change in CS3 behavior???

[Schewe]

CS3 seems to have some memory leak problems; even after a file is closed, PS is using 2 GB of RAM.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176537\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

No...that's NOT a memory leak...a "leak" is where small amounts of raw get fragmented to the point where is is then set to be idle (unusable) by the system until a reboot...

Photoshop is DESIGNED to not free up ram it has asked the system for until (and unless) idle for quite some time or until the SYSTEM requests it because another app needs it. If you have Photoshop running in the background with nothing open over time (dictated by the OS) ram will get freed up.

[John.Murray]

Any disconnected network drives?:

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/a...orer-hangs.aspx

[tsjanik]

Memory management is a tricky subject.

The /3GB switch is useful, but potentially dangerous.  If you don't leave enough RAM for the operating system, it will be constantly paging out to disk and that will bring your system to a halt (particularly if it decides it needs to expand your pagefile).  There are many other settings that need to be considered before using /3GB with confidence (first and foremost being /userva to ensure system stability by controlling how much RAM is left for the OS).


[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Phil:

CS3 is assigned 1.7GB (About 71% of the amount PS thinks is available); since the system recognizes 3.25 GB, there should be plenty for the OS.

You also need to look at your history states and other things that will blow out your scratch sizes (you set to see that rather than basic image size).  [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176553\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

History is set to 1; scratch discs are D and E; CS3 is on C

No...that's NOT a memory leak...a "leak" is where small amounts of raw get fragmented to the point where is is then set to be idle (unusable) by the system until a reboot...

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176565\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Jeff perhaps it is not technically a leak, but it has the same effect.  I open a file, work on it, save, open another, within a short time PS is using all the allocated (1.7 GB) RAM even through I have saved and closed all files.  I then open the next file and see an efficiency less than 100%; the only way to clear the RAM is to close CS3.

Any disconnected network drives?:

[a href=\"http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2005/08/28/the-case-of-the-intermittent-and-annoying-explorer-hangs.aspx]http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/a...orer-hangs.aspx[/url]
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176578\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Nope, but thanks

[Farmer]

CS3 is assigned 1.7GB (About 71% of the amount PS thinks is available); since the system recognizes 3.25 GB, there should be plenty for the OS.

If you're not assigning more than 2GB to Photoshop there's really no need for the /3GB switch.  You might want to consider turning it off.  You will reduce (even if you got to say 80%) the amount of allocation but not by a lot.  See how system stability goes.  If it's better, then the problem is there.  You can then read up on /userva switch and make use of it to re-enable /3GB with more control.

History is set to 1; scratch discs are D and E; CS3 is on C

Ideally you want a single scratch disk that has nothing else on it (even if it's just a partition on a drive that isn't accessed for much else) and you want it on a different drive to your Windows Pagefile which would enjoy the same sort of isolation (and a fixed size of 4GB is ideal).

Jeff perhaps it is not technically a leak, but it has the same effect.  I open a file, work on it, save, open another, within a short time PS is using all the allocated (1.7 GB) RAM even through I have saved and closed all files.  I then open the next file and see an efficiency less than 100%; the only way to clear the RAM is to close CS3.

That's working normally and, normally, it's not a problem.  Something else is getting into the mix and causing your issues I reckon.

Honestly, I'd turn off /3GB to start with and see what happens - it's still possible that some driver is mapping to a part of memory that you're now attempting to access because of the switch and fine tuning with /userva could help.

[tsjanik]

If you're not assigning more than 2GB to Photoshop there's really no need for the /3GB switch.  You might want to consider turning it off.  You will reduce (even if you got to say 80%) the amount of allocation but not by a lot.  See how system stability goes.  If it's better, then the problem is there.  You can then read up on /userva switch and make use of it to re-enable /3GB with more control.
Ideally you want a single scratch disk that has nothing else on it (even if it's just a partition on a drive that isn't accessed for much else) and you want it on a different drive to your Windows Pagefile which would enjoy the same sort of isolation (and a fixed size of 4GB is ideal).
That's working normally and, normally, it's not a problem.  Something else is getting into the mix and causing your issues I reckon.

Honestly, I'd turn off /3GB to start with and see what happens - it's still possible that some driver is mapping to a part of memory that you're now attempting to access because of the switch and fine tuning with /userva could help.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176760\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Phil,  thanks for the input, I will look at /userva.  I should say that I started with 2GB and CS3 was too slow, so I increased to 4 GB and added the /3GB switch.  I should also mention that if I have Bridge running, it uses over 0.5 GB of additional RAM which takes the system over the 2GB available without the switch.  I tried allocating more than 70% of RAM to CS3, but no increase in speed, just more RAM usage.

[Farmer]

Phil,  thanks for the input, I will look at /userva.  I should say that I started with 2GB and CS3 was too slow, so I increased to 4 GB and added the /3GB switch.  I should also mention that if I have Bridge running, it uses over 0.5 GB of additional RAM which takes the system over the 2GB available without the switch.  I tried allocating more than 70% of RAM to CS3, but no increase in speed, just more RAM usage.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176807\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The 2GB limit is *per application* and exceeding this requires both the /3GB switch *and* an application capable of making use of the additional address space.  Note that memory management allows any application to deal with data in excess of 2GB regardless of the switch so long as the application itself is designed to deal with such large amounts of data.

More RAM only helps to a point.  I have one image, for example, that is 3.5GB on disk.  Opening that into Photoshop immediately causes a scratch size of just over 9GB.  Under Vista 64 (which I am testing at the moment) I can see all of the 4GB that I have installed (compared to the 3.5GB out of 4GB that I can see under XP), but even if I had 8GB (the most my main board will support) under Vista 64 it still wouldn't be enough to completely contain this image, with its layers etc.  And that's not even taking into consider that the operating system and application would some RAM anyway.  Image size on disk can blow out to *much* higher scratch values very easily, which means accessing hard drives as scratch space.  

The only way to really improve that performance is to improve the i/o performance of the scratch disk.  This could include things such as the use of raptors, or 15k rpm scsi disks, or RAID 0 (striping), or move to flash RAM drives or, if I have unlimited funds, use a series of volatile RAM drive devices (but even then I'm limited to the speed of the PCI-X or PCI-E bus).  None of those will be as fast as straight RAM but you can see substantial benefits using, say, a couple of raptors in RAID 0.

[jjj]

More RAM only helps to a point.  I have one image, for example, that is 3.5GB on disk.  Opening that into Photoshop immediately causes a scratch size of just over 9GB.  Under Vista 64 (which I am testing at the moment) I can see all of the 4GB that I have installed (compared to the 3.5GB out of 4GB that I can see under XP), but even if I had 8GB (the most my main board will support) under Vista 64 it still wouldn't be enough to completely contain this image, with its layers etc.  And that's not even taking into consider that the operating system and application would some RAM anyway.  Image size on disk can blow out to *much* higher scratch values very easily, which means accessing hard drives as scratch space. 
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176820\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

6 or so years back I was handling 750+M images with what ever version of PS was around then, I probably had 512M of RAM and by today's standards a very weedy chip and yet PS coped no problem. PS definitly seems slower than it used to and my files sizes currently are not as big as when handling multilayered film scans.

[jerryrock]

The 2GB limit is *per application* and exceeding this requires both the /3GB switch *and* an application capable of making use of the additional address space.  Note that memory management allows any application to deal with data in excess of 2GB regardless of the switch so long as the application itself is designed to deal with such large amounts of data.

More RAM only helps to a point.  I have one image, for example, that is 3.5GB on disk.  Opening that into Photoshop immediately causes a scratch size of just over 9GB.  Under Vista 64 (which I am testing at the moment) I can see all of the 4GB that I have installed (compared to the 3.5GB out of 4GB that I can see under XP), but even if I had 8GB (the most my main board will support) under Vista 64 it still wouldn't be enough to completely contain this image, with its layers etc.  And that's not even taking into consider that the operating system and application would some RAM anyway.  Image size on disk can blow out to *much* higher scratch values very easily, which means accessing hard drives as scratch space. 

The only way to really improve that performance is to improve the i/o performance of the scratch disk.  This could include things such as the use of raptors, or 15k rpm scsi disks, or RAID 0 (striping), or move to flash RAM drives or, if I have unlimited funds, use a series of volatile RAM drive devices (but even then I'm limited to the speed of the PCI-X or PCI-E bus).  None of those will be as fast as straight RAM but you can see substantial benefits using, say, a couple of raptors in RAID 0.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

With a 64 bit processor Photoshop CS3 is capable of utilizing ram above 4 gigs as scratch disk before going to the hard drive.  So more ram will actually speed up the system.  All the info is included in this Adobe Tech note:

[a href=\"http://www.adobe.com/go/kb401088]http://www.adobe.com/go/kb401088[/url]

dooode

[Farmer]

With a 64 bit processor Photoshop CS3 is capable of utilizing ram above 4 gigs as scratch disk before going to the hard drive.  So more ram will actually speed up the system.  All the info is included in this Adobe Tech note:

http://www.adobe.com/go/kb401088

dooode
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176978\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It's not the processor, but the OS that counts.  The OP is using Windows XP Home (32bit) and Windows Vista (32bit) so none of that applies in this case.

Of course a 64bit machine (processor and OS) can address higher areas of RAM.

[jerryrock]

It's not the processor, but the OS that counts.  The OP is using Windows XP Home (32bit) and Windows Vista (32bit) so none of that applies in this case.

Of course a 64bit machine (processor and OS) can address higher areas of RAM.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=177004\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The Adobe Tech note is very relevant, covering memory optimization on both 32 and 64 bit operating systems.

You should take the time to read it.

[Farmer]

The Adobe Tech note is very relevant, covering memory optimization on both 32 and 64 bit operating systems.

You should take the time to read it.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=177020\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've read it many times and referred countless people to it.

Here are the important parts of what you're talking about that confirm what I'm saying:

Photoshop CS3 is a 32-bit application. When it runs on a 32-bit operating system, such as Windows XP Professional and some versions of Windows Vista, it can access the first 2 GB of RAM on the computer.The operating system uses some of this RAM, so the Photoshop Memory Usage preference displays only a maximum of 1.6 or 1.7 GB of total available RAM. If you are running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2, you can set the 3 GB switch in the boot.ini file, which allows Photoshop to use up to 3 GB of RAM.

And here:

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 (sic) image data.

Please note the:

running a 64-bit version of the operating system

As I've said, with a 32bit operating system you are limited to 2GB per application of physical RAM.  It can use substantially more virtual memory, which is why you can open files larger than 2GB, but unless you use the /3GB switch 2GB is the absolute maxiumum that the application can use regardless of the amount of RAM physically in the computer and regardless of whether the processor can run in 64bit mode.

WHEN you run a 64bit operating system, Photoshop can use more RAM in CS3 both directly for image data and then other areas of the higher mapped RAM for plugins and caching.  This is NOT possible when running a 32bit operating system such as the OP regardless of the amount of physical RAM and regardless of the processor being capable of handling 64bit instructions.

Thanks.

[tsjanik]

Phil:

One more question, in response to my statement:” Jeff perhaps it is not technically a leak, but it has the same effect. I open a file, work on it, save, open another, within a short time PS is using all the allocated (1.7 GB) RAM even through I have saved and closed all files. I then open the next file and see an efficiency less than 100%; the only way to clear the RAM is to close CS3.”  You replied:

That's working normally and, normally, it's not a problem.  Something else is getting into the mix and causing your issues I reckon.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176760\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

CS does not behave this way on the same system, only CS3, ant idea of what the “something else” is?

Lisa, if you are still following this thread, you said:

CS3 seems to have a lot more problems than all the previous versions I've used (PS4, PS6, CS, CS2).

Lisa
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176558\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I have had other problems with CS3 beyond those discussed here, such as CS3 announcing it has encountered an error and needs to close, thus losing all my work.  This never happened with CS, so I agree.

On a different topic, I saw a post of yours awhile ago and I meant to respond, but never did.  Seems you and I passed through the Kyoto train station at the same time (or darn close).  Attached is a photo taken 3/30/06.  I had been there 3 days earlier as well

[Lisa Nikodym]

I have had other problems with CS3 beyond those discussed here, such as CS3 announcing it has encountered an error and needs to close, thus losing all my work. This never happened with CS, so I agree.

Admittedly, all CS3 problems that were not mostly of my own making are related to printers and printing, though the problems take different forms at different times.  It's possible there's really just one underlying problem with the way printing is set up that crops up in different forms under different conditions.  Whatever it was, I never had these problems with earlier versions of PS.

Of course, there was also the problem of improper uninstallation of the beta release screwing up the behavior of CS3; that was sort of a bug in the sense that it was very easy for people to fall into that trap, and difficult for them to figure out why things aren't working right.  I had a similar pseudo-bug in which I thought I could just copy most of my plug-ins from CS2 to CS3 without uninstalling and reinstalling them (which seems a reasonable assumption); it didn't tell me what the problem was, I just had weird crashes and serious CS2 misbehaviors that appeared unrelated to the plug-ins, and it took assistance from this forum to point me to the cause.  It's unfortunate when software is such that it's easy for users to fall into such traps and the software isn't smart enough to tell the user what they're doing wrong.

We haven't tried moving printers around yet to try to solve the "can't find the printer" problem - that's on today's to-do list...

On a different topic, I saw a post of yours awhile ago and I meant to respond, but never did. Seems you and I passed through the Kyoto train station at the same time (or darn close). Attached is a photo taken 3/30/06. I had been there 3 days earlier as well

Amusing!  And I like your photo.  I found it really tough to get a photo of the Kyoto train station that was any good at giving the impression of how high and huge it is.  It was one of the best parts of Kyoto, IMHO.  If you're ever back, it also had the best restaurants we found in Japan, in the clump of restaurants around the 10th or 11th level about street level - a fantastic tempura restaurant and a fantastic tonkatsu restaurant.

Lisa

[Lisa Nikodym]

OK, an update on my attempts to fix the printer-related slowness problem.  We moved both the Epson and the laserjet to network connections, both served by my PC (the one with CS3), and it now all seems to work well and quickly again.  It appears that having them both directly connected via USB to another PC on the network causes CS3 to have problems.  Also, from what we found some months earlier, having the Epson on a network connection but served by another PC on the network *also* caused problems.

We had previously been serving the Epson on my spouse's PC because my elderly PC was too old & slow to let me continue working while it was sloooowly spooling the print job to the printer.  That's no longer a problem since I got a fast new PC, so the current setup is acceptable.

Many thanks to Farmer and others here for assistance in figuring this out.

Lisa
 

[Farmer]

Lisa - great news that you've found a resolution :-)

CS does not behave this way on the same system, only CS3, ant idea of what the “something else” is?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=177056\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Honestly, no.  I don't have any technical references handy regarding how CS handled caching.  It's possible it was different and unloaded data more quickly (or loaded less in the first place).  This assumes you have all settings the same between the two versions, of course.