How much memory in your computer?

Dave,

 

what makes you think I have a Mac?

 

Did you even read my posts before posting an insult?

 

Where do I say that Photoshop on Macintosh uses more than 2 GB RAM?

I think he was actually referring to R. Hofland.

Actually Mike, it wasn't an insult....and I was also referring to the other fellow....but to quote you,

 

"Macs have always been the desktop computer of choice when you wanted a lot of RAM for Photoshop."

 

Why would you say Macs have been the computer of choice for more memory? That statement is false no matter how you interpret it....and it's your statement.

 

So I'm not throwing out an insult, I'm just commenting on how many Mac users throw out claims that in the end are utter rubbish and not relevant to real world use. I'm saying Macs haven't been choosen because they offer more memory for PS users....it is for other reasons....but not for memory reasons, as that's not physically possible.

 

Lighten up!

Photoshop was once a MAC only program. Us PC users used Photostyler for digital images; curves; color corrections; cropping; even printing. Photoshop for the PC came with verion 2.5 about; then later Adobe bought Photostyler; and then later they killed it off.

I might add that the Macintosh Quadra 950 was for years pretty much the only computer to be used by serious professionals for Photoshop, because it was the only Photoshop setup that could take 256 MB RAM. It was at a time when a PC could barely use 64 MB. Of course those 256 MB (16 x 16MB SIMMs) cost several thousand dollars, but apparently the people who used that could justify it, because their customers were willing and able to pay for this. This is just one example.

 

Dave: I have a hard time interpreting it as anything else but an insult when you say that I spread uninformed opinion rather than fact.

Before Photoshop was available on the PC; one place I worked used a 486DX50 beta unit; that cost 10 grand. We had Photostyler on this box station; and a mess of 128megs ram for its day; 50 Mhz bus speed; EISA slots. After Photoshop came available on the PC; the Neptune board with a Pentium allowed 512megs of ram; and 512megs ram cacheable in 1994. Many folks entry pentiums had motherboards taht only held 128megs; and could really only cache 64megs. The Orion 450KX design of 1995 allowed up to 8 gigs of ram; with a pentium pro; and two CPU's; the KX version could use 4 CPU's; and only 1 gig of ram. Here we have an old server with that came with two 200Mhz PPros; and 256meg of ram; from circa 1996. Later we upgraded to two overdrive 333 PII; and 1 gig of ram; and NT4; and windows 2000 later. With the PC; photoshop could be used with 1 gig of ram; if one use a server board in 1996. Here I went to 128megs in 1994 at home; a pretty penny then

Mike,

 

Being that this quote,

 

"Macs have always been the desktop computer of choice when you wanted a lot of RAM for Photoshop"

 

is not based on fact, I have a hard time understanding why you're defending it. Macs don't support more RAM for PS8 than a PC can. If you find it insulting that I'm pointing this out, then so be it. But I refuse to have people continously spread Mac propaganda that is not based on fact. The quote above is not true. Take this however you will.....be no matter how you shake it, Mac and PCs perform about the same using PS, and memory is identical between them.....and has been for a long, long time. If you have to go back to a Quadra system as an example, this simply proves my point.

When NT evoloved to allow muliple CPU's; many servers boards were developed with multiple CPU's and alot of ram; alot of L2 cache for juggling alot of processes at once. In the PC arena; some of us prefered more of server type board; cpus; and NT software for Photoshop; over win3.11 and win95 and a Pentium. Some of the early Pentium motherboards would only cache the first 64 megs of ram; if 128megs was installed. A machine with say 80megs or 128 would many times show no improvemnet; or a DROP in photoshop speed; when the extra ram was added above 64megs. Goofy things like this help add more adventure to the Mac versus PC performance.

Well, I see that some do indeed feel the need to insult rather than understand the English language! This is what I said not far above those insults:

 

"So I gather that 4 GB is the optimum amount along with some jiggering of the OS and individual aps to ensure that PhotoShop gets and uses its full 2 gigs. Actually, this isn't much different than the old Macs except that the new ones are wicked fast and can actually access a lot more RAM when available. According to Apple their newest G5 towers are up to 95% faster with Photoshop than a Wintel P4 machine (see http://www.apple.com/powermac/) and I believe it"

 

Being somewhat of a hardware geek, I understand that a true 64 bit dual processor machine running a Unix based OS optimized for multiple processors has some advantages over even a very fast single CPU box- even when the chips uses multithreading to optimize execution of instructions. I also understand that PCI bus improvements along with streamlined CPU data and memory buses also increase execution speed as well as the memory to disk I/O when using the 64bit PCI-X bus slots with a really fast SCSI RAID.

 

That Adobe only provides a 2GB window to work within is their failing, not Apple's! However, the faster your data processing, and the faster the I/O from chips to hard drives, the more you'll get done in a workday. Apples still seem to have the advantage here unless you can afford a Silicon Graphics box or something similar. Does PS run on these, and if so, is there any memory ceilings on them?

 

Thus my point about WISHING I had one of the latest greatest Mac machines is well justified, and not ignorant whining based upon the Mac mystique. I own a variety of Mac, Linux (mostly dual 32-bit processor) and Windows machines, but the newest of any of them is a two year old P4 notebook. There are things about each of them that are endearing, but I'll still put my bets on Apple for graphics related stuff since that is its heritage, and Windows continues to have problems that are more than just annoying.

 

And I also don't doubt that Linux could be the dark horse that wins in the end, especially if a few good killer applications for business and the animation/graphics world are released for Linux. After all, it isn't much of a secret that arrays of Linux servers are behind most of the major animation/computer graphics projects in the world today! Linux also has it own set of well regarded computer graphics software than could be used for some of the PS work, with the final CMYK work done in PS itself, although I confess I don't see this as a viable solution for the 2GB ceiling in PhotoShop.

Let me amend above by stating that ANY memory ceiling coded into PhotoShop is the fault of Adobe and not that of the hardware manufacturers, but any memory ceiling or "memory paging" issues inherent in the hardware design is the responsibility of the the hardware manufacturers. Apple provides substantial memory capacity and extremely fast I/O potential in its latest boxes, although I miss the economy, ease of upgrading and added memory speed from interleaving that the 12 slots found in the Mac 9600 provided. However, I also remember Apple's odd habit of crippling the maximum memory capabilities in some of its older M68000 machines (but not in my nice Q950).

 

All this leaves me hoping that the Open Source revolution will succeed and force better and better hardware and software design. That is after all why our computers are as fast and easy to use as they are today.

Aaron, this thread seems to have turned into a MAC v PC debate somehow...

 

I have 3GB because currently PS CS can only access about 95% of 2GB, and this leaves a good amount for everything else.

 

Anyway, two things happen when you open the first image in PS CS: The file is loaded into memory and at the same time is written to your scratch disk temporary file.

 

When you load the second image, the first file is purged from memory (but is still on your scratch disk) and the second image is loaded into memory and at the same time written to your scratch disk temporary file.

 

Current hard disks will load at about 50MB/second. So, as a rule of thumb, if you are counting to more than 10 when loading your 500MB file then you have a bottleneck somewhere. Since you have 1GB of memory, then it is probably not the memory. If you do not have a dedicated scratch disk then you are reading and writing your 500MB file to the disk at the same time - not a good plan - and it will probably take at least 20 seconds. If you have only one physical disk in your computer then your Operating System may choose to dump your memory to disk as well (at some time best known to itself or when you switch momentarily to read an email or look at this forum) so the time may be extended still further.

 

So what does it all mean? 2GB of memory will make your computer happier for sure, but for a real PS 2x or 3x performance increase (at a budget price) you will need one disk for your OS, one for your photos and one for your PS Scratch disk.

 

I have deliberately not mentioned RAID and SCSI solutions because they provide marginal increases in PS performance for HUGE increases in cost (they do however make everything else on your computer go much faster :-) ).

It's not so much about Mac or PC but about what hardware is fastest, etc., so the software will also be fast....

 

The idea of having multiple disks is a good one, and really is not much different that having a RAID system of some sort. However, keep in mind that most "parallel" IDE/ATA drives share the same bus AND DO NOT DISCONNECT UNTIL DONE, so read/writes to different drives will conflict unless they are attached to separate controllers (typically by using separate cards on your PCI bus). SCSI does deal with this conflict since the drives "disconnect" to allow "bursts" of bus traffic while individual drives are doing their slower reads and writes to the onboard memory (the newest 15K+ drives make this "time

gap" much smaller). Ultra SCSI 160/320 systems and in particular the SCSI RAID is probably the best and most cost effective "speed demon" solution and is available for both a variety of hardeware platforms-- but still quite expensive.

 

But don't be fooled by the inexpensive Windows "soft-Raid" solutions-- they are really no comparison to SCSI. Fast Serial-ATA drives, however, can be a functional alternative and are often found on the newer high-end computers (including Macs).