CS3, xp 64, AMD 64 and 8 gig setup question

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Hello everyone,

My searches thus far have implied that with a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit CPU, photoshop CS3 will automatically use whatever RAM above 4 gigs (up to as a sort of scratch disk before sending data to the assigned scratch disks in the "preferences" section.  Does this happen automatically?  I'm running xp 64 with 8 gigs RAM and don't see much improvement over 4 gigs when editing a 2 gig file I have (a huge pano/mosaic).  Am I missing something?  I have the photoshop RAM slider maxed at 3.5 gigs.  

Thanks,
John

[Raw shooter]

Hello everyone,

My searches thus far have implied that with a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit CPU, photoshop CS3 will automatically use whatever RAM above 4 gigs (up to as a sort of scratch disk before sending data to the assigned scratch disks in the "preferences" section.  Does this happen automatically?  I'm running xp 64 with 8 gigs RAM and don't see much improvement over 4 gigs when editing a 2 gig file I have (a huge pano/mosaic).  Am I missing something?  I have the photoshop RAM slider maxed at 3.5 gigs. 

Thanks,
John
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139529\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Do you have a separate hard drive as a real scratch disk?  Maybe 10,000 rpm disk to match your PC setup, which is quite impressive, BTW.
CS3 is a 32bit program, so multicore (Core 2 Duo - quad-core) processors may have a better return on speed that a 64bit OS.

[button]

Do you have a separate hard drive as a real scratch disk?  Maybe 10,000 rpm disk to match your PC setup, which is quite impressive, BTW.
CS3 is a 32bit program, so multicore (Core 2 Duo - quad-core) processors may have a better return on speed that a 64bit OS.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139564\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yeah, I use a seperate scratch disk.  What I've noticed when running commands on my 2 gig file is that the green progress bar moves pretty quickly while the RAM does the heavy lifting and then hits a brick wall when the scratch disk takes over.  I just want to make sure that all 8 gigs are working and that I don't have to activate some special setting to make that happen.

John

[tived]

Hello everyone,

My searches thus far have implied that with a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit CPU, photoshop CS3 will automatically use whatever RAM above 4 gigs (up to as a sort of scratch disk before sending data to the assigned scratch disks in the "preferences" section.  Does this happen automatically?  I'm running xp 64 with 8 gigs RAM and don't see much improvement over 4 gigs when editing a 2 gig file I have (a huge pano/mosaic).  Am I missing something?  I have the photoshop RAM slider maxed at 3.5 gigs. 

Thanks,
John
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139529\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi John,

I have a similar setup, with an all scsi hard drive system. When working with large scans in the 2-3gb range, the machine does take a hefty hit.
it certainly is no speed deamon when it tried to juggle on of these files. a bit like getting behind your old 486dx machine again.

what sort of task are you doing that you are finding slower. I can try replicate it and see if I get something different

Henrik

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what sort of task are you doing that you are finding slower. I can try replicate it and see if I get something different

Henrik
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139593\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hey Henrik,

Thanks for the reply.  The command that brings my machine to its knees is the lens correction under "distort" (under "filter").  That one simply wont work on my 2 gig file.  "Crop" and "flatten image" take forever.  Did you do anything special to "enable" all 8 gigs of RAM?

Thanks,
John

[tived]

Hey Henrik,

Thanks for the reply.  The command that brings my machine to its knees is the lens correction under "distort" (under "filter").  That one simply wont work on my 2 gig file.  "Crop" and "flatten image" take forever.  Did you do anything special to "enable" all 8 gigs of RAM?

Thanks,
John
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

John,

PS will only see ~3.5Gb as per Adobe KB [a href=\"http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401088&sliceId=1]http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewConten...01088&sliceId=1[/url]

Quote from the above article:
When you run Photoshop CS3 on a computer with a 64-bit processor (such as a, Intel Xeon processor with EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, or Opteron processor) running a 64-bit version of the operating system (Windows XP Professional x64 Edition or Windows Vista 64-bit) and with 4 GB or more of RAM, Photoshop will use 3 GB for it's image data. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance preference to 100%. The RAM above the 100% used by Photoshop, which is from approximately 3 GB to 3.7 GB, can be used directly by Photoshop plug-ins (some plug-ins need large chunks of contiguous RAM), filters, or actions. If you have more than 4 GB (to 6 GB), then the RAM above 4 GB is used by the operating system as a cache for the Photoshop scratch disk data. Data that previously was written directly to the hard disk by Photoshop is now cached in this high RAM before being written to the hard disk by the operating system. If you are working with files large enough to take advantage of these extra 2 GB of RAM, the RAM cache can speed performance of Photoshop. Additionally, in Windows Vista 64-bit, processing very large images is much faster if your computer has large amounts of RAM (6-8 GB).

The default RAM allocation setting is 55%. This setting should be optimal for most users. To get the ideal RAM allocation setting for your system, change the RAM allocation in 5% increments and watch the performance of Photoshop in the Performance Monitor. You must quit and restart Photoshop after each change to see the change take effect.

and

Bigger Tiles plug-in

The Bigger Tiles plug-in, which is located in the Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-Ins\\Extensions\Bigger Tiles folder, is disabled by default. When you enable it by removing the tilde (~) from the file name, you increase the image tile size in Photoshop. You should only enable the plug-in if you have more than 1 GB of RAM installed.

If you enable the plug-in, then Photoshop redraws more data at a time because each tile is larger, and each tile is drawn, complete, at one time. Photoshop takes less time to redraw fewer tiles that are larger than it takes to redraw more tiles that are smaller. Because Photoshop redraws more data at one time, each tile it takes longer to be redrawn; so bigger tiles can look like they are redrawing more slowly, but they are actually redrawing faster than if the image had more smaller tiles.

quote end:

I will try and run an image with the filters you mentioned and get back to you

just for the record, my system is

2x Dual Core Opteron 285 (2x 2.6ghz)
Tyan S2895s mainboard
8x 1gb ATP DDR400 RAM
2x Quadro FX-3400 Graphics card
2x 300gb Seagates 10k SCSI u320 RAID 0
1x 73gb Seagates 10k SCSI u320 (by mistake I installed windows on this)
3x 73gb Seagates 15k SCSI u320 RAID 0 Photoshop scratch disk
2x 147gb Seagates 10k SCSI u320 RAID 0 Windows page file disk

this system is getting a bit long in the tooth, 2 years and over now

regards

Henrik

[tived]

Hi Again John,

I created a 2gb file and filled two blocks with two different colors. I then ran the lens correction filter on it, and it sort of just halted for 3-4 min, then it started to tile the image, bit by bit or tile by tile. I played around with the settings on it and changed the appereance of the image a fair bit. I clicked apply...and I am writingt this and it is still going.

I have applied as many of the information thats in the Adobe KB, in the link above, to improve performance. I have even run my MSCONFIG and disabled all startup processes execpt for my iOne color calibration, and still have

I am also copying a CF card, watching Task manager, I using 2.66GB of PF usage, ~25-27% CPU across four processors. Photoshop CS3 is taking up 2.2GB of memory in the task manager, I have a total of 44 processes going.
Commit charge: 2725M/40760M..by now the progress bar has moved to what looks like 80% and two of my four processors shows activity.

Man, I could go and pick my coffee beans, milk the cow and still have time to drink my coffee with this going on :-)

...I think it would be cheaper to go and buy a better wide angle lens, then paying someone USD$100-300 for photoshop creatings retouching. I should have put the timing on this, so I could get a correct time on the process. its now 90% and I have probably waited 10min by now.

the good news is that it is working away :-) interesting if the new MacPro's would fair better, with the Universial binary code? (SP?)

Ok it finished!! ;-) wow!!!

Henrik


PS: i did it again and tried to follow it, - trying to do anything but work today!!! -

started the process - after 210 sec I could access the image in "lens Distortion", I made some random changes
Distortion +50%
Vignette -18 and +62
Transform +13, -13 and rotated it to 300.77 degrees
started the process and after 1 min it had done 60%....after 5 min it had 90%. at closer inspection, it looks like it is only using one or two processors and only 15-26% with a constant 2.62GB of Page File usage?
Physical Memory (K)
total 8386856
available cache 5458620
system cache is 5450288

when done system cache was down to 579636 K

the process finished after 7-8 min after pressing OK

Doc: 2.10G/2.51G (background with 5 layers)
Scratch: 6.74G/2.38G
Dimension: 100x83.333 inches @ 300DPI

Flatten: Ctrl+shift+E   took 2.6 seconds and drops the size to 2.1G/889.8mb
Crop with a rotate:  15.7 seconds and I now have an image that is 24200x20025pixels @ 300dpi or 1.35GB in size

Crop upsize to 2.2Gb took 3 sec giving me 31625x24850 pixels or 105.417x83.833" @ 300dpi

Ok, thats enough playing for today - I hope this may give you some insight, or atleast a good laugh, that someone will sit on the other side of the world and spend half hour playing with the above, just for laughs :-)

I hope you will have a great day, I will go looking for wildflowers now ;-)

cheers

Henrik

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Thanks, Henrik.  I guess I'll have to build a monster RAID 0 setup like you have (or buy a 45,000 RPM hard drive!).  All jokes aside, your tests are quite informative.  Looks like we'll just have to wait for a 64 bit CS4 so we can throw even more RAM at large files.

John

[Gurglamei]

John,

just for the record, my system is

2x Dual Core Opteron 285 (2x 2.6ghz)
Tyan S2895s mainboard
8x 1gb ATP DDR400 RAM
2x Quadro FX-3400 Graphics card
2x 300gb Seagates 10k SCSI u320 RAID 0
1x 73gb Seagates 10k SCSI u320 (by mistake I installed windows on this)
3x 73gb Seagates 15k SCSI u320 RAID 0 Photoshop scratch disk
2x 147gb Seagates 10k SCSI u320 RAID 0 Windows page file disk

Henrik
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139671\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Henrik,

just out of curiosity, do you have any idea how much/often and under what tasks your system actually uses the page disk?  Is your experience that such a heavy hardware investment on this part of the computer really gives you a significant performance boost when running  CS2/CS3 or Lightroom?


Christopher

[tived]

Henrik,

just out of curiosity, do you have any idea how much/often and under what tasks your system actually uses the page disk?  Is your experience that such a heavy hardware investment on this part of the computer really gives you a significant performance boost when running  CS2/CS3 or Lightroom?
Christopher
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139887\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi Christopher,

:-) No, I don't think that anyone would need such a setup as I have outlined. It is actually far from efficient.
 I have an Intel QuadCore single processor 2.66Ghz system, Asustek workstation board, with a 150GB raptor for OS and 3 seagate 320Gb 7200.10 ( two drive Mirror for data and a disk for scratch disk), 4 gb ram and a nVidia 7900. this box cost 1/3 or 1/4 of the other system and it is within 10% performance of the Opteron system.

So, NO it is definately not a good investment if you are only doing PS work.

I would however, if money permits, have seperate disks for scratch and page file, and depending on backup frequency a Raid 0 for data. and again if you can have both scratch disk and page disk on a RAID 0.

Now, Jeff Schewe, mentioned something interesting, though I have not compared it, but he has a couple of large disks i think it was 750Gb which Jeff has stripped and partitioned and on a 300Gb partition he has his scratch disk and the remaining for data storage. I think that is a very economical way of doing it and since he is doing it, it must work. My initial thought is that this will cause a conflict when you are working and you will have to wait while the disk is writing data and scratch info or reading, but I could very well be wrong. Give it a try and see if it makes a different.
Now all these small jumps through hoops, is really only needed if you want to push every single drop of juice out of your system.
I would love to hear from someone who knows more about the hardware setup for using photoshop.

I do want to stress one thing, you can have the fastest hardware, but its your workflow that it all comes down to, how quickly you get your jobs done!!!! I think this is the area, that we all need to spend out time on.

all fun no work

Henrik

[tived]

Thanks, Henrik.  I guess I'll have to build a monster RAID 0 setup like you have (or buy a 45,000 RPM hard drive!).  All jokes aside, your tests are quite informative.  Looks like we'll just have to wait for a 64 bit CS4 so we can throw even more RAM at large files.

John
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=139743\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hi John,

its all a bit of fun, anything to do, so I won;t have to start the next job :-) and these forums are a great distraction :-)

Yes, as it is, there isn;t much point in adding more then 8 gb of ram, and some will probably say that 4Gb is tops.
I would love to see if anyone that has more, like 16gb which is the max my current mainboard can handle, how their experience is. Do they feel if the extra is helping. More ram certainly is better, when we are multi-tasking, when you got 2, 3 or 4 Adobe apps open at once, it does take a lot of ram to keep them happy.

regarding harddrives and raid and all that Jazz...we are talking a few % improvements at most 10-15% depending what you are comparing things with. I think if you are doing a lot of batch processing, with lots read and writes then a Raid 0 setup build with fast spindle disks 10k or faster would help. Also, when you start buying "Enterprise" disks such as highend scsi disks you also get disks that are build to handle the high stress of the frequent reads and writes, which will ensure/minimise the risk of disk failure (all disks will fail!! sooner or later) but Enterprise disks have a reputations of Later IMHO.

Speaking of Harddrives, Solid State Disks are slowly entering the arena, though small in size they seem to be fast! just make sure you have a good power-backup!!! :-)

thats enough for me and my ranting :-)

take care

Henrik