Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Tim H on October 15, 2006, 08:20:55 am
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Hi. I am looking to upgrade to a new computer for post production work and wanted to find out if a laptop would be powerful enough for my needs.
I shoot on a Canon 1ds mkii, process the Raw files to 16bit 96mb Tiffs in Capture one and do my colour correction in Photoshop CS.
At the moment I have a 3 and a half year old Sony Vaio GRT715M Laptop. It has a Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor, 1 gig of ram (it’s maximum) and a Nvidia Geoforce FX Go5600 video card. When I got it I was working with 36mb 16 bit files from a Canon 10d and with only 512mb of ram. It was fine for this. A year or so ago I brought my 1ds mkii and upgraded the laptop to a gig of ram. But the problem is, it is slow. For example, if in photoshop I opened an image (96mb), then made, say, a few curve adjustments in a row, the first couple would be fairly quick but by the third it would be hanging for about 10 seconds, then 15 seconds for the 4th adjustments etc. And the more complicated I make the images, if I start adding layers or making composites, it will hang for a lot longer. This can get pretty frustrating when making a lot of tweaks and adjustments, as I tend to do.
So, my thought is to upgrade but I have a few questions.
1. How realistic is it of me to expect photoshop to run a lot faster on files of this size? Ideally I would love to be able to have a much larger history or use multiple layers, without the machine starting to hang. Is this achievable?
2. I was looking at getting something along the lines of the HP Pavilion dv6174EA. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz processor, 2 gig of Ram, and a Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics card. I am not a computer expert so I am not clear on how big a jump this is in terms of processor and Ram from my current Sony laptop? Is it a far superior machine which would run photoshop a lot faster and leave me free of the frustrations of a constantly hanging computer? Or is it only a small jump and really I am not going to see any significant improvements. It would be great to hear any thoughts?
3. Am I being crazy expecting what I want from a laptop and should I get a desktop instead.? I really love having a laptop and it works perfectly with my workflow. I run it duel monitor with a Lacie 19” (if I got a desktop I would definitely get a second monitor so I could stay duel monitor). And I do often need to take it out on shoots, so if I upgraded to a desktop I would still need to keep the old laptop for location work, and then have the complication of having two different machines. So essentially, I would love to upgrade to a laptop but am I crazy for that, would all my problems be best solved going for a desktop? Also, just to mention, my budget can’t really go much above the cost of the Pavilion above, or a similar machine, £900 in the UK. Also all my software and knowledge is PC so I would rather stick with a PC for now.
It would be great to hear anyone’s thoughts. I know whatever I buy I will be relying on it for the next couple of years (but am not going to be upgrading my camera in this time), so I just want to make sure I get it right.
Many thanks.
Tim
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Here's the short answer:
The best laptop configuration will be equal to a mediocre desktop and cost 2-3x as much.
The best laptop monitor panel will be nowhere near good enough for final color correction. Good enough for on-site work, for basic editing, yes. All of the workflow? No way.
This goes for both PC and MAC, although the performance gap between the best laptop and best desktop is even wider with a MAC due to the better possible config of a MAC desktop specifically for PS over a PC (You are talking $10k+ though).
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Since you already work with a laptop I assume you know the limitations of the most (all) laptop screens when it comes to accurate color and color shift when you change viewing angle even slightly. Sony seem to give priority to screen quality. So while screen technology generally improve you might actually find a new laptop for general business use with inferior screen to the one you got. Try to check out the screen before buying!
Agree with the previous poster that you get less performance for more money with a laptop, but I still think you'll be able to find a system that will perform at least significantly better than the one you got.
Here's what I'd look for:
Already mentioned the screen, your current model has a 16" one? Haven't seen that in a while, but 17" is slightly larger and fairly easy to find, and 15.?" is even more common. Just make sure you get high enough resolution - and of course good picture quality. There are even some models with 20" screens, but that's pretty big and expensive systems.
Processor: I'd reccommend going for something faster than the one you mention. Dual 1.66 cores would be faster than a 2.8 PIV on tasks that are easily split on two processors, but not that much faster even though a Core 2 Duo gets more done for each clock cycle than a PIV. If you want 3-4 years life from the new PC you might also do another camera (megapixel) upgrade in that timeframe.
The price difference for higher processor speed is quite high, but if you're looking for a really fast system I'd try to find something faster than 1.66. Preferably 2GHz or better, but that seem to be impossible with your budget.
Hard disk speed can be a problem on laptops. Many models come with 4200rpm disks, but lateley 5400rpm has become quite a bit more common (the Hp you mention has a 5400rpm drive). Still, a desktop will usually have a disk with 7200rpm which is quite a bit faster. You can find 7200rpm disk on some laptops too, but you have to read the specs to find them. With the large files you describe hard disk performance is an issue even before the system run out of memory and start swapping and then it becomes an even bigger factor. Another way to get better performance from the disk system is to use two disks. Some systems support that.
Last is memory. Obviously also important. Get 2GB, and see how that works. Going to 4B on a laptop is currently really expensive so might not be worthwhile. Note that many systems that support 4GB has only 2 slots and need to use 2x2GB modules to get to that amount. So you have to take out what you already got to upgrade.
Conclusion: I'd say that your budget is kind of low for what you're asking. The HP you mention will certainly be faster than the one you got. Maybe even fast enough for today, but not very futureproof. Given £900 I'd at least try for a 7200rpm drive, even if you have to go down from 120MB to 80/100GB. Dell offer configurable systems with 7200rpm drive option, but the problem with Dell is that you wont be able to see the screen quality before buying. I'd at least try another round searching for better specs than the HP.
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Just a quick comment on hard disks. A 7200 RPM disk is definitely the way to go; but the markup may be high for the upgrade. If you find a laptop that fit's what you want, but has a slow drive, you can just purchase a new disk for it and install it instead. Installing laptop hard drives is a piece of cake and 7200s aren't really too expensive.
Phillip
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Svein, Kaelaria and Philip. Great, many thanks for your posts, that is really useful and makes a lot of sense.
In terms of a monitor and laptop-screen, I am not too concerned. I only use the laptop out in the field about 10% of the time and when I do it is more to check composition etc than anything critical. Back at base I use it dual screen with a Lacie 19” CRT (regularly profiled) and using the laptop screen for the tool palette only. And again with the size of the laptop/screen, it is not too much of a priority, as it will not be out and about that much and I would rather get the specs right.
Interesting what you say about hard drive speed. I didn’t realise it was that critical. Pretty much 100% of my photoshop work is done at base and at the moment I use external 7200 drives connected to the laptop by USB2. Is USB2 fast enough to keep up with the 7200 speed of the drives? Would continuing to work like this eliminate the concern about what speed the hard drive is?
I will have a dig around to see what else is out there and what else I can get for my budget. I would love to find a laptop that will work at the speed I would like. Any more advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks again.
Tim
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Again, the best laptop config (7200) is only mediocre to a good desktop (10,000 or 14,000).
Can you get a better laptop then what you have? Certainly. Can you expect it to be a Photoshop powerhouse? Never, in comparison to a desktop. So what is you real goal if you know the limitations?
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Using a 7200rpm drive in an external USB-enclosure slows down the drive considerable compared to using the same disk inside the PC. Comparing a fairly new external USB-disk to an old 40Gb (and maybe 4200rpm) notebookdisk might give a different result. I've never seen a test of this.
Using a firewire disk yields (slightly) better results in most tests, but if you want close to full speed from an external disk you need an external SATA-disk. There are of course other options like SCSI etc, but external SATA is the only realistic one on a limited budget.
If you want to work with external USB-disks then try to leave a lot of room on your internal disk. Copy the files you want to work on to the internal disk, work, then move them out again to make room for the next batch.
This article is worth reading as it compares performance of a several disc-enclosures with different interfaces:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/d...re-roundup.html (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/35hdd-enclosure-roundup.html)
So in my opinion your best bet is still to find an internal 7200rpm drive. Note that the price difference isn't that big, the main difficulty is to find a laptop that will fit all your requirements and have this type of disk.
Btw, you wont find many off the shelf desktop systems with a 10000rpm (or more) drive for £800-900, particlury if you need another screen for a desktop.
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I have a friend using a 15" Mac book pro with the Duo 2.16 processor. It easily powers his 30" cinema display with 256mb of video RAM. The files and the scatch disk are on an eSATA dual enclosure with two 400GB Seagate 7200.10 hard drives connected to an express card 34. The one glaring ommision is that it only has 2 gb of RAM (oh, and glaring ommision two is that CS2 is not Intel native on OSX). I have used this as a capture station with C1 pro tethered to a P25, and LC10 tethered to an Aptus 75 and it works really great. I know you are discusing a PC laptop, but maybe this gives some perspective. I would not want to make a living retouching with only 2 GB of RAM though.
-Eric
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Hi everyone. Thanks so much for all your advice. I think I am going to go for a desktop. It sounds like any laptop I could afford is still going to leave me frustrated with the speed. So desktop it is. Have learnt a lot on the decision making process though!
Many thanks again, greatly appreciated.
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If you get a second small hard drive you can use this as a pagefile drive which helps to speed everything up.
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Not going through a USB2 or FW connection it won't. External drives are ONLY good for storage, not as a working drive like with a swap file.
I use an external 500 for storage and backup, and an external 250 for transport. Neither are anywhere CLOSE to internal speeds, not even the same ballpark. I would want to throw it against the wall if I had to use an external swap disc, working with large files.
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Hi everyone. Thanks so much for all your advice. I think I am going to go for a desktop. It sounds like any laptop I could afford is still going to leave me frustrated with the speed. So desktop it is. Have learnt a lot on the decision making process though!
Many thanks again, greatly appreciated.
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I'm late to this thread. I'm using a MacBook (2.0) with a 300gig external drive (maxtor),processing very large files (scans from 4x5) and its very workable. It is correct that the weakness with the latest lower cost computers is having only 2 memory slots. Its not only laptops that are limited to 2 slots, most desktops are now also. Of course, heavy duty desktops are not so limited but then the price goes up. The best machine on the planet is a Mac Pro. But even the cheap macbook is pretty good. Large batches and "some" PS edits are slow, but certainly usable. If you need portability it's an effective solution. BTW, don't believe the Apple story regarding memory on the core duo's. Got 2 gigs (non apple) at Fry's for $140. Only the dual xeon Mac Pro requires special heatsinked memory.
Now I'm scanning 200+ meg files (8bit) to 400+ meg files (16bit), so I'm putting lots of stress on this laptop. Those tiny files you're playing with can't nearly be as much of a challenge.
Add a 23 inch Apple display. Mine is very sweet, significantly better than the Sansung 213T I run at work. No laptop screen is comparable to a good external monitor.
For a cheap way out, why not upgrade the memory in the current laptop. That 2nd gig makes a huge difference. 1 gig is not enough to open some editing programs. If it was "near" workable with 1, you'll be "happy" with 2.
bob
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Its not only laptops that are limited to 2 slots, most desktops are now also.
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Not true whatsoever. Only the extreme low end motherboards are limited to 2 slots such as small form factor systems like Shuttle, or the super el-cheap-o POS systems from Walmart, Best Buy, etc. that use baby boards to save $10. The VAST majority of motherboards have been and are 4 slot designs with 2 slots per bank in dual bank (channel) configurations. All the mainstream northbridge chipsets have been using this configurations for years, along with all the AMD Athlon/XP/X2 chips (memory controller on-die).
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Not true whatsoever. Only the extreme low end motherboards are limited to 2 slots such as small form factor systems like Shuttle, or the super el-cheap-o POS systems from Walmart, Best Buy, etc. that use baby boards to save $10. The VAST majority of motherboards have been and are 4 slot designs with 2 slots per bank in dual bank (channel) configurations. All the mainstream northbridge chipsets have been using this configurations for years, along with all the AMD Athlon/XP/X2 chips (memory controller on-die).
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=81051\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
My guess is you build your own boxes. Most just ring up dell. I haven't looked today but the core duo desktops were all two slots, only the XPS offered more at a higher price. I would hope with the core 2 duo, they would fix this, as vista is just around the corner. We have ton's of HP's in the office with P4 processors with 2 slots.
Oh well, doesn't matter. As long as Tim is happy.
BTW, Tim I have the same Vaio (preceeded the Mac). Had two slots, was able to put two 1 gig dimms in. Passed on the 512's to the less fortunate, but memory is cheap!!.
bob
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I'm looking at the higher end HP notebooks to parallel my desktop, you can get a 2ghz with 2 gig ram (upgradeable to 4) at a relatively price (£8-900 on ebuyer) these days, you can get an even better processor as well. As my desktop is a dual 2ghz with 2 gig ram I doubt that I will be too bothered by any comparison in processing speed.
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Hi All!
Also, sorry for the late response to this post. This site and discussion area are true gems!
Most salient issues regarding performance have been well addressed here - memory being most important. One often overlooked optimization used by database admins (i'm one) is "short stroking" the hard drive subsystem. Essentially, this is using only part of the available storage on the drive (via partitioning), effectively reducing the average head seek and data transfer rates.
In an excellent article ZDnet's George Ou discusses this:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=322 (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=322)
I tend to distrust articles that don't "do the math"; George does, with links to back it up. I can only attest that many DB admins have been doing this for years. My approach, of course, is to go ahead and pay the premium price, using the highest RPM drive available (10K rpm) and then short stroke it in my Dell laptop. I'm not worried about large capacity as everything gets archived off to a server with multiple 300gb drives at home . . .
If you have the patience to suffer through a re-partition then complete O/S + Application re-install, I *strongly* recommend this - you *won't* look back!
Regards - John
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I think one of the comments made to that blog sums up my feelings exactly - fuzzy math. If I get the time at the office tomorrow I will actually test his theory on a couple of my drives and do back to back sandra tests. My guy feeling is the results will be nowhere near as incredible as that suggests they should be. Frankly, if that kind of free speed was available by such simple setups - the gaming community would have been using it for YEARS. The facts is - they are not, not at all.
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Here's the short answer:
The best laptop configuration will be equal to a mediocre desktop and cost 2-3x as much.
The best laptop monitor panel will be nowhere near good enough for final color correction. Good enough for on-site work, for basic editing, yes. All of the workflow? No way.
This goes for both PC and MAC, although the performance gap between the best laptop and best desktop is even wider with a MAC due to the better possible config of a MAC desktop specifically for PS over a PC (You are talking $10k+ though).
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=80508\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Hi Kaelaira,
the better configurations with the Mac desktops, is that due to the millions of new configuration options you now have with the new Intel Macs?
Tim,
Laptops are compromises, they are for the quick and dirty on the road. For some they can act as a substitute for a desktop but not for workstation style computers be it mac or PC
Henrik
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There are actually exponentially more options for a PC, but some that are still only MAC. Primarily those involving the use of larger amounts of addressable RAM, which is still very limited on MS Windows and the majority of PC hardware.
For example to get 8GB on a MAC you simply plug it in, and OSX will use it.
If you want 8GB on a PC, it requires very expensive server class hardware, and server operating systems to address it. Then there's the fact that PS won't use it all on a PC yet regardless (3GB max seen by PS on a PC).
RAM size is the biggest contributor to PS performance followed by CPU number and speed. That, however is more than matched on the PC side, so it's neither pro nor con for either platform.
Other than that, the current MACs are so much a standard PC that it's a draw performance wise except for the handful of apps that can take advantage of the greater potential ram on a MAC.
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And yes, I build many, many PCs - both for cutting edge performance (my personal units), 50+ workstations at the office, 3 windows based and one linux based servers, and one lone MAC, used primarily by my wife (she's a 2nd grade teacher).
Along with 40+ I build and sell every year via word of mouth.
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I think one of the comments made to that blog sums up my feelings exactly - fuzzy math. If I get the time at the office tomorrow I will actually test his theory on a couple of my drives and do back to back sandra tests. My guy feeling is the results will be nowhere near as incredible as that suggests they should be. Frankly, if that kind of free speed was available by such simple setups - the gaming community would have been using it for YEARS. The facts is - they are not, not at all.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=81097\")
Actually, his math is crystal clear and well supported by the provided links He also never states that difference is "incredible" - rather a great way to get the I/O performance of an expensive high RPM drive on a less expensive one. The gaming community recognizes the fact that high RPM drives simply perform better.
My personal experience is that short stroking *any* drive makes a noticeable difference in overall system performance. Another advantage is that the extra partition can be used a store for user preferences and settings. In fact, during Windows setup the %ProfilePath% can be set to use this partition, making it very easy to blow away or upgrade the OS without losing any user or application data.
In any case a great tool for objective measurement of HD subsystem performance has been around for years:
[a href=\"http://www.iometer.org]http://www.iometer.org[/url]
Finally, Photoshop RAM usage is actually the same on either OSX or Windows:
OS X: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332270.html (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332270.html)
Windows: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332271.html (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332271.html)
In a nutshell, PS can directly use a bit more than 3GB on 64bit hardware. Plugins and filters can load above this for a total of 3.7GB. Memory above this to a total of 8GB is used as cache for the scratch disk.
hope this helps - John
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Not a 'bit' more - a LOT more. Yes, it uses up to 3GB for the file itself, .7 more for plugins and then the rest up to 8GB for scratch - that is STILL being used by PS and is a HUGE bonus, compared to a PC! In comparison, on a PC after 3GB, it's as is the ram simply isn't there! PS can not address it whatsoever, it's 100% wasted. The OS can use it, but not as scratch, so it's not useful to PS.
Tell you what - I'll take the time today to do some tests here. I have my second drive in this system barely used, I'll off load it's content to my file server and try different partitions and format schemes, run a few benchmark utilities and put this argument to rest.
I predict single percentage gains if any at all, based on it's lack of use in the industry alone. Just common sense tells me that if it worked, it would be used by EVERYONE looking for more performance, especially system builder & sellers looking for every fraction of a second, or professional organizations such as studios that put such high premiums on system performance and time. Heck, just look at the latest article/videoblog by MR - if Studio One could get more free performance, don't you think they would do such a simple change? Anyway, talk's cheap, let me get started on the tests I need to re-read the article now to be sure on what they want.
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Hi. I am looking to upgrade to a new computer for post production work and wanted to find out if a laptop would be powerful enough for my needs.
I shoot on a Canon 1ds mkii, process the Raw files to 16bit 96mb Tiffs in Capture one and do my colour correction in Photoshop CS.
At the moment I have a 3 and a half year old Sony Vaio GRT715M Laptop. It has a Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor, 1 gig of ram (it’s maximum) and a Nvidia Geoforce FX Go5600 video card. When I got it I was working with 36mb 16 bit files from a Canon 10d and with only 512mb of ram. It was fine for this. A year or so ago I brought my 1ds mkii and upgraded the laptop to a gig of ram. But the problem is, it is slow. For example, if in photoshop I opened an image (96mb), then made, say, a few curve adjustments in a row, the first couple would be fairly quick but by the third it would be hanging for about 10 seconds, then 15 seconds for the 4th adjustments etc. And the more complicated I make the images, if I start adding layers or making composites, it will hang for a lot longer. This can get pretty frustrating when making a lot of tweaks and adjustments, as I tend to do.
So, my thought is to upgrade but I have a few questions.
1. How realistic is it of me to expect photoshop to run a lot faster on files of this size? Ideally I would love to be able to have a much larger history or use multiple layers, without the machine starting to hang. Is this achievable?
2. I was looking at getting something along the lines of the HP Pavilion dv6174EA. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz processor, 2 gig of Ram, and a Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics card. I am not a computer expert so I am not clear on how big a jump this is in terms of processor and Ram from my current Sony laptop? Is it a far superior machine which would run photoshop a lot faster and leave me free of the frustrations of a constantly hanging computer? Or is it only a small jump and really I am not going to see any significant improvements. It would be great to hear any thoughts?
3. Am I being crazy expecting what I want from a laptop and should I get a desktop instead.? I really love having a laptop and it works perfectly with my workflow. I run it duel monitor with a Lacie 19” (if I got a desktop I would definitely get a second monitor so I could stay duel monitor). And I do often need to take it out on shoots, so if I upgraded to a desktop I would still need to keep the old laptop for location work, and then have the complication of having two different machines. So essentially, I would love to upgrade to a laptop but am I crazy for that, would all my problems be best solved going for a desktop? Also, just to mention, my budget can’t really go much above the cost of the Pavilion above, or a similar machine, £900 in the UK. Also all my software and knowledge is PC so I would rather stick with a PC for now.
It would be great to hear anyone’s thoughts. I know whatever I buy I will be relying on it for the next couple of years (but am not going to be upgrading my camera in this time), so I just want to make sure I get it right.
Many thanks.
Tim
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I know you said you are PC based.
Best solution, upgrade to a MacBook Pro running both MAC and XP PRO with 2gb ram but the budget a bit more £1750??? About a third of a 1ds ii in price.
If NOT, try Macbook running both MAC and XP PRO with 2gb ram - I think about £1000.00??? About a fifth of a 1ds ii in price.
I don't know if you are aware, MAC gets less viruses. Also recent test shown that MACBOOK PRO and MAC PRO runs faster than XP WINDOW machine with XP on Apple BootCamp.
So you get style, best of both world and still able to run your WINDOW app.
A laptop will NEVER replace a desktop. Because manufacturers can add more to desktop and also the heat problem prevent faster chip to add on laptop.
Canon EOS 1ds ii 16bit 96mb Tiffs is very demanding with Capture One, even on my Apple Quad G5 running Capture One can take a bit of time just high res jpg and QuickProof. So you are asking a lot from a laptop at least before manufacturers can solve the heat / power ratio.
Well, I am sorry to sound arrogant , if you can afford a Canon 1ds ii and processing file to the max, you really need fairly expensive computer to run - laptop or desktop!!!
RAW processing isn't for the faited heart computers. CHEAP COMPUETR AND HIGH END DSLR do not mix very well consider the SIZE of your file!!!
But ask yourself, do you really need to res up all your 1ds ii files to 96mb 16bits Tiff? Can you maybe say do 72mb 16 bit or 8 bits Tiff??? I archive a lot of PhaseOne 39mp files and it is getting a bit out of hand, at least for storage!!!
CORE 2 DUO isn't that much faster than CORE DUO, and I guess a powerful desktop is what you need PC or MAC. What you really need is a BIG BAD "MAC PRO" 3 GHZ with 4GB RAM (16GB RAM would be nice) at least running with either XP PRO or MAC OS X.
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Not a 'bit' more - a LOT more. Yes, it uses up to 3GB for the file itself, .7 more for plugins and then the rest up to 8GB for scratch - that is STILL being used by PS and is a HUGE bonus, compared to a PC! In comparison, on a PC after 3GB, it's as is the ram simply isn't there! PS can not address it whatsoever, it's 100% wasted. The OS can use it, but not as scratch, so it's not useful to PS.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=81316\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Sorry - Adobe's own documentation disagree's with you:
Windows
"When you run Photoshop CS2 on a computer with a 64-bit processor (such as a, Intel Xeon processor with EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, or Opteron processor), and running a 64-bit version of the operating system (Windows XP Professional x64 Edition), that has 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 Maximum Used By Photoshop number when you set the Maximum Used by Photoshop slider in the Memory & Image Cache 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, actions, etc. If you have more than 4 GB (to 8 GB), 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. "
OS X:
"When you run Photoshop CS2 on a 64-bit operating system, such as Mac OS 10.3 and higher, it can access up to 8 GB of RAM. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Maxiumum Used By Photoshop number when you set the Maximum Used by Photoshop slider in the Memory & Image Cache 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, actions, etc. If you have more than 4 GB (to 8 GB), 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."
-John
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Yes you are correct, as I am assuming everyone on a PC is using Windows XP not XP64, as it is largely an experimental, unused, unsupported, undeveloped OS.
Is *anyone* here using XP64 as their OS?
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Yes you are correct, as I am assuming everyone on a PC is using Windows XP not XP64, as it is largely an experimental, unused, unsupported, undeveloped OS.
Is *anyone* here using XP64 as their OS?
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I'm running it Kaelerian . . . . It was released in April 2005 Far from experimental, unused, and unsupported. MS has had 64bit support since Server 2003.
In any case I'll certainly defer any further discussion to your experience and judgements.
Take care -John
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That's one hand up...any others?
BTW the main reason it's so unpopular is the lack of drivers and software support I've played with it several times, but I have yet to have all my hardware supported at any given time. Performance wise, at the best, it's equal to WinXP. At worst, very slow, especially in some games (games drive the PC hardware market).
I have my test system setup ready to go, to test the drive theory...I'll have results very shortly...
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OK here's the first results, one WD 40GB drive, formatted to 37GB. Using Sandra 2007.
First run, full partition:
Throughput 41MB/s
Random Access Time 12ms
Second run, partitioned down to 19GB:
Throughput 42MB/s
Random Access Time 12ms
Third run, partitioned down to 10GB:
Throughput 41MB/s
Random Access Time 12ms
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Back to the original Question for a moment and this may be of interest to others.
I purchased a mac book Pro only about 4 weeks ago - to be honest I was less than happy with its performance running CS2 and Lightroom. So much so I took it back and got my money back. It was just to slow for my liking. Even rendering RAW images in DPP was too slow. I wasnt a fan of OSX either - but thats beside the point and was not a factor in returning it.
I bought a Dell Precision M90 Laptop - Duo Core 2 2.33 Ghz, with 4 Gig DDR2 Fast RAM with 100 Gig 7200rpm drive and a NVIDIA Quadro FX GO 2500M 512 mb Video card. It ABSOLUTELY HAMMERS and runs CS2 at lightning speed.
Rendering of RAW files is virtually instant from a 5D 12mb RAW file and I can batch process about 30 images in less than two minutes to 16 Bit Tiff files. Photoshop is super quick - Photokit sharpen plug in completes its Capture Shapren of a 5D 16 bit Tiff by way of example in about a second - as opposed to the mac which took about 4 seconds.
I should note this was not an inexpensive laptop - in excess of $4000 US dollars as spec'd - a lot of that cost was in the RAM as each RAM chip is 2 Gig. 4 Gig RAM is overkill and really not required - I just needed a TAX write off so it seemed a good idea at the time.
Back to the question however - YES you can run Photoshop on a laptop with no speed problems.
Late Edit - Is*anyone* here using XP64 as their OS?
Yes - no problems running it with the CS2 suite on my machine.
another late edit - you could build a desktop that would eat my laptop for breakfast when comparing sheer raw speed - mostly due to the Hard disk speed difference and the ability of the desktop to run a striped RAID set-up for the same amount of money - but.. and its a big but for me... there is no portability with a desktop and I wouk in the field a LOT.
My workflow is best suited to a high end laptop - which I now plug into an external monitor when working in the studio - so I would base any deicsion on where nd how I wanted to work and then purchase the appropriate hardware.
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OK here's the first results, one WD 40GB drive, formatted to 37GB. Using Sandra 2007.
First run, full partition:
Throughput 41MB/s
Random Access Time 12ms
Second run, partitioned down to 19GB:
Throughput 42MB/s
Random Access Time 12ms
Third run, partitioned down to 10GB:
Throughput 41MB/s
Random Access Time 12ms
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=81374\")
Interesting results . . . however did you notice the *measured* hard drive size as reported by Sandra? Like many (if not most) disk benchmarks. Sandra calculates preformance based on hardware drive size reported by the system BIOS . This is exactly why you would not see any difference based on partitioning alone.
I also performed benchmarking over the weekend and included Sandra. In addition I included results from Iometer which *does* respect disk partitions and is more indicative of real world results (Iometer was originally developed by Intel and is now open sourced - there are binaries available for nearly any platform - [a href=\"http://www.iiometer.org]http://www.iiometer.org[/url] )
Test system: 3 year old Dell Laptop (D800) Intel 1.6Ghz "Centrino" proc/855 chipset. 2 Ghz RAM. Drive is a spare 20GB 4200/RPM IBM (Hitachi) w/ATA66 interface. WinXP SP2. Network adapters, and all radios disabled.
Tests on system with HD partitioned to full capacity
Sandra:
SiSoftware Sandra
Benchmark Results
Drive Index : 18 MB/s
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.
Random Access Time : 19 ms
Results Interpretation : Lower index values are better.
Performance Test Status
Run ID : PGM02-Full on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 11:35:21 AM
Processor Affinity : No
System Timer : 3.6MHz
Use Overlapped I/O : Yes
IO Queue Depth : 4 request(s)
Block Size : 1MB
Volume Information
Capacity : 19GB
Benchmark Breakdown
Speed at position 0% : 17MB/s (96%)
Speed at position 3% : 18MB/s (99%)
Speed at position 6% : 17MB/s (93%)
Speed at position 10% : 18MB/s (100%)
Speed at position 13% : 17MB/s (96%)
Speed at position 16% : 17MB/s (93%)
Speed at position 20% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 23% : 16MB/s (90%)
Speed at position 26% : 15MB/s (85%)
Speed at position 30% : 16MB/s (86%)
Speed at position 33% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 36% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 40% : 15MB/s (83%)
Speed at position 43% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 46% : 14MB/s (79%)
Speed at position 50% : 15MB/s (80%)
Speed at position 53% : 14MB/s (78%)
Speed at position 56% : 14MB/s (79%)
Speed at position 60% : 14MB/s (77%)
Speed at position 63% : 13MB/s (74%)
Speed at position 66% : 14MB/s (75%)
Speed at position 70% : 13MB/s (70%)
Speed at position 73% : 13MB/s (70%)
Speed at position 76% : 12MB/s (68%)
Speed at position 80% : 12MB/s (67%)
Speed at position 83% : 12MB/s (66%)
Speed at position 86% : 11MB/s (60%)
Speed at position 90% : 11MB/s (60%)
Speed at position 93% : 10MB/s (56%)
Speed at position 96% : 10MB/s (56%)
Speed at position 100% : 10MB/s (54%)
Random Access Time : 19 ms (estimated)
Full Stroke Access Time : 23 ms (estimated)
Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.
IoMeter:
'Version
2004.07.30
'Time Stamp
2006-10-23 11:46:06:753
'Access specifications
Total I/O's per second: 215.47
Average I/O Response Time: 4.6409
Maximum I/O Response Time: 46.7053
Tests on same system with the same drive partitioned to half capacity (short stroked)
Sandra:
SiSoftware Sandra
Benchmark Results
Drive Index : 18 MB/s
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.
Random Access Time : 19 ms
Results Interpretation : Lower index values are better.
Performance Test Status
Run ID : PGM02-HALF on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 12:47:53 PM
Processor Affinity : No
System Timer : 3.6MHz
Use Overlapped I/O : Yes
IO Queue Depth : 4 request(s)
Block Size : 1MB
Volume Information
Capacity : 19GB
Benchmark Breakdown
Speed at position 0% : 17MB/s (95%)
Speed at position 3% : 18MB/s (99%)
Speed at position 6% : 17MB/s (93%)
Speed at position 10% : 18MB/s (100%)
Speed at position 13% : 17MB/s (96%)
Speed at position 16% : 17MB/s (93%)
Speed at position 20% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 23% : 16MB/s (90%)
Speed at position 26% : 15MB/s (85%)
Speed at position 30% : 16MB/s (86%)
Speed at position 33% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 36% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 40% : 15MB/s (83%)
Speed at position 43% : 15MB/s (84%)
Speed at position 46% : 14MB/s (79%)
Speed at position 50% : 15MB/s (80%)
Speed at position 53% : 14MB/s (78%)
Speed at position 56% : 14MB/s (79%)
Speed at position 60% : 14MB/s (77%)
Speed at position 63% : 13MB/s (74%)
Speed at position 66% : 14MB/s (75%)
Speed at position 70% : 13MB/s (70%)
Speed at position 73% : 13MB/s (70%)
Speed at position 76% : 12MB/s (68%)
Speed at position 80% : 12MB/s (67%)
Speed at position 83% : 12MB/s (66%)
Speed at position 86% : 11MB/s (60%)
Speed at position 90% : 11MB/s (60%)
Speed at position 93% : 10MB/s (56%)
Speed at position 96% : 10MB/s (56%)
Speed at position 100% : 10MB/s (54%)
Random Access Time : 19 ms (estimated)
Full Stroke Access Time : 23 ms (estimated)
Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.
IoMeter:
'Version
2004.07.30
'Time Stamp
2006-10-23 13:03:06:502
'Access specifications
Total I/O's per second: 261.43
Average I/O Response Time: 2.6245
Maximum I/O Response Time: 28.2249
Although benchmarks are usefull, it's important to determine *exactly* what is being measured. Sandra is certainly usefull for comparing different physical drives, it is not however, a valid measure of "real world" data I/O. IoMeter with it's support for network and san storage systems on the other hand is. That is why database and network admins use it.
In any case, short stroking *does* offer real performance advantages at a great price
Addendum:
For grins I thought I would include results from the (full stroked) drive that normally lives in the above described laptop, a Hitachi 60GB 7200RPM unit w/ATA100 Interface.
IoMeter:
'Version
2004.07.30
'Time Stamp
2006-10-23 15:02:52:217
'Access specifications
Total I/O's per second: 645.83
Average I/O Response Time: 1.5417
Maximum I/O Response Time: 54.5654
hth - John
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OK let's go beyond benchmarks - come up with an actual real world example in PS on an image - create an action that will take a couple minutes and let's see what actual real world testing gives. I'm very curious now.
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OK let's go beyond benchmarks - come up with an actual real world example in PS on an image - create an action that will take a couple minutes and let's see what actual real world testing gives. I'm very curious now.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=81855\")
Absolutely Working on it now, will report back.
[a href=\"http://driverheaven.net/photoshop/]http://driverheaven.net/photoshop/[/url] looks promising in that there's a ton of collected data to comapre results to.
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Back to the original Question for a moment and this may be of interest to others.
I purchased a mac book Pro only about 4 weeks ago - to be honest I was less than happy with its performance running CS2 and Lightroom. So much so I took it back and got my money back. It was just to slow for my liking. Even rendering RAW images in DPP was too slow. I wasnt a fan of OSX either - but thats beside the point and was not a factor in returning it.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=81703\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I'm in the market for an upgrade, and have also been wondering about using a MacBook Pro as my primary machine with an external monitor for when I'm back at base. I am surprised and slightly dismayed to hear about your experience. I assumed a 2.3Ghz chip with 2GB RAM would be fine for RAW conversion and moderate PS work. I was hoping to run Lightroom or Aperture on it, with colour correction and limited editing in PS.
FWIW, I currently run a P4 2.8 Ghz PC with 1GB ram (4 years old and maxed out on RAM) and rather like the user who started this thread, it runs Rawshooter perfectly well, but begins to bog down in PS. I also have a laptop, and find it a pain to have 2 systems, hence the idea of a powerful laptop as a primary machine.
My budget is around £1500. Sounds like a Mac Book Pro would be a bad choice. Maybe i'll see if I can try one at the Apple store in town.
Julian
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I got a 17" PowerBook G4 for location work, but I find I'm using it for more and more Photoshop work, Canon 5D shots up to stitched shots from a P25 on a sliding carriage.
It's not as fast as my desk top, no where near, but sometimes speed isn't everything. Sometimes a new and different idea means more than the hurry up, and for those happy occasions it's great to be able to take a job to a more convivial space. I wouldn't use the PowerBook screen for pantone referenced pack shots, but I don't do too many pantone referenced pack shots so it's not really a problem!
If you need to batch process lots of shots, then you'll need an appropriate set-up, but if your work is about fewer better shots without being under a deadline cosh then you've got more options, one of which is a laptop.
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Hi,
Thanks to everyone who commented on this thread, greatly appreciated.
So…. I went for a desktop in the end, a Dell Dimension 9200 with an Intel Core 2 duo 2.4Ghz processor, 2 gig of Ram, 320gb SATA 7200Rpm hard drive and a Nvidia Geoforce 7900GS graphics card. Like I said at the beginning, I really wanted a laptop but got the feeling I needed to go the desktop route to get the speed I wanted within my budget.
I’ve had the computer for about a week and so far it’s great. Everything is so much quicker. Photoshop runs fast and there are none of the frustrations of it hanging after only a few history states that I had in the old laptop. I have done a little bit of editing with 2 or 3 layers and this hasn’t slowed it down yet. I haven’t done any major multiple layer jobs or composites yet. I would say there have been a couple of times that it has taken a while to catch up with itself (maybe a few seconds) when I am deep into history states (have it set for 99) but nothing that has been a problem. Capture one steams through the image previews and I would say processes my Raw files about 5 times as fast as the laptop. The overall experience is that I don’t feel slowed down by the computer, it doesn’t get in the way of what I want to do. But yes, my real world experience is that it is a significant jump forward from the laptop, and that is what I was looking for. Whether I would have gotten that with a laptop or not, I don’t know.
So it’s good, I have my laptop to take out on location to use for copying files to and previewing for the client and the desktop for fast editing work back at base. It works well.
Tim