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03/14/2006 09:35:59 PM · #1 |
OK, I know there are geeks out there...
So after the Catastrophic Hard Drive Crash of 2006, I'm reconfiguring my computer. I've ordered two SATA drives which will be here Friday. I plan to RAID them, and put the system, the programs and the data all on the RAIDed drives. Here's the rub - I know PS prefers to have a separate hard drive other than the one where the program itself resides to use as the scratch disk. I'll have a spare IDE drive after I install the SATA drives - should I just leave that in there and use it for the scratch disk? (Like anyone needs an 80G drive for a scratch disk...)
Any good setup suggestions? Thanks! |
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03/14/2006 09:39:55 PM · #2 |
| i have a 200 gig scratch disk for PS and she loves it ;) |
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03/14/2006 09:58:43 PM · #3 |
| Lots and lots of RAM...max your RAM out. |
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03/14/2006 10:03:02 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by doctornick:
Lots and lots of RAM...max your RAM out. |
yes, yes!!
that is the answer
200GB works well
_bran(yes)do_
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03/14/2006 10:43:39 PM · #5 |
| LOL - thanks, gents. So the 80 becomes the scratch disk (and becomes jealous of Rikki's 200 gigs). Currently have 1G of RAM, but have space for another gig. May have to look into that, but I currently have a pair of 512K 466 P-3700 from OCZ, which apparently is no longer available when I checked newegg.com. My understanding is that the memory needs to "match" to be effective... |
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03/14/2006 10:46:11 PM · #6 |
| do you guys really feel a speed difference with all those excessive RAM and scratch space? I think the performance for Photoshop sort of maxed-out somewhere... |
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03/14/2006 10:51:03 PM · #7 |
Regarding scratch disks, I believe you can use partitions for this.
Most people use their C: for their OS and primary apps (MS office) (<5GB), D: for pagefiles (2GB) and E: for their info. It would be a simple thing to build an F: on the primary drive that housed the Photoshop App itself and then you could have all info saved on E:, being your large partition. (having PS on F: makes it a fair bit easier to upgrade PS if that happens and you need to make the partition larger.
Your E: can also be regularly optimized or whatever.
Viruses usually go to C: and can often be removed by merely wiping and re-installing the OS and office suite...
The pagefile isn't strictly necessary and I don't have a pagefile partition, and it doesn't bother me, but everyone has their own preferences.
When I build computers for other people for general use, there's always a C: for OS and a D: for files. Adding PS to a back-end partition is simple. |
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03/14/2006 11:10:06 PM · #8 |
| CS2 ran very slowly on my 3.0 ghz P4 until I reduced the percentage of ram available from 100% to 50%. It would also hang when trying to exit the program until this change. I believe that some background housekeeping utilities in XP were responsible for this, needing some finite amount of ram to run, but it was being hogged by CS2. Works much better now, runs smoothly and exits quickly with no hangups. For faster startups, eliminate all those plugins that you never use. |
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03/15/2006 06:41:46 AM · #9 |
PS is optimised to run with 55% of your RAM..
you can give it more or less depending on your needs - i used to have 80% allocated (2.5GB RAM in my PC) but i found PS very slow when opening PSD files (14MB!) and my scratch went through the roof!
i trouble shot my machine for nearly a day until i came across an article on Adobe's site which mentioned that the best performace comes from giving PS 55% - i did this and its amazing the speed increase i have when opening PSD files!
JPEG and TIFF etc always opened quickly (under a second) but as i do alot of website design and have PSD files with 30/50 layers, it was a real headache waiting 2-3mins for a 14MB file to open!
my scratch partition is my D: (second partition on the disk) and is 8GB in size, i don't find PS using more than 2-3GB of it now i have 55% RAM allocated - when i was @ 80% with alot of layers it would reach 7-7.5GB
i have also shrunk the Pagefile for Windows 2K to just 200MB min and max from 3.5GB and haven't noticed any performance issues (just happy to get spome extra HDD back :)) |
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03/15/2006 09:26:41 AM · #10 |
I'm working on a mac so it might not apply..
the max memory PS CS2 is able to use is 3GB so if you have more it doesn't matter, the max memory for PS CS is 1.3GB, I have 5.5GB in my G5 and PS CS2 only sees 3GB, does the 55% rule apply ? 3GB is 55% of 5.5GB so should I set PS CS2 to 100% as it only recognice 3GB or should I set it to 55% and only let it use 1.6GB of my 5.5GB ?
even with a powerful computer one still tries to optimize for max speed ;)
and regarding topic..
BEST hardware setup for Photoshop is..
Quad G5
8GB DDR2
4x 250GB SATA raided. external firewire 2
1x 74GB 15000rpm systemdisk
1x 500GB SATA internal storage
Quadro FX4500 512MB graphics card
1x 30" apple Cinema HD screen second screen optional.
1x 21" Wacom Cintiq
keyboard and mouse
osX and PS CS2
that should do it... for a little over $10.000 ;)
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03/15/2006 09:33:37 AM · #11 |
| Using a different partition for the scratch disks is pointless cause it can still only read the disk and get the data through at a certain speed. The only way to boost performance with the scratch disk is to use a separate drive. But really the thing that will increase performance the best is lots of RAM. |
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03/15/2006 09:51:48 AM · #12 |
Originally posted by Bobster:
PS is optimised to run with 55% of your RAM..
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In the "how weird is that" category, I just set PS to use 55% of my RAM the other day. It was completely arbitrary on my part.
I do find I have to dump the cache periodically to increase response times.
Originally posted by DanSig:
that should do it... for a little over $10.000 ;) |
Uhhh, yeah, right. :-) Seriously, though, that would be one kick-butt setup! The SATA disks I ordered are 250G, so I'll have 250G RAID. And will keep the 80G IDE as scratch, since I agree with bluenova - gotta have a separate disk, not a separate partition for the scratch.
Now I need to think about upgrading the RAM, though - or at least adding more. And here I thought 1G would do me for awhile. |
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03/15/2006 09:54:35 AM · #13 |
Originally posted by Melethia:
Originally posted by Bobster:
PS is optimised to run with 55% of your RAM..
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In the "how weird is that" category, I just set PS to use 55% of my RAM the other day. It was completely arbitrary on my part.
I do find I have to dump the cache periodically to increase response times.
Originally posted by DanSig:
that should do it... for a little over $10.000 ;) |
Uhhh, yeah, right. :-) Seriously, though, that would be one kick-butt setup! The SATA disks I ordered are 250G, so I'll have 250G RAID. And will keep the 80G IDE as scratch, since I agree with bluenova - gotta have a separate disk, not a separate partition for the scratch.
Now I need to think about upgrading the RAM, though - or at least adding more. And here I thought 1G would do me for awhile. |
I think 1Gb of DDR ram would do you fine for editing pictures, but of cause more is always better :D |
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