XP w/SP3 and 4G of RAM

Hi


More ram does help but to get to 4GB then you really need a 64bit Windows version to take advantage of that amount of ram, and soem info here that might be of interest to you http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/320/320005.html do the monitoring of RAM on the images you generally adjust. Laso check this out http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/331/331372.html

What I would try is the scratch disks and if you have a 2nd HDD then add a Photoshop scratch disk to that disk over the main HDD.

But with 2GB ram your likely not to see much of an increase in performace over having 4GB unless the images you are using are huge and your doing alot of image manipulation with filters etc RAM is always good to have but comes at a cost and to maximise it you'd have to run XP x64, Vista X64, Windows 7 x64, which is an additional cost.

 

Hi

Scratch disks are pretty much like a Virtual Drive that is like the Windows Virtual Memory thats used if you run out of ram to run applications or hold data, but in Photoshop it tensds to work better if the Scratch Disk is not on the same driver as Windows VM, so worth moving it to your secondary drive.


As I should have asked what version PS your using as you didnt mention I can give you the steps to setting up a scratch drive in PS CS3/CS4 (should be same in virtually all versions of PS as Adobe dont check much in prefs)

Open PS and click Edit > Preferences > Performance and you should see a listing of your HDDs like below, in that window untick C: and tick your other drivers letter (mine I choose F: as its a fast drive with loads of space)

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/138/76066704.jpg

Also note the message highlighted in blue as Adobe as mentioned in that LB article from PS2 they advice using scratchdisks on seperate drives fromt he boot disk to gain some speed, I wouldnt say its much but works.

Also what I would do to test ram usage is to open up Task Manager and click Performance, and note the Memory usage, then with Task Manager still open, run PS and load the type of image you would use and then just run a filter (Artistic > Watercolor is fairly intensive one) and then check your Memory usage, how much different is it to not running PS with Image loaded and how much is being used % wise, Physical Memory, listed on bottom of Task Manager?