Speed- give me what I need !!!?

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.

pparks1 said:

LuzTeTT said:

No, he doesn't "need" it, he wants it. Photoshop loves to play with RAM, and the faster your RAM the better. You might want to look up the definition of 'DDR' as well.

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).

You are right on the OC stats- there are a zillion posts around with relative newbies OC'ing to 4 GHz with stock cooling, slow-ish RAM and a little advice, running virtually the same gear with, in many cases, a CPU slightly below the 9550

There is definitely room for a little tweaking even with current hardware, but I figured I would upgrade whatever will benefit the OC the most, before I go heating the room up !

Cheers lads.

Must be hot in NT dude- it's friggin 35 here.

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.

If I do upgrade RAM, what config should I use with the sticks in order to maximise the effect- ? I know it is wiser to go *Gig of the same brand, speed etc; but can I get away with just adding 4 Gig of faster RAM or will the effort be pointless without replacing the whole lot ?

pparks1 said:

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.

Sweet- I have a disgusting amount of fonts and have resorted to running a sideline font program instead of installing them all- 5000 fonts take forever to load and slows down the system to Commodore 64-speed. I could definitely benefit from faster startups...and 3 secs is lightning for PS.

Your ram is going to run at most, the speed of the slowest RAM in the system. But like I said, unless you are overclocking the FSB to over 400Mhz..you won't be maximizing the DDR2 800Mhz ram that you currently have.

Makes sense thanks mate.

Do better font management. I wish that Adobe still made ATM as it was very helpful. The more fonts you have loaded in your system the slower your computer will run and boot up.

Tone said:

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.

funny

@ slowrey

Tone said:

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

????