Photoshop, RAM and Scratch Disks

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Mike Farley
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Photoshop, RAM and Scratch Disks

Postby Mike Farley » Wed 02 Sep 2015, 08:09

Some advice on configuring a computer to run Photoshop. While the author is referring to Apple's OS X operating system, the comments apply equally to Windows.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... mance.html
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)
Mike Farley
Posts: 7316
Joined: Tue 11 Sep 2012, 16:38
Contact:

Re: Photoshop, RAM and Scratch Disks

Postby Mike Farley » Wed 02 Sep 2015, 23:11

Looking through the comments on the blog post to which I linked, it is clear that the way to improving Photoshop performance is not through horsepower, but by having lots of RAM, followed by a fast scratch disk. A faster CPU comes a distant third and the author of the blog article reports that he is using a 2009 iMac with 16 GB RAM without any performance issues.

  • RAM - I would recommend a minimum of 8GB, more if you use a lot of layers when processing images. I have just upgraded my PC to 16 GB and it is noticeable that everything is running just a bit more smoothly. Best of all, RAM is cheap and an upgrade represents good value.

  • Scratch disk - Photoshop uses a scratch disk when it runs out of physical memory and needs to store its data somewhere. If you boot from a conventional hard drive with spinning bits, having the scratch disk on the same drive will slow things down as there will be contention with the operating system. The heads will be constantly moving around from one place to another, which means that time will be lost when they could instead be reading or writing from/to the disk. The solution is either to have a dedicated hard drive, which does not have to be very big so will be inexpensive, or install a SSD. Since the latter have better performance and no moving parts, it can be shared with the operating system and 256 GB will be sufficient. Be aware that not all SSDs are created equal and the cheapest ones will be unlikely to perform as well as those which cost a bit more.

  • CPU - this is an expensive upgrade and will probably require other components such as the motherboard and RAM to be replaced as well. Most processors manufactured in the past few years will have more than enough grunt to run Photoshop, although the extra power will speed up some computationally intensive operations such as Raw conversion and panoramic stitches. Unless you require a faster processor for other purposes, it's an expensive way to achieve modest improvements to Photoshop performance.
Regards

Mike Farley
(Visit my website and blog - www.mikefarley.net)

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