what is enought ram?

I find a lot of people saying that you can have whatever computer as

long as you have enough ram.

 

Can someone explain to me what does this really mean? What does ram

really do and why do people say that they can have an old Pentium 3

or G4 600mhz as long as they have enough ram they get the job done.

 

I mean, effects and other processes will take such a long time to

render on those systems so why do they say that if they have enough

ram then they are cool?

 

I am just trying to understand.

When applications and the operating system need more RAM for the

active page set than there is physical RAM the system hits the wall.

This is not gracefull. The disk becomes busy, CPU to manage the

system (demand paging) goes up. RAM is cheap enough now to consider

how many GB will be installed. Problem may be the number of DIMM slots on the motherboard.

Having alot of ram is like Granny in the Hillbillies having a 6 burner stove; two ovens; and a huge amount of counter space; a huge amout of pots and pans; a freezer full of food and a refridge full too. A slow CPU is like granny slowing cooking the viddles for Jethro. <BR><BR>A poung fast cook with one burner; a dorm fridge; one pot; one spoon; and a one foot square counter is like a fast CPU with no ram; the cook is bottled in; fast; but has no working space.<BR><BR>For a large meal; old granny maybe slow; but can handle a larger meal; maybe 100 times; if the ram ratio is 100 times more. <BR><BR>Here one old server has 1 gig of ram; with a 200Mhz Pentium pro. This is the granny situation.

A <b>Y</b>oung fast cook with one burner;

640kb. Bill said so himself!

Photoshop needs about 3x as much memory as the size of the expanded image. If there's not enough RAM, Photoshop uses the hard drive as "virtual memory" to store data too big for the available RAM. The disk is much slower than RAM, so the operation of Photoshop slows down dramatically after RAM is filled. Try loading several images and observe at which point the system bogs down.

 

The time it takes to render various effects in Photoshop is still dependent on processor speed. For example, a slow processor makes airbrush effects with a pen pad hard to accomplish due to the time lag. Sharpening is another task that is processor-intensive. Scanning with effects (Digital ICE, GEM, etc) is another task that improves with processor speed.

 

You will see the most dramatic improvement when you add RAM, which is also relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, you need to double processor (and I/O) speed to see a significant improvement, which is much more expensive.

Well, I run a 2.4GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM...some filters max out the CPU and use very little RAM, others use very little CPU but turn the hard disk light solid from swapping...in a perfect world I'd run a pair of AMD Dual Cores with 4+ GB of RAM......and those same filters would STILL be slow as molasses...

be aware that an older system may not be able to accept/ use a large amoutn of ram or large capacity chips ( dimms)

adding ram to a system is usually the best "system supercharger" but if you exceed the design capacity of the motherboard, it may "clock up" the additional ram but not really utilize it.

check the mb manual and also look for a bios upgrade.

most systems in the 600mhz and above rangem will accept a gb of ram.

In many settups; the media transfer rate of the Hard Drive is the limiting factor in loading an image; and never the CPU speed. One old server we have has a 333Mhz Pii; with a modern 133 class controller card; several 133 class 7200Rpm Maxtors; that transfer data at the OD of the disk at modern speeds. This older box will load a 100meg file a hair quicker than our P4 with 2.5Ghz; that has more ram; but a clunkier 100 class controller; with the same 133 class Maxtor 7200Rpm drive. Once loaded; if the ram is the same in the two different vintage machines; the quicker box is the P4. The 333Mhz Pii will rotate a 100meg file 90 degrees in about 9 seconds . With dual 333Mhz CPUs the rotation time is about 7 seconds; with 512 megs of ram. <BR><BR>The anceint rule of thumb from Photoshop 1 was having 5x the ram; as the file you are working on.

When running batch conversions; when you have enough ram; then the CPU will hit 100 percent; and the bog will be the CPU. In some large files I convert to print; two dozen files might take 1/2 hour; with a P4 with 3.0 Ghz; 2 megs of ram; with the files being as big as 300 to 400 megs. Here the ram is enought; and the disk drive is not being used for swapping; and all the time is the CPU doing all the batch operations. If one drops the ram down to say 512megs; the same batch operation might be all night!<BR><BR>When ripping video files; the CPU seems to be the limit; and ram usage is way less. <BR><BR>Unless you know the file size you are going to work on; one doesnt really know "what is enough ram". <BR><BR>With an older 90 Mhz box; it cost 3000 bucks new; with a 17" crt; and 16 megs of ram. The single 16 meg chip was 650 bucks; the same cost as my Photoshop 3.0 . Then a decade ago most power users got 4 megs; at typical office maybe 2 megs. The state of the art video card with 4 megs of ram was about 400 bucks; with snappy drivers for win 3.11; for cad work and other stuff. This box was raised to 64 megs total; that cost another say 500 bucks for the extra 48 megs ram. One could open a 100meg file; but one had to get a cup of coffee or two; after each operation down. I got the 90Mhz when it was the fast CPU available. MANY friends then said 16megs is WAY TOO MUCH RAM!

You can't be too thin, too rich, or have too much RAM.

 

Get with the program ;-)

i like kelly's comparison to granny in the kitchen to describe the usage of ram. It is similar to what I would have used. for a given project (cooking in kelly's example) you have table space, and pots and pans, that is the ram. you have the cook (grandma or a young fast person) that is the processor. you have hard drive which could be your pantry space. and then you have how open and easly accessable every thing in the kitchen is (ie no buckets of water on the floor to step around) that is what the mother board or main circuits and controlling chips for the system would be.

 

when ever you set PS to do somthing it has to calculate the math to do that.. that is the CPU (chip, or cook mixing food and adding more ingredients).. also if you picture is all in RAM (counter space) you don't have to hit up the hard drive for all the info and temporary storage (walking to the pantry to set your bowls asside to have room to work with other bowls. and if you did have to hit up the hard drive (pantry) for info/data then you have to walk there and back or even reach across the counter... this is all controled by how fast your motherboard and chipset is.

 

that is how i described a computer to my mom. that is why I liked Kelly's description..

 

anyway.. about a gig of ram will be good for most stuff. and 512 will still work. some people like to go all out with 2 or 4 gigs of ram but that is almost more than is necessary if you have the rest of the system optimized to be fast.

 

a lot of it really also depends on how big your file is. i have a gig of super ram (the expensive kind) and the time i start paging files (using the pantry for extra work space) and slowing down my processor is with files that are 2 or 3 hundred megs or more,, with a 300 meg file once i create a layer or two (duplicate layers ,, not adjustment layers) the file size jumps real quick to double or triple the image size and then there isn't much room left in ram to deal with the image,, and stuff starts to get reeeeaaaal slowww then. So if you are wanting to get a rough calc of what you need. then take your average file size (finished as PSD with layers before flattening) and multiply the file size by around 3 ish and then round to the nearest whole ram size available. with this you will rarely incounter a RAM caused slow down.. it will be the cpu or mother board or graphics card.

 

anyway that is what I do.

I understand what Kelly is saying, but wasn't Granny's efficiency level more related to whether she had her rheumatis medicine or not?

no, the rheumatics meds didn't affect her efficiencey but the morning coffee did, because she had to keep going to the bathroom. (also if she for got her arthritis meds then. well she couldn't cook at all)

I have 4 x 256mb (1gb) DDR-333 of RAM. (4 slots all used.)

 

Would I be better off with 2 x 512 DDR-333 ?

 

Or is there no difference?

How much is enough RAM? Photoshop will only recognize 2G as it comes from the box. With tweaking (see adobe.com), that limit can be raised to 3G.

 

Disk speed certainly affects loading and saving images - RAM and processor speed have little effect in these operations (bus speed yes). Transformation of data (filters, curves, etc) is affected by processor speed, RAM speed and disk speed if virtual memory is required. If you have sufficient RAM, the processor speed is the most important factor.

 

Returning to the original question, "...why do they say that if they have enough RAM they are cool?" People say that because that's what they have. When they get something better, that becomes the new standard. I don't have an issue with that because there's no end to the speed rainbow. Do with what you have until you can't. That works for cameras too.

Byron, Thank you for clearing this up and putting it into laymens terms. I understand now.

That is exactly what I had in mind. Thank you so much.