD-file (Background only) into Photoshop.
1.
In Win2000 (1 GB RAM, Photoshop7 uses 762 MB RAM working space):
Photoshop says it uses: ‘Virt 985M/762M’.
In the primary scratch disk there is a temporary file of 198 MB.
Win2k uses 942 MB RAM (Task manager).
2.
In XP Home (4GB RAM, Photoshop7 uses 1777 MB as RAM working space):
(no ramdisk arrangement).
Photoshop says it uses: ‘Virt: 998M/1,69G’.
In the primary scratch disk there is a temporary file of 2 GB.
XP allocates 1,8 GB RAM (Task manager).

What takes down the expected performance upgrade is that XP seems to use two times as much RAM memory and that
Photoshop7 in XP produces a large temporary file on the hard disk.
So in both cases the Photoshop RAM working space seems to be exceeded, and a remainder is written to the hard disk. Even if XP-Photoshop says ‘Virt 998M/1,69G’ it writes a large temporary file to the hard disk.

Any idea why this happens with XP, and any consequences on the performance??

thanks,
Larry

—
Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

In article ,
jjs wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 02:00:48 GMT, Chris Cox
wrote:

The scratch file is always created –
<snip>

Thanks Jim!

Could anyone please help clear this out a little bit more for me?

XP says it has 3,5 GB memory (Control Panel, System).
I have 4 GB RAM on the mb.
I have given PS 100% of the available RAM, = 1777MB.
[…]

Larry, I have fussed with XP (and OS-X) and 4gb RAM for some time and learned that with Photoshop (CS) that it’s not worth the effort to try to squeeze any more from the systems with fancy tricks. Give CS 60% RAM at the very most, pare your ancillary processes to the minimum, and live with it until there is a true large-word OS. Then add _lots_of RAM to help with very large image files. But that’s later. Not today (and I remain skeptical regardless.)

Adobe will have to come out with a version of CS that takes advantage of 64bit OS/hardware to get the big speedup.

At this time, regardless of OS-X or Windows (XP) with CS 1.8gb is all you can really give it. What you really need are _fast, clean discs on separate spools_, a minimum of two separate drives. I use three under XP. A RAM disc will not help you. Even if you had enough RAM to support one (and you don’t and *can’t), under most circumstances – where CS allocates the scratch disc space to RAM and then doesn’t use it – all you get is the brief saving of time when opening the image file.

Agreed that for people playing with multi-hundred MB PSD files disk IO is very important.

If I start using PS heavily I’ll build a system that looks like this;

– A SCSI controller card ($70)
– 2x 34GB 15k SCSI drives in a raid0 ($180 each)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?U1C832109
– One or two big (200gb) SATA drive for archival storage and as a place to put the backup images I make daily
of the RAID0 disk.

So the SCSI adds maybe $300 to the cost of over an IDE/SATA the system.

I’d start with 1GB memory on this system and use perfmon to see what the bottleneck is and add memory only when it’s shown to be the bottleneck.

Screw ramdisks. They may have been usefull in w/98 but they’re snake oil in a modern OS, except for very special dedicated computer applications.

Our human nature is strange in that the more computing power we have, the larger our images tend to get to soak up all that new power.
* back in the 80*6 processor days I made up a ‘RAM’ drive using a disc-drive controller under RAM chips. Norton saw it as a 64-platter drive. 🙂 Maybe someone today will have the same temerity to do the same with big RAM chips today. I won’t!

—
Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004 07:24:32 -0500, "jjs"
wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message

XP says it has 3,5 GB memory (Control Panel, System).
I have 4 GB RAM on the mb.
I have given PS 100% of the available RAM, = 1777MB.
[…]

Larry, I have fussed with XP (and OS-X) and 4gb RAM for some time and learned that with Photoshop (CS) that it’s not worth the effort to try to squeeze any more from the systems with fancy tricks. Give CS 60% RAM at the very most, pare your ancillary processes to the minimum, and live with it until there is a true large-word OS. Then add _lots_of RAM to help with very large image files. But that’s later. Not today (and I remain skeptical regardless.)

At this time, regardless of OS-X or Windows (XP) with CS 1.8gb is all you can really give it. What you really need are _fast, clean discs on separate spools_, a minimum of two separate drives. I use three under XP. A RAM disc will not help you. Even if you had enough RAM to support one (and you don’t and *can’t), under most circumstances – where CS allocates the scratch disc space to RAM and then doesn’t use it – all you get is the brief saving of time when opening the image file.

Our human nature is strange in that the more computing power we have, the larger our images tend to get to soak up all that new power.
* back in the 80*6 processor days I made up a ‘RAM’ drive using a disc-drive controller under RAM chips. Norton saw it as a 64-platter drive. 🙂 Maybe someone today will have the same temerity to do the same with big RAM chips today. I won’t!

Thanks jjs,

There is something fishy about XP and PS7 RAM memory
handling.

I upgraded from 1 GB RAM (Win2kPro) to 4 GB RAM (WinXPHome) and can only increase the RAM for PS7 working space
from 745M to 1244M.
If you in PS7-XP go above assigning 70% RAM (=1244M) then for instance none of the artistic filters will work (‘not enough RAM’) .

So…. I should have spent the money on high speed disks instead of RAM.
Good to know to the next bluddy time.. 🙂

/Larry

In article ,
Larry wrote:

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004 07:24:32 -0500, "jjs"
wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message

XP says it has 3,5 GB memory (Control Panel, System).
I have 4 GB RAM on the mb.
I have given PS 100% of the available RAM, = 1777MB.
[…]

Larry, I have fussed with XP (and OS-X) and 4gb RAM for some time and learned that with Photoshop (CS) that it’s not worth the effort to try to squeeze any more from the systems with fancy tricks. Give CS 60% RAM at the very most, pare your ancillary processes to the minimum, and live with it until there is a true large-word OS. Then add _lots_of RAM to help with very large image files. But that’s later. Not today (and I remain skeptical regardless.)

At this time, regardless of OS-X or Windows (XP) with CS 1.8gb is all you can really give it. What you really need are _fast, clean discs on separate spools_, a minimum of two separate drives. I use three under XP. A RAM disc will not help you. Even if you had enough RAM to support one (and you don’t and *can’t), under most circumstances – where CS allocates the scratch disc space to RAM and then doesn’t use it – all you get is the brief saving of time when opening the image file.

Our human nature is strange in that the more computing power we have, the larger our images tend to get to soak up all that new power.
* back in the 80*6 processor days I made up a ‘RAM’ drive using a disc-drive controller under RAM chips. Norton saw it as a 64-platter drive. 🙂 Maybe someone today will have the same temerity to do the same with big RAM chips today. I won’t!

Thanks jjs,

There is something fishy about XP and PS7 RAM memory
handling.

I upgraded from 1 GB RAM (Win2kPro) to 4 GB RAM (WinXPHome) and can only increase the RAM for PS7 working space
from 745M to 1244M.
If you in PS7-XP go above assigning 70% RAM (=1244M) then for instance none of the artistic filters will work (‘not enough RAM’) .

So…. I should have spent the money on high speed disks instead of RAM.
Good to know to the next bluddy time.. 🙂

/Larry

You can add a 18GB 15K RPM disk to your system for under $200. I’d use a SATA or SCSI (preferred) controller for about $70, if I didn’t have a spare socket on the Mobo.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&am p;DEPA=0

I’d put PS scratch disk, pagefile, and the system temp filder on it. 18GB should be enough for that.

—
Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

From: "jjs"

it’s not worth the effort to try to squeeze any more from the systems with fancy tricks. Give CS 60% RAM at the very most …

I’ve been allocating 86% on two different systems (1.5 GB RAM and 2 GB RAM) and never had a problem … the extra RAM really helps. I wouldn’t do this with a small amount of RAM though. I regularly work with 550 MB film scans and need all the RAM I can get.

Bill

"Al Dykes" wrote in message

Adobe will have to come out with a version of CS that takes advantage of 64bit OS/hardware to get the big speedup.

So easy to say. As one who has managed a true 64-bit OS for a long time (in computer years) let me tell you that all sorts of boogymen come up. It’s not as simple as it seems to be! Besides the utter horror story of converting code to 64-bit (which is the really hard part), schlepping that huge word around entails overhead you don’t even want to know about. Be happy with what you have, for one day you might be lamenting "the good old days" of the small word.

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q:
from my 4GB RAM on mb, of which XP recognizes 3,5GB .
Had Photoshop7 use 70% of 1777MB = 1244MB.
Had Q: as primary scratch disk, P: as secondary scratch
disk.
Loaded a 900MB image and used some heavy filters.

YES,
very nicely first Photoshop’s working space was used,
then Q:\temp was filled
and after that P:\temp was used.
So, the Ramdisk was used as a quick 2 GB scratch disk.

BUT.
With any size that I gave to the Ramdisk, the pagefile (Task Manager) immediately grow with the same amount.
So when creating the Ramdisk something else went out of RAM and down to the hd.
Probably WinXP?? And PS7?
Yes, I noticed that PS7 was slow, even if the filter
treatement was fairly quick.

I don’t seem to be able to grab that extra 0,5GB that XP not recognizes and make that only a Ramdisk.

So I still don’t know if I have gained anything by using a Ramdisk…

Larry

In article ,
jjs wrote:

"Al Dykes" wrote in message

Adobe will have to come out with a version of CS that takes advantage of 64bit OS/hardware to get the big speedup.

So easy to say. As one who has managed a true 64-bit OS for a long time (in computer years) let me tell you that all sorts of boogymen come up. It’s not as simple as it seems to be! Besides the utter horror story of converting code to 64-bit (which is the really hard part), schlepping that huge word around entails overhead you don’t even want to know about. Be happy with what you have, for one day you might be lamenting "the good old days" of the small word.

Agreed.
—
Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

In article ,
Larry wrote:

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q:
from my 4GB RAM on mb, of which XP recognizes 3,5GB .
Had Photoshop7 use 70% of 1777MB = 1244MB.
Had Q: as primary scratch disk, P: as secondary scratch
disk.
Loaded a 900MB image and used some heavy filters.

YES,
very nicely first Photoshop’s working space was used,
then Q:\temp was filled
and after that P:\temp was used.
So, the Ramdisk was used as a quick 2 GB scratch disk.

BUT.
With any size that I gave to the Ramdisk, the pagefile (Task Manager) immediately grow with the same amount.
So when creating the Ramdisk something else went out of RAM and down to the hd.
Probably WinXP?? And PS7?
Yes, I noticed that PS7 was slow, even if the filter
treatement was fairly quick.

I don’t seem to be able to grab that extra 0,5GB that XP not recognizes and make that only a Ramdisk.

So I still don’t know if I have gained anything by using a Ramdisk…

Larry

The size of the pagefile, by itself, isn’t slowing down your photoshop system; It’s how often XP reads and writes to it. Disk space is cheap.

perfmon.exe can graph the rate (pages/sec) activity on pagefile.

—
Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m

"Larry" wrote in message

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q: [… snip …]

Doesn’t it strike you as odd to create a RAM disk for virtual RAM?

Just some advise, but I noticed a huge performance increase under Windows XP by moving my installed programs to another physical disk. Meaning nothing I install, game, program, application, gets installed to the actual system/boot disk, but to a seperate physical drive. I have not noted this much of a performance boost in Windows 2000, but in XP, it seems to make a huge difference in load times and working with files. Doesn’t have any effect on applying filters etc… but does make a huge difference working with files. Also, on files as large as you mention, try moving them to a seperate physical disk as well, that should improve "acceleration and breaking" so to speak. Hope that helps, if you’ve dropped enough cash to purchase 4GB of RAM, what’s $110 for a 160GB 8MB IDE133 or SATA?

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 11:03:24 GMT, Larry wrote:

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q:
from my 4GB RAM on mb, of which XP recognizes 3,5GB .
Had Photoshop7 use 70% of 1777MB = 1244MB.
Had Q: as primary scratch disk, P: as secondary scratch
disk.
Loaded a 900MB image and used some heavy filters.

YES,
very nicely first Photoshop’s working space was used,
then Q:\temp was filled
and after that P:\temp was used.
So, the Ramdisk was used as a quick 2 GB scratch disk.

BUT.
With any size that I gave to the Ramdisk, the pagefile (Task Manager) immediately grow with the same amount.
So when creating the Ramdisk something else went out of RAM and down to the hd.
Probably WinXP?? And PS7?
Yes, I noticed that PS7 was slow, even if the filter
treatement was fairly quick.

I don’t seem to be able to grab that extra 0,5GB that XP not recognizes and make that only a Ramdisk.

So I still don’t know if I have gained anything by using a Ramdisk…

Larry

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 09:47:22 -0500, "jjs"
wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q: [… snip …]

Doesn’t it strike you as odd to create a RAM disk for virtual RAM?

Nope,
first, there is more RAM on the motherboard then XP can
utilize, why not try to turn it into space that PS can use, making it to a scratch disk. At least 0,5GB not used.
second, while you are at it anyway, why not try to take som more from Windows and give to PS – try to grab 2 GB.
And, yes, it speeds up the scratch areas!
But what do I loose?

Larry

Thanks Chuck Norris (didn’t know you could use your fists on the keyboard too 🙂 ),

I immediately moved PS7 from C: to another hard disk. Even if you would have thought that it doesn’t matter where PS7 came from once it was loaded into memory…
But I gladly sqeeze every millimeter out of the system, and yes, I will very soon also get a very fast SATA disk to set up as a scratch disk.
(I do architectural photo and sometimes I have to put
together up to 6 pieces of 220MB images to construct one image. Then you really are beginning to worry about
performance.. :- ) )

Larry

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:41:21 -0400, Chuck Norris
wrote:

Just some advise, but I noticed a huge performance increase under Windows XP by moving my installed programs to another physical disk. Meaning nothing I install, game, program, application, gets installed to the actual system/boot disk, but to a seperate physical drive. I have not noted this much of a performance boost in Windows 2000, but in XP, it seems to make a huge difference in load times and working with files. Doesn’t have any effect on applying filters etc… but does make a huge difference working with files. Also, on files as large as you mention, try moving them to a seperate physical disk as well, that should improve "acceleration and breaking" so to speak. Hope that helps, if you’ve dropped enough cash to purchase 4GB of RAM, what’s $110 for a 160GB 8MB IDE133 or SATA?

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 11:03:24 GMT, Larry wrote:

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q:
from my 4GB RAM on mb, of which XP recognizes 3,5GB .
Had Photoshop7 use 70% of 1777MB = 1244MB.
Had Q: as primary scratch disk, P: as secondary scratch
disk.
Loaded a 900MB image and used some heavy filters.

YES,
very nicely first Photoshop’s working space was used,
then Q:\temp was filled
and after that P:\temp was used.
So, the Ramdisk was used as a quick 2 GB scratch disk.

BUT.
With any size that I gave to the Ramdisk, the pagefile (Task Manager) immediately grow with the same amount.
So when creating the Ramdisk something else went out of RAM and down to the hd.
Probably WinXP?? And PS7?
Yes, I noticed that PS7 was slow, even if the filter
treatement was fairly quick.

I don’t seem to be able to grab that extra 0,5GB that XP not recognizes and make that only a Ramdisk.

So I still don’t know if I have gained anything by using a Ramdisk…

Larry

"Larry" wrote in message

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 09:47:22 -0500, "jjs"
wrote:

"Larry" wrote in message

Here is some evaluation on XP + 4 GB + Ramdisk:

I got a Ramdisk-trial program from www.superspeed.com and set up a Ramdisk with of 2GB size as Q: [… snip …]

Doesn’t it strike you as odd to create a RAM disk for virtual RAM?

Nope,
first, there is more RAM on the motherboard then XP can
utilize, why not try to turn it into space that PS can use, making it to a scratch disk. At least 0,5GB not used.
second, while you are at it anyway, why not try to take som more from Windows and give to PS – try to grab 2 GB.
And, yes, it speeds up the scratch areas!
But what do I loose?

Of course it is arguable, but PS and the OS share the same space. By giving PS too much RAM and too little scratch space, you are messing with things you don’t understand – or at least I don’t without a deep system monitor.