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Amount of RAM needed for Adobe CS3?

fridgeymonster3

fridgeymonster3

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 28, 2008
493
14
Philadelphia
I'm a web designer that mainly uses Adobe Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. I also use After Effects, priemere pro and illustrator on occasion. I just bought the new 2.8 octo with the stock ram (2x1 gb). How much RAM should I have to get the best performance for Adobe CS3? Price also is an important consideration so i was going to go with OWC - i just didnt know what to order
 
Unless you are running those programs at the same time, or using rather large sized files or HD video, the 2 gig should suffice. I'm a firm believer that you can never have too much ram on a 64 bit workstation, but where economy is a factor, you will get by with what you have unless you do what I mentioned above, where you would likely experience sluggishness.

If you do use a lot of large files, and/or operate these programs at the same time, a boost to 4gigs would be money well spent. I'm not sure if you need to stick with the ECC ram, and I'm sure it's expensive! Good luck and congrats on awesome setup.
 
You will want to get Mac Pro RAM with the large heatsinks, like what OWC sells.

Get as much RAM as you can afford. For your case another 4GB (2x2GB) would be good to bring you to 6GB.

You can let Photoshop alone use 3GB of RAM (I do). I don't think you can specify how much DW and Flash use, but let them take as much as they want!

I'm a web developer and frequently have all those apps open, as well as Mail, BBEdit, iTunes, FTP, etc. I have 11GB of RAM, but that's just because of how/when I bought it.

I don't think you'll need over 6-8GB of RAM, unless you get into video/audio editing.

It's nice to not have to have your machine pageout to disk.

-Kevin
 
AfterEffects is multicore sensitive now right? And they recommend 2gb pr core. ;) hehe Apart from that though, 4 should serve you alright, but 6-8gb is even better, it helps a lot when you have all apps open at the same time, which I assume you have.

Matched pairs might mean you should get 4 or 6 1gb sticks, unless you want to go for 10 gb, which would let you put in matched pairs of 2gb sticks.
 
I get page outs with 8 GB using photoshop, but I edit photos for print so that might not apply to web graphic (lower res.). I do think 8 GB is an ideal number.
 
Can you mix RAM from OWC and the ones you get with Mac Pro? I am thinking of boosting mine (once I get it) to 6 GB by buying 2x2GB. The computer will have 2X1GB as supplied by Apple.
 
I use Photoshop CS3 daily, the more ram you have the quicker things happen particularly when using large files. I would suggest an absolute minimum of 4 Gb and highly recommend 8 Gb. The old adage "you can never have too fast a processor or too large a hard drive or too much ram" is true
 
Mac-HD said:
Can you mix RAM from OWC and the ones you get with Mac Pro? I am thinking of boosting mine (once I get it) to 6 GB by buying 2x2GB. The computer will have 2X1GB as supplied by Apple.
Click to expand...

I was looking to do the same thing but keep getting mixed messages from responses on here that this could possibly slow down your system... Could that be true?
 
bluecluee said:
I was looking to do the same thing but keep getting mixed messages from responses on here that this could possibly slow down your system... Could that be true?
Click to expand...

thats exactly what i did, my machine is much faster. but then again, im not doing extensive testing, im just going by actual use.
 
Awad - so you did mix Apple RAM with 3rd party RAM for your Mac Pro. Could you please tell me the exact combination? Also, was the 3rd party memory from OWC?
 
Mac-HD said:
Awad - so you did mix Apple RAM with 3rd party RAM for your Mac Pro. Could you please tell me the exact combination? Also, was the 3rd party memory from OWC?
Click to expand...

i got the 2x2gb from OWC, moved the stock apple ram to riser B.

so it was

Riser A = 2 x 2GB
Riser B = 2 x 1GB.
 
I ordered my 2007 version 8-core Pro with 4 GB, and bought an additional 4 GB from OWC, which works great and also saved me from paying through the nose for ridiculous RAM prices directly from Apple.


kbmb said:
You can let Photoshop alone use 3GB of RAM (I do). I don't think you can specify how much DW and Flash use, but let them take as much as they want!
Click to expand...

Is there some way I can make certain my Photoshop uses all the RAM I can? I had assumed it was automatic - but after seeing you write this I am curious. Even with 8 GB of memory, my machine will still get the hiccups for instance when I am batch resizing 50 high-res photos.
 
valdore said:
I ordered my 2007 version 8-core Pro with 4 GB, and bought an additional 4 GB from OWC, which works great and also saved me from paying through the nose for ridiculous RAM prices directly from Apple.




Is there some way I can make certain my Photoshop uses all the RAM I can? I had assumed it was automatic - but after seeing you write this I am curious. Even with 8 GB of memory, my machine will still get the hiccups for instance when I am batch resizing 50 high-res photos.
Click to expand...

Answered my own question - I looked in Preferences in Photoshop and changed it. Thanks... learning something new all the time.
 
Hold on a second!! Photoshop can only use a maximum of 3GB directly. So sure extra memory will keep your system up and running, but with a large project even with 7 or 8GB ram you will still get page outs because it's just the way Photoshop uses HDD space as cache memory.


8GB may help you keep open other applications at the same time, but if you only have Photoshop CS3 open, I bet there would be negligible difference if any between a 4GB mac and an 8GB mac of the same processing speed.

I went from 4 to 8 lately and it hasn't made one shred of difference to me in my quad mac pro.
 
MacRumorUser said:
Hold on a second!! Photoshop can only use a maximum of 3GB directly. So sure extra memory will keep your system up and running, but with a large project even with 7 or 8GB ram you will still get page outs because it's just the way Photoshop uses HDD space as cache memory.
Click to expand...

What?

This is a quote from Adobe:
Allocating Memory above 2 GB with 64-bit Processors

When you run Photoshop CS3 on a 64-bit operating system, such as Mac OS X v10.4 and later, Photoshop can access up to 8 GB of RAM. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance 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, and actions. 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. If you are working with files large enough to take advantage of these extra 2 GB of RAM, the RAM cache can increase performance of Photoshop.

So it can use up to 8 GB of mem, 4G by the application (up to 3 GB and the rest for the pugins. If you run Onone and Nik plugins... it is a must to be above 3 GB ;),. If you open large files and have lots of history states... you better have as much as possible (up to 8GB).

If you have a batch workflow, this is a must! specially if you plan to use your system for other things while a batch is running.:cool:
 
Remember not to upgrade to Quicktime 7.4 is you want to use After Effects. As for ram I would get at least 8 gb. (see the article at barefeats about ram for mac pros)
 
fridgeymonster3 said:
just go to Photoshop - Preferences - Performance and then you can change the settings for the amount of RAM PS utilizes...you can also change your scratch disk from there too
Click to expand...

Remember that Adobe recommends that you assign about 80% of available ram to Photoshop, not 100% which actually slows the system down.
 
Luis Ortega said:
Remember that Adobe recommends that you assign about 80% of available ram to Photoshop, not 100% which actually slows the system down.
Click to expand...

I think as long as you have enough RAM to cover your other open apps, setting to 100% shouldn't be an issue. Most likely you'd have to have over 8GB of total RAM.

-Kevin
 
Well I have 8GB of Ram, I have CS3, i'm on a 64bit operating system (Leopard) and MacPro Quad 2.66

I open the preferences & peformance tab and I get

mem.jpg

When I try changing the figure above the slider to say 4096 for example I get the following error

mem2.jpg

I don't use third party plugins.
 
MacRumorUser said:
Well I have 8GB of Ram, I have CS3, i'm on a 64bit operating system (Leopard) and MacPro Quad 2.66

I open the preferences & peformance tab and I get

View attachment 100390

When I try changing the figure above the slider to say 4096 for example I get the following error

View attachment 100391

I don't use third party plugins.
Click to expand...

This is all correct. Within PS, you can only set it to use up to the 3GB of RAM. As stated in the post above, internally PS will use up to 3.7GB fir plugins. Beyond that, PS works in conjunction with Tiger/Leopard to use up to the 8GB limit as scratch space. This isn't a setting that you can change.

-Kevin
 
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