I do not think that the linked RAM would be the best choice. Intel strongly recommend ECC RAM. UDIMMs in 1 and 2 GB density and RDIMMs in 4, 8 and 16 GB density.
True but I looked up ECC and it was the same price +/- $20 so I just let it ride. He can figure out what kind of RAM he needs separately from the thread. Good catch tho. Thanks.
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Much better advice. Nothing in Photoshop uses octo, it's completely overated. And the day it does, there will be much better chipsets at cheaper prices.
Or even better if it's like that, get a 2008 Mac Pro. It's initially cheaper, it's faster at some things, AND it's got 8 RAM slots!
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Wow! Seems like there are many ways to approach this issue. Even though I'm learning more about RAIDs and RAM discs I am also getting more confused. Dr. Pants and nanofrog seemed to be in agreement about an SSD boot disc for OS and applications and a 4X RAID 10 for speed and redundancy but then nanofrog agreed with flatfoot that a RAM Disc is the way to go. A few like gugucom and Tesselator think I need 48GB RAM to improve things. Then justit seems to agree with Tesselator that the octo is overrated even though I thought Tesselator was saying the octo is better because you could put more RAM in it. Also Tesselator claims RAID setups are a waste of time, contradicting all of you!
The confusion is coming from just one major difference. People who are generalists are answering questions in a thread where you specified Photoshop ONLY operation. If you're a generalist and use many applications (audio recording, audio editing, CD Ripping, Page Layout, DataBase & SpreadSheet, Movie Ripping, Developing / programming, etc. etc.) then you need to profile each thing you do and find out what it needs most, weigh that with how often you do each thing, and choose your system based on that.
For Photoshop ONLY operation it's rather easy:
Fact: PhotoShop takes 70 ~ 250 seconds to load a 350 MB layered image depending on layer complexity and modes.
Meaning: Photoshop does NOT benefit from fast storage devices like RAID or SSD much.
Comment: RAIDs are a waste of time and money for photoshop. Single drives will be about the same speed.
Fact: With 11" x 17" 300 PPI images containing about 500 layers the disk catch WILL see frequent use in 32-bit PS or in any low memory machine.
Fact: Photoshops's disk cache is EXTREMELY slow and dependent on device speed.
Meaning: Editing such files in Photoshop will benefit greatly from fast scratch devices like SSD.
Comment: Use an SSD (or two SSDs in RAID0) for your scratch device.
Fact: Editing such files is memory intensive. Approximately 4GB per image just to load one. Approximately 20 GB to 40 GB are used to do much editing.
Fact: While Photoshop is currently 32-bit the 64-bit version is scheduled for release (and inside sources say "it's almost ready" -(whatever that means)).
Meaning: While Photoshop under OS X will not currently benefit (very much) from 32 GB of system memory (over 8 or 12 GB) however, both the PC version under bootcamp and the 64-bit version when released, will benefit dramatically from 32 GB over 12 GB when editing such files as you describe. In many instances the speed increase may be measured in minutes per operation!
Comment: You should configure the system with 24 or 32 GB of RAM.
Fact: 4 x 8 = 32.
Fact: 4GB RAM modules are about half the price of 8GB RAM modules per gig.
Fact: Four 8GB modules is about $2,500.
Fact: Eight 4GB modules is about $1,200.
Meaning: It may be better to have 8 RAM sockets available.
Comment: Get an octad (2008 or 2009) which has 8 RAM slots - as the price difference is balanced out when you factor in the RAM prices.
Fact: About 10% to 15% of Photoshop's plug-ins, filters, and etc. can and do benefit from more cores through multi-threading.
Fact: The benefit varies from between 150% and 200% increase in speed.
Meaning: Some 1 to 5 minute operations will be cut almost in half with an octad over a quad - things like the lens blur filter and etc.
Meaning: Some real-time filter "previews" will also be dramatically sped up - 10 to 15 percent of them.
Comment: Get an octad (2008 or 2009) which not only has 8 RAM slots available, but is also up to twice as fast about 10 percent of the time.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm trying to show the logic here so you can weigh the comments in this thread for yourself and possibly show why the differing comments are being made in the 1st place. Everyone's usage is different and for them what they're saying is correct. For photoshop ONLY operation however the major determinations are arrived at from knowing how Photoshop works and what works best for Photoshop. The OS is also a factor but it's pretty much limited to booting the machine (happens once or twice a day), loading the Photoshop application (happens once or twice a day), and navigating to the folders to select the images.
Another factor that you haven mentioned and that may be a pertinent part of your decision is library handling. Applications like LightRoom or Bridge do indeed benefit from large/fast
storage devices such as a 3-drive RAID 0 or a 6-drive RAID 10. Loading, generating, writing, and previewing the thumbnails for a few hundred images can be kinda slow and most of the time taken to do so is based on the device I/O and seek speeds.
Here are some questions: I have read that Photoshop will only use 3GB of available RAM and then automatically begin to use the remaining available RAM as the first scratch disc. Is this true?
No. The extra RAM that people are referring to when they say such things are actually relegations to the OS. As just one example, when you select and copy a large section of the image the OS X clipboard is used. So, after hours of editing it can look like PS is using more RAM. Profiling the Photoshop application in something like Activity Monitor or better, will quickly show you otherwise tho. Photoshop has it's application space (about 3 GB I think) and it's addressable document space (about 3 GB total for all opened images) and that's it. But even though that "other" memory isn't owned by Photoshop it can still make things a
little faster overall - thus we see threads here comparing PS benchmark times between systems with 8, 12, and 16 GB that show some advantage to having more total memory available.
If it does that automatically why would you need a RAM disc?
It doesn't. But the reasons for using a RAM disk are primarily ultra fast seek, load, and save times. Yes, if you have buttloads of RAM using a RAM Disk as the primary scratch device can be very beneficial. When Photoshop goes 64-bit (or when using PS-64 in bootcamp) this will no longer be true as Photoshop's addressable document space will be ALL of the RAM you have installed.
If you install a good SSD disc and set it as the first scratch disc shouldn't that be as good as a RAM disc?
No, better IMO. A RAM Disk might be a tad faster but when you turn off the machine it's all gone. The SSD will retain the information for a years and years.
I like the idea of an SSD scratch disc. I read that SSD discs are great for read operations but not fast for write operations- could that make SSD a bad choice for a scratch disc?
No. They are still faster than single drives. SSD's are only slower at large data write operations when we compare them to "good" 3-drive RAID0 arrays. Also I think depending on the type of operations you're doing in PS that the cache is typically read many more times than it is written. So while the initial data write may be a second or two slower the 10 or 20 reads that follow are going to save minutes of time over a single conventional drive. The slow redraws that we notice are all reads. The progress bars when applying filters and such are the writes - generally speaking.
Several people have mentioned putting the OS and application files on an SSD- aside from faster program opening and a free drive bay are there any other advantages?
Faster boots. And the Operating System itself is constantly loading, caching, and off-loading modules (code segments, sub-routines, data caches, utilities, etc.) while you're using the OS itself and also while some applications which request such things are running. So yes, it could speed the the "feel" of the entire system. If you're pal (wife?) is primarily only using Photoshop however then there won't be enough of a difference to justify the costs. She loads PS what, twice a day? Boots the machine what, once or twice a day maybe?
That's a 30 second saving once a day for booting, and a 15 second saving one or two times a day for loading PS. If that's all she's doing is that worth the approximate $800 price tag? You're call.
Final question (for now). It was my understanding that the quad core maxed out at 16gb ram and the octo maxed out at 32gb ram. The point is really moot. That train has left the station- I'm getting the quad core and will put in 16GB RAM.
Well, 1st it may not be moot. Apple is very liberal with returns and exchanges. Call them to find out exactly. On to the question, there are 4 RAM slots available in the quad Mac Pro system. It has been confirmed that it will indeed accept 8 GB memory modules and it's my guess that 16 GB modules may work as well. So the Max is either 32 GB or 64 GB awaiting confirmation of the 16 GB modules. It's just that Apple doesn't offer it and therefor the "Configure You Own" and the official Spec Sheet say 16 GB max.
I found some more interesting things comparing my G5 dual 1.8GHz PowerPC with 2GB RAM to my WinXP machine with Intel 3.0GHz Quad core and 3 GB RAM.
Opening a 447MB file with 510 layers: Mac= 3:46 minutes WinXP= 2:25 minutes
Zooming in and out and pan around image with navigator: At first Mac was choppy and slow but this improved the more I did it. On the WinXP I could hear the hard drive working as I zoomed and panned but it became faster and smoother the longer I had the file open. I think with more RAM this is not going to be a problem!
It still will be a problem to some degree until you upgrade to the 64-bit version of Photoshop. That's the result of several caches and transfers being accessed. Mostly disk cache and RAM based file data to screen preview buffer(s) which it generates on the fly - thus as more of it is read in and "generated" it becomes faster and smoother.
Anyway the solution may be this: max out the ram, get an SSD just for the scratch, and get two matching drives. Try the 2 drives in RAID 0 and RAID mirrored and see if the RAID 0 is much better. If it is get more drives to make a RAID 10 or for backup. If the RAID 0 is no help then use the second drive as a mirror or backup!
Sounds perfect even though I didn't fully understand the last two sentences.
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I was going on the fact only the 32bit version is currently available (and what's being used by the OP's spouse), and no idea as to when the 64 bit version will release.
Adobe: "Our goal is to ship a 64-bit Mac version of Photoshop in CS5..."
Adobe photoshop cs5 (and the rest of the suite as well) should release on or about April 2010 based on the current 18 month product release cycle that Adobe has stuck with for the last 6 years or so. So, that's a little less than 6 months. I said "or a year" just to be totally safe but I doubt it'll take that long. Adobe Lightroom is already in a 64-bit version right?
I figured an array can both provide scratch space when needed, and if RAM disks are implemented, it can feed the memory faster than a single disk. Stupid bottlenecks...
Yup, it can but not very much and the impact on the user is negligible unless (s)he's opening hundreds of files per hour. There's only a few second's different given a over one minute to load the multi-layer file of the size being discussed. It would have the most affect on scratch I/O of course but to that end the SSD especially two of them in RAID0, is even faster.
I didn't have any idea as to when the 64 bit version would ship, or that it would still be stuck running 1 - 2 cores.
I doubt very seriously Adobe intends to alter the the entire architecture of image handling and processing from the ground up - which is what would be needed to improve multi-core performance anything close to linearly. Nah, I guess even if Adobe embraces Apple's Grand Central it will still be the same ~ 15% of photoshop operations that are multi-threaded. GC could likely make those a little more efficient tho.
As per the additional DIMM slots in an Octad, it would be nice to have now, and advisable for the 64 bit version. But I've no idea of budget. 8GB and 16GB (when they actually show), will be expensive. That should help drive the 4GB sticks down a bit further (as the 8GB sticks already have). They could become more of a "sweet spot" for MP's, as the 2GB sticks have been from the beginning.
So 32GB in the case of an Octad may not be horrendous in the near future. We'll have to wait and see.
Yep all true. For an advisory position the file being described here would need to be specifically considered tho. And of course we can look at what PS-32 is doing and make
very close guesses.
I thought you used the array to feed your RAM disk fast enough to keep the system usable (definitely should help on the initial loading at least).
True. Yeah, but I'm a fairly broad "generalist" as the term is used above. Also I don't generally use a RAM disk. I would if I had 64 GB of ram tho!
My biggest thing is 3D CG for film and TV and the way those applications typically work the computer loads sometimes 100's of texture images and CAD models per frame, renders it and then saves that frame. That cycle is repeated for the number of frames in the layer or clip being rendered. Over a 1000 frames is not uncommon. Then of course compositing those rendered layers and/or clips and editing them have their own set of requirements.
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Yeah, that's a pretty good link. If (s)he goes through it tho (s)he should test things out and always keep in mind the file size and number of layers being used as the specifics values and results can change quite a bit depending on that.
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