Processor vs RAM

[KdLaneJr]

It seems like every time someone starts to think about upgrading their computer or building a new computer many of the recommendations are for RAM.

When I built my current desktop, I maxed out the mother board on RAM. On too many of my prior builds I put in about half of what I would have liked to have had. Call it a decision of price point vs. performance. It's the same criteria I've used to determine which processor to buy.

Here's a screen shot of my desktop applying a surface blur to a raw file from a 1DsmkII.

24 gb of ram is installed in the system and while it looks like it's using nearly 10 gb of ram, it's really not.
I have a 6 gb ram disk as part of that 9.9 gb being used, leaving system use, photoshop CS5.1 extended, Bridge, web browser, etc. running along handily on 3.9 gb.

When I've tried to push the ram usage in photoshop, it's been nearly impossible to get above 8GB, unless I open way more raw files than I would normally work with. 12 gb of ram would have been more than enough for photo editing. This might be different if you are assembling huge panoramas and need lots of files, but the fact remains that your processor still has to crunch through that data. Don't skimp on your processor.

Notice that the cpu is at close to 100% on all eight processes. This is what I typically see when taxing the system doing photo or video editing. This kind of heavy processor use tells me that one of the best upgrades I could do to my system is to install a 6-core processor.

For informations sake, I'm running an i7-920 overclocked to 3ghz. My OS drive is a 600gb velociraptor and the "slow" portions of my system are the data drives, something I'm considering changing since they affect my video editing performance.

[Charles Putnam]

Ken

What antivirus/security suite are you running? Also, are there any programs (third party system utilities perhaps) that load at startup? The four core i7 920 should be more than enough for what you're doing without having to overclock it.

[KdLaneJr]

I run Avast Pro on startup. I know I could turn it off and unplug from the net when processing, but haven't taken the time to check on performance with the system configured for minimum running processes.

[Charles Putnam]

Avast shouldn't be a system hog. FWIW Microsoft Security Essentials is easy on both processor and RAM usage.

I'm assuming you're running Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate, correct?

[KdLaneJr]

Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

Surface blur is the filter that pegs the processor.

[Charles Putnam]

Ah! OK....that helps. What video card are you using? If it's Open GL 2.0 compliant, check your OpenGL settings under Photoshop's preferences.

[KdLaneJr]

EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, also overclocked. OpenGL settings in photoshop are good.

[d2creative]

I just replaced the hd in my macbook pro with a solid state drive and moved the original hd to the optical bay slot. HUGE improvement. Way more than any ram upgrade.

[Charles Putnam]

Ken

If I can suggest it - don't overclock. It's not needed.

[Rson]

PS doesn't use the video card much for actions and filters.

(See GPU and OpenGL features and preferences | Photoshop and Bridge | CS5, CS4)


Photoshop runs best on a well balanced system, I have a AMD 940, SSD drive main, 8gb ram and I will smoke most others. The systems I build do the same.

1: Can you tell me what programs are loading with your rig?
2: Can I have exact specs on your rig, Mobo, Ram, drives, etc.
3: How much RAM is on the MOBO
4: How big are your raw files...I would like to replicate here and get a benchmark

[KdLaneJr]

You're right, overclocking isn't needed, but it isn't hurting anything either.

I have another recent thread discussing my laptop and the upgrade of it's hard drive and ram. I'll probably upgrade the hard drive again, from the Momentus XT to an Vertex 3 SSD.

[Rson]

Where is the data coming from? SATA Drives?

[jeffkohn]

OK but how often do you use surface blur? That's a CPU-bound filter, as you've discovered, but it's hardly representative of typical Photoshop usage. Memory consumption will vary depending on lots of things. How many files are open, how big the images are, how many layers you have, how much history state is being cached. Layers and history state are the big ones as far as memory goes in my experience.

I will agree that 24GB may be overkill just for Photoshop, although if you multi-task while running Photoshop it may matter more. For me the real difference in going from 12GB to 24GB was that I can have Photoshop using several GB, PTGui using 10+GB, and still have several GB left over for the file cache and other apps.

I can't really say upgrading from 4 to 6 cores had any noticeable impact on Photoshop, for me. That may be because I use a fairly limited set of filters that don't necessarily scale with multiple cores. What 6 cores allows me to do is assign 4 to PTGui running in the background and still have two cores available for Photoshop or some other foreground task (letting PTGui use all available cores will drag system responsiveness down).

[KdLaneJr]

Originally Posted by Rson

Where is the data coming from? SATA Drives?

Not sure what you're asking here. If you're referring to my OP, the data (image) is already in ram when I run a surface blur on it.

[KdLaneJr]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

OK but how often do you use surface blur? That's a CPU-bound filter, as you've discovered, but it's hardly representative of typical Photoshop usage. Memory consumption will vary depending on lots of things. How many files are open, how big the images are, how many layers you have, how much history state is being cached. Layers and history state are the big ones as far as memory goes in my experience.

I will agree that 24GB may be overkill just for Photoshop, although if you multi-task while running Photoshop it may matter more. For me the real difference in going from 12GB to 24GB was that I can have Photoshop using several GB, PTGui using 10+GB, and still have several GB left over for the file cache and other apps.

I can't really say upgrading from 4 to 6 cores had any noticeable impact on Photoshop, for me. That may be because I use a fairly limited set of filters that don't necessarily scale with multiple cores. What 6 cores allows me to do is assign 4 to PTGui running in the background and still have two cores available for Photoshop or some other foreground task (letting PTGui use all available cores will drag system responsiveness down).

Exactly! Photoshop runs fine for me other than that one filter. What hurts me now is using the box for video editing. Adobe after effects really exposes system bottlenecks. The system actually performs very well, I'm just trying to get it to perform at its best.

Adobe forums hardware info indicates that moving from a quad core to a 6-core i7 brings an immediate ~35% performance gain in video rendering. My weak link for video editing is the speed of my source drive. I have a plan on how to fix that without resorting to raid 10. :-)