Lets find out who is photoshop savvy...

[steeleclipse]

RAM is cheaper than ever before, and I have 512 in MDD G4 Dual 867, but I was wondering if another 512 would make a NOTICEABLE improvement??? I am sure it would do something, but I am not into audio production, I do a little FCP work, it is most raster graphics, layouts and photo editing.

Does photoshop use RAM or processor power for rendering?

What are the biggest gains I would notice (ie: what software titles. etc)

Thanks

[Dont Hurt Me]

YES

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by steeleclipse
RAM is cheaper than ever before, and I have 512 in MDD G4 Dual 867, but I was wondering if another 512 would make a NOTICEABLE improvement??? I am sure it would do something, but I am not into audio production, I do a little FCP work, it is most raster graphics, layouts and photo editing.

Does photoshop use RAM or processor power for rendering?

What are the biggest gains I would notice (ie: what software titles. etc)

Thanks

512MB is just about minimum to run with OSX and a couple of apps open. Putting in another 512MB will give you noticeable improvements with FCP and OSX especially with additional apps open. Photoshop eats ram for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if there's any left over after that it will make a midnight snack of it.

[steeleclipse]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
YES

Wow! That is deep! I feel like we have known each other our whole lives! :D

[steeleclipse]

Little follow up to my question: Are macs usually able to identify generic ram or does it have to be proprietary???

[Dont Hurt Me]

To the point no playing around, By the way hows the family been doing?

[eyelikeart]

my rule of thumb is "the more RAM, the happier" :D

u will see definite differences going from 512MB to 1GB no doubt...especially if u use Photoshop extensively...

on my work machine...I'm still running OS 9 for production purposes...but it's a G4 400 w/832MB RAM...200MB allocated to Photoshop alone... ;)

[Kwyjibo]

Originally posted by steeleclipse
Little follow up to my question: Are macs usually able to identify generic ram or does it have to be proprietary???

I'm pretty sure it doesn't make a difference. Apple Ram is just a branded ram like if you buy Kingston or Crucial Ram, the bottom line is that RAM is Ram and thats all u need to know. I have a generic piece (384 from Coast2Coast memory) for my iBook and it works great. I would jsut mkae sure it has a lifetime warranty.

[bbarnhart]

The gains in speed you would notice are the times when Photoshop or Mac OS X for that matter, swaps memory to disk and vice-versa. If you had more memory it would not swap as often so it would seem faster.

If you're PSing 1 MB pictures, I don't think you'll notice anything, but if you working on 20-30 MB images, and you added another 512 MB of RAM, you might think it seemed 'snappier'.

Take a look at the top program from Terminal. Above the section when the apps are listed are pageouts and pageins. I'm not running Mac OS X now (I'm at the inlaws), but if the pageout value is high and keeps incremented, your machine would seem faster if you added more memory.

I've got 768 MB RAM and after using it for a week the pageout value was 8. So, I'm set for memory... for now!

[Choppaface]

I upped the ram in my G4 from 512 to a gig a while ago and got some improvement from photoshop when editing smaller files, but for editing very large files and series of hundreds of photos I noticed the biggest improvement when I got a new hard drive and used it as a scratch disk (18 gig SCSI seagate cheetah).

[steeleclipse]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
To the point no playing around, By the way hows the family been doing?

There great! Little Billy asks about you all the time! Kim wants to know if that rash cleared up... :D

[steeleclipse]

Well I just got back from the computer store

512MB DDR pc2700 for 60 bucks (100 CDN)!

Not bad huh? I applied a few filters in photoshop and there is a noticable difference.. .Thanks guys

[steeleclipse]

Originally posted by Choppaface
I upped the ram in my G4 from 512 to a gig a while ago and got some improvement from photoshop when editing smaller files, but for editing very large files and series of hundreds of photos I noticed the biggest improvement when I got a new hard drive and used it as a scratch disk (18 gig SCSI seagate cheetah).

What is involved in installing SCSI? Please be specific, as I know NOTHING about it

[krossfyter]

i have two 256 chips in my powerbook.


if i want to go with 1GB ram i will obviously have to get rid of the two chips i have know and go get two 512 chips.


how do i best do this without spending too much money? can i trade in my two 256 chips for two 512 chips and pay the difference?

or whatever else?

[steeleclipse]

Originally posted by krossfyter
i have two 256 chips in my powerbook.


if i want to go with 1GB ram i will obviously have to get rid of the two chips i have know and go get two 512 chips.


how do i best do this without spending too much money? can i trade in my two 256 chips for two 512 chips and pay the difference?

or whatever else?

uhhh... well I just quit working at the comp store by your house.... um I don't know.. I guess it depends on each stores policies on trade in....

If you don't have the coin right now to upgrade everything, keep one 256 and buy one 512 you'll notice the difference AND you won't feel as bad as you would if you abandoned two DIMMs in the same day :D

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by steeleclipse
uhhh... well I just quit working at the comp store by your house.... um I don't know.. I guess it depends on each stores policies on trade in....

If you don't have the coin right now to upgrade everything, keep one 256 and buy one 512 you'll notice the difference AND you won't feel as bad as you would if you abandoned two DIMMs in the same day :D


thanks. you were working by my house?
what city?

[thedude]

Seems that most people got the right idea. If you're working with 2k+ files, the more ram you have, the better, because you won't have to access the HD scratch disk as much. But again, like others have said, it depends on what you're working on. But hey, more ram couldn't hurt.