[filmscanners] Re: Re:Computer size(New Topic)

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

Rob writes:

> What size computer do I need so that I may
> work happily  with Photoshop and 200M scan
> file size.

The largest and fastest you can afford.  Seriously.

RAM is the most important.  You should have at least a couple of times as
much RAM as your image size to work at a reasonable speed ... and the more
you have, the better.  If you can afford and configure 10 GB of RAM, so much
the better.  You cannot have too much.

Next, the faster the disks you have, the better.  Having lots of RAM makes
the disks far less important, but they should still be fast, otherwise
Photoshop will nearly grind to a halt each time it needs to touch the disks.

Finally, the importance of processor speed varies with the type of
manipulations you perform, but here again, faster is better.  A single
processor at 1 GHz is preferable to two processors at 500 MHz each, since
most Photoshop operations cannot be spread over multiple processors.  But if
you are held back by RAM or disk, a faster processor won't make much of a
dent in your working speed.

> I now have a P3 800  / 780M ram  + scratch disk.
> This  is using sometimes 3G  PShop memory and is
> taking heaps of time to process.

Triple the amount of RAM, if your machine allows it, or simply buy and
configure as much RAM as you can afford, up to the maximum on the machine.
That will make a _huge_ difference.

If you still see disk activity after adding as much RAM as you can, try to
get faster disks.

If you finally have added enough RAM to eliminate disk I/O and/or you've got
the fastest disks and the most RAM you can get, and you still want more
speed, consider a faster processor.  Usually, though, RAM will provide the
biggest jump in speed, and may well be enough alone to fix your problem.
Disk will provide another, somewhat smaller jump.  Processor will provide a
significant jump only if RAM and disk are already adequate, as Photoshop
tends to spend a lot more time I/O-bound in most configurations than it does
processor-bound.  You can get a feel for the influence of processor power by
comparing the time required for a Gaussian blur to that required for a
motion blur or radial blur (the latter requires a lot more processor time
than the former, but not really any more memory or disk); the bigger the
difference, the more processor-bound your machine currently is (if you see
no difference, you need more RAM, or failing that, faster disks).

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