Got more RAM, how to make photoshop faster?

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sduk

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Sammy
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Hi everyone, just got my PC back after upgrading the RAM and I have gone from 3GB to 8GB.

I run Windows 7 64 bit and only use the PC for my photo editing and storage.

Can anyone help me with any changes I need to make in Photoshop (CS5) that can make full use of the extra RAM?

thanks in advance,

Sammy
 
Get yourself an SSD and place windows and your programs on that..... Massive speed difference to the whole system.
 
Since I upgraded from 4 to 8Gb and fitted 2xSSD (one for programs & one a scratch disk) the only thing I've noticed is windows starts a bit faster :)
 
Really! Every program opens faster - Any time you work with the hard drive it should be faster - Maybe you need to optimise your registry as there's a few tweaks you can use.
 
EOS_JD said:
Really! Every program opens faster - Any time you work with the hard drive it should be faster - Maybe you need to optimise your registry as there's a few tweaks you can use.
Click to expand...

or maybe I had a fast HD already .....

It all depends on how big the program/file is that you are opening, a 30 meg RAW file opens pretty damned quick from magnetic or SSD.

I must admit Windows boots up about 15s faster but as I rarely turn the machine off :clap:

Then again, I started moding PC's when the Amstrad 1640 was top spec so anything is quick to me :lol:
 
The fastest consumer HDDs still only have half the sequential read performance of a standard SSD...and random reads are terrible in comparison. Must be a bottleneck somewhere else in your system if you didn't notice much difference!
 
mrgubby said:
Since I upgraded from 4 to 8Gb and fitted 2xSSD (one for programs & one a scratch disk) the only thing I've noticed is windows starts a bit faster :)
Click to expand...


That's odd. It should be chalk and cheese. Your motherboard SATA3? Is your Windows install and BIOS AHCI? These can make a massive difference. You need to have set up as AHCI to use TRIM... without which your SSD will grind to a crawl before long in some cases of heavy use. You can't really just plug a SSD into any old system and expect it to work effectively.
 
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Pookeyhead said:
That's odd. It should be chalk and cheese. Your motherboard SATA3? Is your Windows install and BIOS AHCI? These can make a massive difference. You need to have set up as AHCI to use TRIM... without which your SSD will grind to a crawl before long in some cases of heavy use. You can't really just plug a SSD into any old system and expect it to work effectively.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree. It doesn't sound set up correctly.
 
Its windows 7, AHCI, dedicated SATA 3 card with latest firmware on the SSDs. It's faster than HD but it's nowhere as good as a faster CPU :)
 
Apologies for jumping the thread, but reading the posts has prompted a related question I have before buying a laptop. I'd also like it to run Photoshop damn fast

As an IT numpty, can I get a laptop with an SSD drive to run only the operating system and Photoshop on, and a normal hard drive to store files on? Would the hard drive have to act as the scratch disc (whatever that is :shrug:)? What size SSD drive would you recommend?

TIA for your help
 
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nigpd said:
As an IT numpty, can I get a laptop with an SSD drive to run only the operating system and Photoshop on, and a normal hard drive to store files on?
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not many laptops ship with twin HD. you could get a caddy and replace the DVD on some models.

or get a laptop with SSD and store files on a USB3 external.
 
neil_g said:
not many laptops ship with twin HD. you could get a caddy and replace the DVD on some models.

or get a laptop with SSD and store files on a USB3 external.
Click to expand...

Thanks Neil. Yep, just been having a quick look on the Dell website at a Latitude E6430. Would a 256GB SSD drive be enough for what I want and then store any files I needed externally?

I am assuming that having just one SSD drive would be quicker than a single normal hard drive??
 
i run my desktop on a 128gb ssd so yeah that should be fine :) (that is just for windows and programs, i have large external hard drives for files)

SSD will be faster than a normal mechanical hard drive.
 
neil_g said:
right, you didnt say that in your post i quoted.. :)

but if you dont have enough memory to prevent scratching then an SSD will help :)
Click to expand...

I find cream helps stop scratching....

:coat:
 
mid_gen said:
The fastest consumer HDDs still only have half the sequential read performance of a standard SSD...and random reads are terrible in comparison. Must be a bottleneck somewhere else in your system if you didn't notice much difference!
Click to expand...

I agree that there's something slowing everything down because an SSD should speed everything up. And it's not solely because of the improvement in read speeds but the huge difference in access times.

When a HDD wants to load one of the hundreds of DLLs that Windows and its applications need to operate it goes through a fairly tortuous procedure.

First it has to move the read head to the are where the File Allocation Table lives. Then it has to wait for the start of the FAT to pass under the head before it can start looking for the location of the file it wants. When it finds that it has to move to the correct area of the disk and read the file - once the start of it has worked its way round to the head. If you're lucky that's the end of the process. If you're not, and the file is fragmented, then the head has to move to the next bit of the drive and read the next part of the file. You'd have to be really unlucky (or have a full, rarely defragged drive) for it to have to read more bits from elsewhere.

Now, every time that head has to move somewhere it takes a few milliseconds to do so. Don't sound much, but Windows does load a lot of stuff (just look at your disk access light) and all of those milliseconds add up.

But an SSD doesn't have to move anything except for electrons - and they're nippy little bleeders. With an SSD your file will probably have been read while the read-head on an HDD would be wandering over to find the right place on the FAT.
 
hollis_f said:
I agree that there's something slowing everything down because an SSD should speed everything up. And it's not solely because of the improvement in read speeds but the huge difference in access times.
*snip*
.
Click to expand...

SSD's are unarguably faster than HD's but when you are moving diddly squat RAW files around there is more latency involved due to software (CPU) than in basic hardware IO


Ps. I spent 25 years designing high speed digital systems, been there - done it ;)
 
mrgubby said:
SSD's are unarguably faster than HD's but when you are moving diddly squat RAW files around there is more latency involved due to software (CPU) than in basic hardware IO
Click to expand...
Oh dear. Oh dearie dear... The WHOLE point of L1, L2 and L3 cache, main memory, filesystem caches and caches on the HDD is to hide the latency of slow I/O systems from the CPU. Disk I/O is thousands of times slower than CPU I/O and you want to keep the CPU as full as possible which is why it's surrounded by memory (at various speeds and hierarchies in the system)

mrgubby said:
Ps. I spent 25 years designing high speed digital systems, been there - done it ;)
Click to expand...
I spend my days managing high speed embedded computer systems hardware and software to production and been reasonably deeply involved in bit-slice and pipelined CPU architecture design in the past. Been there - done that AND got the T-shirt ;)
 
arad85 said:
Oh dear. Oh dearie dear... The WHOLE point of L1, L2 and L3 cache, main memory, filesystem caches and caches on the HDD is to hide the latency of slow I/O systems from the CPU. Disk I/O is thousands of times slower than CPU I/O and you want to keep the CPU as full as possible which is why it's surrounded by memory (at various speeds and hierarchies in the system)

I spend my days managing high speed embedded computer systems hardware and software to production and been reasonably deeply involved in bit-slice and pipelined CPU architecture design in the past. Been there - done that AND got the T-shirt ;)
Click to expand...

You go girl..

:p
 
neil_g said:
you could get a caddy and replace the DVD on some models.
Click to expand...

If I was to replace the optical drive with a caddy and 2nd SSD drive, would I need to ensure that the specification of the two SSD drives matched?

The one that will already be in the Latitude E6530 will be a 256GB Adata SSD 2.5 inch SATA 6Gb/s, 1M Hrs MTBF
 
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ssd drives dont need to match.... theyre just hard drives - but bloody fast ones
 
The Crucial M4 drives I own have been excellent.
 
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