What kind of machine will really make PhotoShop fly?

[Walter Moss]

I've really never been happy with PhotoShop's performance, and I seem constantly to be throwing hardware at it. What does it take? I'm running a 3 Ghz Pentium 4 machine with 2 gigs of RAM. Still takes 30 seconds to load.

Does it come down to running hard drives that spin at 10,000 rpm?

[photosbymorgan2]

What version Photoshop?

I have heard many complaints about Photoshop CS2 being slower than the previous version even on fast machines.

[Walter Moss]

Any versions. Really, I'm currently using CS2, and that unfortunately upgraded to every version since v5.The machines get faster, but Pshop outpaces them.

[photosbymorgan2]

Originally Posted by Walter Moss

Any versions. Really, I'm currently using CS2, and that unfortunately upgraded to every version since v5.The machines get faster, but Pshop outpaces them.

One thing you may look at is how much space you have given for the scratch disk. This can affect how fast photoshop works also.

Photoshop is just a very intensive program and I do not think any computer will speed it up that quickly.

[Mark Thomas]

G5 2.5 Dual processor with 8meg Ram - fastes at the moment.

Cheers

[Alice Morrison]

Originally Posted by Mark Thomas

G5 2.5 Dual processor with 8meg Ram - fastes at the moment.

Cheers

Mark, you mean 8 gig, right?

I'm on a Windows machine, and unless I'm mistaken, Windows will allow only 2 gigs per task.

[Mark Thomas]

Yes GIG not Meg, all this talk of megapixels fried my brain. If I'm correct photoshop on the mac can only use 4G of RAM at this stage, but at least the OS and other programmes aren't using any RAM that Photoshop could have used.

Cheers

[AlbertP]

Originally Posted by Mark Thomas

Yes GIG not Meg, all this talk of megapixels fried my brain. If I'm correct photoshop on the mac can only use 4G of RAM at this stage, but at least the OS and other programmes aren't using any RAM that Photoshop could have used.

Cheers

There is a Windows x64 version out which will use all the RAM you control at it, at least for now. I have not used it, however, but plan to in the near future.

[Mark Thomas]

Yes, but does Photoshop use the RAM or is the Windows version also limited to 4Gig - its not the Mac that is limited but the programme. Also I read that Apple will be producing machines with Intel chips from next year - will we see a machine that can work on 2 different operating systems?

Cheers

[photosbymorgan2]

Originally Posted by Mark Thomas

Yes, but does Photoshop use the RAM or is the Windows version also limited to 4Gig - its not the Mac that is limited but the programme. Also I read that Apple will be producing machines with Intel chips from next year - will we see a machine that can work on 2 different operating systems?

Cheers

I saw a program that talked about the Mac running both operating systems on the new Macs with Pentium processors and Apple said that they would not be setting it up to do that but that third party vendors may come out with programs that will allow it just like Virtual PC does on the Macs today.

I just love my Mac

[Mark Thomas]

Me too, been using them since 1995 (performa 630 & 6100/66) with 64 meg RAM running photoshop 3. Two 32meg RAM chips cost me more than 2gig would cost now. My 15" Powerbook is my favourite.

Cheers

[photosbymorgan2]

Originally Posted by Mark Thomas

Me too, been using them since 1995 (performa 630 & 6100/66) with 64 meg RAM running photoshop 3. Two 32meg RAM chips cost me more than 2gig would cost now. My 15" Powerbook is my favourite.

Cheers

I started out with the Timex Sinclair 1000 with 1K of memory then moved on to the Apple IIE and then the Mac and have stayed with it.

[d2creative]

I've used macs exclusively for the past 12+ years (since i was in college going after my bfa in design).
I most recent purchase is a dual 2.3 G5 with 2.5 gigs of ram and it is plenty fast! No issues in PS at all. I can work on 300mb and bigger files without a fuss.
The key is plenty of ram and plenty of HD space. Especially with the modern OS's these days requiring so much ram and hd space just to function properly. Mac osx really needs a gig of ram just for itself to run at its full potential. I can't believe Apple even thinks of selling these high end machines with only 512mb of ram. That's useless.

[BigB]

Originally Posted by Walter Moss

I've really never been happy with PhotoShop's performance, and I seem constantly to be throwing hardware at it. What does it take? I'm running a 3 Ghz Pentium 4 machine with 2 gigs of RAM. Still takes 30 seconds to load.

Does it come down to running hard drives that spin at 10,000 rpm?

PShop shouldn't take that long to load on your machine, especially with 2GB of RAM. Check to see if you've got lots of junk programs running the background of your machine, spyware, adware, virus, any other programs you don't use, etc.

[s-jerry]

I just finished building a new PC: Pentium D Dual-Core 3.2GHz, 2Gb RAM, two WestDigital Raptor (10,000rpm) HDs, Nvidia 6600GT 128Mb graphics card. Asus MB has FSB 800; memory is rated 667.

PS CS2 will boot in 8 seconds with email and Word open, in addition to 40 processes running in background plus applications for anti-virus, firewall, calendar, spam filter, Creative Labs sound controller, startup monitor and CounterSpy anti-spyware.

Raw files process in a flash; I rarely see a lingering progress bar after "ok-ing" PS edits on large PSD or TIFF files. Editing in 16-bit is no longer sluggish.

PSCS2 is a bigger boat; you need a bigger truck to pull it!

[Sami]

It takes HDs with 16MB cache and that you never use any other program or ramdrives for PS CS2

[metalstorm]

Adobe is notorious for their preloaders. It's not limited to just Photoshop. So your load times can be greatly affected depending on how fast your peripherals are such as drives.

S-jerry's example of his machine with 2 raptors( RAID 0) would load the preloaders in a fraction of the time a single 7200 or 5000 rpm drive could.

[Paul Shields]

My iMac G5 (2GHz CPU + 2GB RAM) takes around 10 seconds to load Photoshop CS. As someone else said, Adobe launches have always been a bit slow. Acrobat Reader can be a pain to load when just wanting to have a quick peek at a PDF. In the end though, if your only issue is the launch time then I personally wouldn't worry about it. I tend to have PS always running. Slow performance while actually using it would be more of a worry for me - but it seems pretty quick on my box.

[cameraguy21773]

I built a dual processor AMD box with 3GB or RAM , 2 80GB SATA drives for system and CS2, 2 400GB SATA drives for images and data, and dual monitors. The second drive will hold the Windows swap file and the Photoshop scratch disk. Adobe recommends a separate physical drive if possible. It's also a memory hog so the more you can put on your system the better.