Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests About to give up on my PCs, comtemplating a MAC...

Any time I do graphics work on my computers (mainly Photoshop and Corel) they slow to a crawl and I usually have to shut down and restart the program to clear out the memory.

I'm working with files that are sometimes uncompressed TIFFs or Corel files a couple hundred megs in size. Any suggestions about things I can tweak? My PC's range from 1 to 1.5 ghz, 500mb to 1gb in ram, adequate swap file size, etc.

I've never owned a Mac before and never really wanted to, but now open to that possibility. Any suggestions on what specs, models to look for? Are used Macs a good idea? I just bought this current laptop a few months back so can't break the bank again.

Thanks!

For graphic editing on a PC you'll need about 2G of ram and 3GHZ+ single Proc or lower duals. 1.5 is simply not enough. What OS are you running?

If you are set on a Mac though, I can't argue with you.

-Andy

Running a few different Windows versions over a couple machines, 2k, XP Pro mainly.

I'm not necessarily set on a Mac, just exaspeated at waiting for my computer to finish its little lockups and having to reboot everyday because of some system crash.

So 3ghz cpu and 2gb of ram. Is Intel tops in the cpu game again? What kind of budget should I be looking at?

Open the windows task manager and watch what is maxing out all the time when the system slows down. Do you run out of physical memory? Or is it the processor that is pegged at 100% performing some operations. Normally its a ram issue for me, and I only run a PIII 1.0 GHz, with 756 MB ram.

I use GIMP for my image processing mainly now, and sometimes still Corel Photopaint. In either case as soon as I run out of ram and it starts using the virtual ram (hard drive swap space), the system starts bogging. Even with only 1.0 GHz, that really doesn't affect me too much unless I am running some complex operations.

Increase the RAM so you don't have to rely on a swap file. You can also go for some faster drives like a 10K RPM SATA (Western Digital Raptor) or some SCSI equipmemt.

AMD Athlon64 is the top of the heap these days on everything except for Media Encoding.

I recognize the lack of memory problem. My primary computer is a laptop right now, so I'm kinda constrained to the 512mb without spending more money and ditching some of the current ram.

When I'm working I can the memory page usage jumps up >500mb so the physical ram is all used up, and things slow to a crawl. The problem is, even after I finish close the files, and purge the history, etc the memory usage stays that high. I have to shut down the application and restart it - a real pain to do every 15 mins.

I'll look into doubling the ram on one of the desktops and switching to that. Thanks for the inputs.

I am running a 3.06E, with 1GB of Kingston Ram at PC3200. Photoshop still runs great. Haven't used corel in a long time I couldn't tell you. However when before I upgraded to my 3.06E, I was running a 2.53 Northwood with 1GB of PC2700 Ram Not sure on the brand. It also ran photoshop very well. even before I upgraded to 1 GB of ram, and was still running 512. Now when i had my 1.8Ghz and 512mb of PC2400. It also ran photoshop 7 very well. CS isn't much different now. It barely uses any more resources then 7 did. You can set photoshop to use more of your ram, and also get a program called Ram Idle, it will free up ram that is no longer being used, and just hasn't been released to be used again. Upgrading your hard drive will do nothing besides help loading and saving times for files. But won't be very notible. If you do graphics all the time, you should consider an apple. When I was in college I had the choice between Apple, or PC. and I choose apple everytime. When I got home I didn't have the luxury of that choice, as apples were at of my spending limit. Now that I have money I am playing on buying a Powerbook laptop to use for web designing and video editing. But it won't be till after Spring Zing as I need money for that first.

CPUs and Typical FSB Specifications
Processor, Class, FSB, Frequency, Theoretical Bandwidth
Pentium II 66/100 MHz 533/800 MB/s
Pentium III 100/133 MHz 800/1066 MB/s
Pentium IV* 100/133/200 MHz 3200/4200/6400 MB/s
Athlon** 100/133 MHz 1600/2100 MB/s
Athlon XP** 133/166/200 MHz 2100/2700/3200 MB/s
Athlon 64*** 200 MHz 3200 MB/s
Athlon FX*** 200 MHz 6400 MB/s
Opteron*** 200 MHz 6400 MB/s


Time to upgrade. The above chart describes how much info(theoreticlly) can be moved around your system using more up to date hardware. Your system would probably be a Pentium 3. Memory is important when doing graphics but your problem starts with the CPU and just backs up from there. Modern graphics software needs modern hardware. Apples are good computers but way overpriced. Buy a close to top of the line AMD 64 system and you'll be very happy and $600 wealthier!

I'm running an Athlon 2500 XP-M with 512mb of ram, 5400rpm 16mb cache drive. PSD files are up to 50mb in size, Corel files 50-200mb in size.

Granted it is a laptop with shared video, but do any graphics work and it starts on one of those harddrive activity light binges and I just have to wait it out. The problem is I don't have a newer desktop machine to compare to.

There are few laptops that can match the power of a desktop. Desktop CPU's have a larger cache on board allowing them to pre-fetch instructions to speed up processing. An AMD 2500 XP-M has a memory bus speed of 266 Mhz where as it's desktop equivalent 2500 XP Barton runs 333 Mhz. %25 faster. Desktop hard drives are running 7200 to 10,000 RPM with better air flow which enhances performance. If you were to RAID two hard drives(something that would be very hard to do with a laptop) you gain even more speed. All of these things combine to make a much quicker system. Heat can be another issue for laptops. The hard you work them, the hotter they get, the more the performance degrades. Is portability a big deal for you?