Windows 7: Speed- give me what I need !!!?

In his original post, he indicated that he "might" perform a "slight" overclock. Thus DDR2 800 provides plenty of overhead for that.

A stock Q9550 runs at a 333 Mhz FSB with an 8.5 multiplier. DDR2 800 can handle a 400Mhz FSB speed and maintain a 1:1 ratio with the CPU. So, unless he bumps up the FSB to at least 400Mhz..he still wouldn't be maxing out the RAM that he currently has installed. 400mhz x 2 = 800Mhz At stock clock speeds, his DDR2 800 RAM is actually running at DDR2 667 speeds (333mhz FSB x 2).

Bumping to 8GB of RAM and moving to 64-bit should improve things with Photoshop for you. I'd start there as it's cheap and easy to do.

If you want faster performance across the board (booting up, starting apps and shutting down), consider going for the SSD drive. The almost non-existent random access times make application launches extremely fast. While not a photoshop user myself, I believe it opens in less than 3 seconds on an SSD drive.

Sorry for the Duble post- overclocking shouldn't be a problem- i will just ascend in stages and see how she holds.

and anything CS4, especially Photoshop just chews up RAM, especially when working from large multiple files in high res.

Thanks for the adviice- and for the record- you BOTH had something useful to offer, so high five each other and hug in a purely hetero way.

I have a disgusting amount of fonts and have resorted to running a sideline font program instead of installing them all- ...