CS4: most important computer component specs?

[button]

Now that CS4 can use the video card GPU, what (in order) are the most important computer componenet characteristics for maximizing performance?  For example, some video cards offer 256 bit processing, and up to 2 gigs of ram.  I know photoshop only requires 16 bits from the cards, but does buying increased bit rate help?  What means more, the video RAM, the video processor, or the bit rating?  Similarly, if I have 8 gigs of computer RAM, will getting a faster processer help more than getting more computer RAM?  Do the computer/CPU affect performance more than the video card?  The context is this: working with 2+ gig files with multiple layers.  I realize the general nature of these questions, but any help is appreciated.

John

[NigelC]

Now that CS4 can use the video card GPU, what (in order) are the most important computer componenet characteristics for maximizing performance?  For example, some video cards offer 256 bit processing, and up to 2 gigs of ram.  I know photoshop only requires 16 bits from the cards, but does buying increased bit rate help?  What means more, the video RAM, the video processor, or the bit rating?  Similarly, if I have 8 gigs of computer RAM, will getting a faster processer help more than getting more computer RAM?  Do the computer/CPU affect performance more than the video card?  The context is this: working with 2+ gig files with multiple layers.  I realize then general nature of these questions, but any help is appreciated.

John

Sorry, this is not an answer, since I am looking for the same information. What I think I have picked up so far is:
a) If using Windows, need Vista 64 bit to address 8GB RAM
 A relatively modest graphics card is fine - extreme cards are for gamers and only show advantage in 3D. But what constitutes a good mid-level card? Nvidia or Radeon?

What I'm not sure about is whether, say a 3.0GHZ or faster Dual core is better for CS4 than a 2.4Ghz Quad Core. Also, if I want to run two 750Gb HDs in a mirror arrangement, is it OK if both are internal, or is it better to have one internal and one external and can I set them up to automatically mirror each other?
Also, if you want to have the ability at some time to run two monitors, can you get cards with 2 x DVI-D sockets, or is it best to add another card when/if you add a second monitor

[button]

Sorry, this is not an answer, since I am looking for the same information. What I think I have picked up so far is:
a) If using Windows, need Vista 64 bit to address 8GB RAM
 A relatively modest graphics card is fine - extreme cards are for gamers and only show advantage in 3D. But what constitutes a good mid-level card? Nvidia or Radeon?

What I'm not sure about is whether, say a 3.0GHZ or faster Dual core is better for CS4 than a 2.4Ghz Quad Core. Also, if I want to run two 750Gb HDs in a mirror arrangement, is it OK if both are internal, or is it better to have one internal and one external and can I set them up to automatically mirror each other?
Also, if you want to have the ability at some time to run two monitors, can you get cards with 2 x DVI-D sockets, or is it best to add another card when/if you add a second monitor

A 64 bit OS is key for RAM utilization.  I noticed a staggering difference in CS4 performance between Vista 64 and XP 32, surely for this reason.  What I don't understand is exactly how CS4 utilizes a video card's innards.  I know that the cards are now responsible for image smoothing, and I believe also for "rendering" (cutting down on the marching tiles across the screen when you zoom in on an image).  If rendering is the main function of the card now, I think I might now have an answer, as stated here:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/video/perf_Width.htm

Specifically, simply increasing video RAM probably wont help much, unless 3D acceleration matters in CS4:

"The size of video memory on the video card has, for the most part, not much impact on video card speed. There are a couple of exceptions: one is the slowdown with 64-bit cards that use 1 MB of video memory. Another is the fact that 3D accelerators often have better performance when given more memory to use for intermediate calculations. Otherwise, increasing the memory size gives you more resolution and color depth options, but no increase in overall speed."

Here's another important comment:


"The video card and its performance level are tied tightly to the performance of the other components in the system. The most important one of these is the CPU itself. A PC with a top caliber processor will have faster video performance than one with a slower CPU, all else being equal. The type of motherboard (and chipset) and the amount and type of memory and system cache also have an effect, as does the system bus (discussed above).

The degree to which video performance is tied to processor performance depends on what the application is. Some applications are more able to make use of the internal acceleration features of high end cards. In this situation, the impact of the processor on overall video performance is minimized. In other cases such as standard VGA, the processor is doing all of the work of determining what will be displayed on the screen. In this case, the CPU's type and speed can have more of an impact on video performance than the video card itself."

I think we really need help from someone "in the know" with respect to CS4's architecture.

John

[fike]

The largest improvement I have seen in the last 5 years of computing and image manipulation was to get a very fast boot/application hard drive. I purchased a Western Digital Raptor as my boot/app drive and immediately saw speed increases that dwarfed increases in memory, processor speed, and video cards.  No matter how much RAM you have, you will frequently be reading program memory off the hard drive and more importantly, you will frequently be swapping RAM back and forth to the hard drive.  For ~$180, it is a very good upgrade.

[Farmer]

Sorry, this is not an answer, since I am looking for the same information. What I think I have picked up so far is:
a) If using Windows, need Vista 64 bit to address 8GB RAM
 A relatively modest graphics card is fine - extreme cards are for gamers and only show advantage in 3D. But what constitutes a good mid-level card? Nvidia or Radeon?

What I'm not sure about is whether, say a 3.0GHZ or faster Dual core is better for CS4 than a 2.4Ghz Quad Core. Also, if I want to run two 750Gb HDs in a mirror arrangement, is it OK if both are internal, or is it better to have one internal and one external and can I set them up to automatically mirror each other?
Also, if you want to have the ability at some time to run two monitors, can you get cards with 2 x DVI-D sockets, or is it best to add another card when/if you add a second monitor

I would recommend, as you say, a modest GPU but I would get 512MB RAM or more (based on direct information from Adobe folks).  Personally, I prefer nVidia for a whole page full of reasons, but whilst I have nVidia at home, I have a Raedon at work and it's just fine.  Any "current" card that meets the specs from Adobe and has 512MB RAM or more should be just fine.

For Windows, use Vista 64 SP1.

I would suggest that there's no real issue with your hard drive being internal or external except that if you use it externally, use eSata so it's not slow (USB and Firewire are much slower than eSata).  If you're doing to use a mirror, condier doing it as RAID 1 mirror so it's automatic and immediate.

Regarding processor - I would say that most of the time the 3.0 Dual will give you more performance than the 2.4 Quad *unless* you're doing more stuff in the background that can take advantage of threads using the other cores in the Quad.  Even then, it will be minimal.  That said, RAM (limits) and then Scratch disk performance will limit you far more than the differences in the processors.  As Fike just said, the performance from a fast scratch disk is huge.

[button]

The largest improvement I have seen in the last 5 years of computing and image manipulation was to get a very fast boot/application hard drive. I purchased a Western Digital Raptor as my boot/app drive and immediately saw speed increases that dwarfed increases in memory, processor speed, and video cards.  No matter how much RAM you have, you will frequently be reading program memory off the hard drive and more importantly, you will frequently be swapping RAM back and forth to the hard drive.  For ~$180, it is a very good upgrade.

This is a big deal.  I currently have 2 raptors in RAID 0 (equivalent of a 20,000 rpm hard drive) as my scratch disc.  Maybe I should move CS4 to this drive, and also use it as scratch?  Or better yet, maybe I'll just buy another raptor for the OS/apps    . I didn't realize that the boot drive mattered that much.  Interestingly, I was watching the task manager last night and it kept saying that disc usage was up around 100% as I was playing with a 2 gig file.  As I didn't hear my raptors running, I couldn't figure out what that meant.  Currently, CS4 resides on a standard 7200 rpm HD, and now I think I saw what you are describing: RAM swapping.   Thanks for the tip- I'll look into it.

John

[Farmer]

This is a big deal.  I currently have 2 raptors in RAID 0 (equivalent of a 20,000 rpm hard drive) as my scratch disc.  Maybe I should move CS4 to this drive, and also use it as scratch?  Or better yet, maybe I'll just buy another raptor for the OS/apps    . I didn't realize that the boot drive mattered that much.  Interestingly, I was watching the task manager last night and it kept saying that disc usage was up around 100% as I was playing with a 2 gig file.  As I didn't hear my raptors running, I couldn't figure out what that meant.  Currently, CS4 resides on a standard 7200 rpm HD, and now I think I saw what you are describing: RAM swapping.   Thanks for the tip- I'll look into it.

John

Moving CS4 isn't likely to help and I certainly wouldn't put it on the same drive that you're using for PS Scratch.

The advantage in having the boot drive as a faster drive is (obviously) boot times but also that's the default location for for the OS to swap to disk from RAM.

Either moving that swap space to your raptor RAID or putting in another raptor (or pair) for the OS swap space will help (even more than just making the boot disk a raptor or raptor RAID).

With your current setup, I'd just move the OS swap file to your raptor RAID - where CS4 resides is of little consequence except for the initial load time.

[button]

Moving CS4 isn't likely to help and I certainly wouldn't put it on the same drive that you're using for PS Scratch.

The advantage in having the boot drive as a faster drive is (obviously) boot times but also that's the default location for for the OS to swap to disk from RAM.

Either moving that swap space to your raptor RAID or putting in another raptor (or pair) for the OS swap space will help (even more than just making the boot disk a raptor or raptor RAID).

With your current setup, I'd just move the OS swap file to your raptor RAID - where CS4 resides is of little consequence except for the initial load time.

When you say OS swap file, do you mean the page file?

[Farmer]

When you say OS swap file, do you mean the page file?

Yes.  Even though PS uses its own scratch disk, when its set to use a significant amount of RAM (which is good for performance) your OS will likely need to page out more, particularly if you have other apps running, so making sure you have that pagefile on a fast drive (that's not the OS drive, ideally) will help considerably.  Having both the OS pagefile and the PS scratch file on the same disk will be OK most of the time, but best performance will have them on their own drive.

[button]

Yes.  Even though PS uses its own scratch disk, when its set to use a significant amount of RAM (which is good for performance) your OS will likely need to page out more, particularly if you have other apps running, so making sure you have that pagefile on a fast drive (that's not the OS drive, ideally) will help considerably.  Having both the OS pagefile and the PS scratch file on the same disk will be OK most of the time, but best performance will have them on their own drive.

Thanks.  Here's some info on Vista tweaking, specifically wrt page files:

http://www.tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_6.htm

John

[Farmer]

Thanks.  Here's some info on Vista tweaking, specifically wrt page files:

http://www.tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_6.htm

John

Tweakhound is generally very solid advice - if in doubt, follow it.  I disagree that you *need* to leave a pagefile on the root drive, and I disagree about the need to size it the same as your available RAM.  You'll note he mentions 2GB and that dates the advice to when 2GB was considered the high-end of normal.  With a 64 bit system and 8GB or more, it's a different story.  In fact you can run without a pagefile just fine, although I wouldn't suggest it for most users just in case something does go wrong.

Vista 64, for example, will recommend about 6GB of pagefile for a system with 4GB of RAM and more if you have more.  If you have a spare drive (and a raptor or raptor RAID is ideal but even a small sata drive is fine and save the raptors for PS) to give for Windows to pagefile then make it whatever size Vista is recommending and don't worry about one on the root drive.  Then turn off logging and memory dump files in Startup and Recovery under system properties.  Unless you're actually having problems and know how to read the data, it's of no use and turning it off removes the need to have a pagefile on the root drive.

Things are a little different when you're working 64 bit and potentially might have PS, LR and Bridge all running, plus some web browsing, maybe an FTP session etc - these are not demands placed on a system by the average user.

[button]

CS4 video card info, from adobepress:

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article...38&seqNum=4

Video Acceleration

For pure two-dimensional (2D) image editing, you probably won't benefit from spending more money on the kind of high-end three-dimensional (3D) video card that makes gamers happy. The bottleneck in redrawing Photoshop images is almost never the video system—it's getting the image data out of RAM (or even worse, from disk) to the video system. The one video card spec that affects 2D Photoshop performance the most is video RAM. Aim for a video card with lots of video RAM onboard—at least 256MB, and preferably 512MB. If you're running multiple large monitors, try starting at 512MB.

Photoshop CS4 is the first version of Photoshop that can take advantage of a video card's graphics processing unit (GPU) for some display operations (not image-processing operations, though). If your video card supports OpenGL, you may see new, smoother panning and zooming options in Photoshop CS4, such as free rotation of the canvas.

The 3D capabilities of a video card used to be irrelevant to Photoshop, but since the addition of 3D and video editing in Photoshop CS3 Extended, 3D graphics hardware now comes into play. But you may not have to upgrade your video card. If you have a 3D video card that's sufficient to run general CAD programs, it's good enough for Photoshop Extended.