mem upgrade?

[yamaha83]

so i have an HP dv6780se it had windows xp on it and i wiped everything when trying to dual boot ubuntu as a noob. Needing windows for photoshop i decided since im starting fresh i might as well get windows 7 and i loaded the 64bit version (didnt know the differences between 64 and 32 so just picked one... not sure if i made the right choice?) well im starting to get more and more into editing high res photos in CS5 and my computer takes FOREVER to run what seems to be just basic tasks. it freezes up and just wont do anything sometimes but i can still move the mouse around. i currently have 3 gig of mem in the laptop and i know 64bit windows can read more so i wanted to upgrade but found out i can only have 4gig? is this right? and if so, would it be worth it to get the extra 1gig or mem? also, can anyone help me do anything to make photoshow run better/faster? my hard drive is pretty full as well, would this slow things down as well?

 

[The Howling Wolves]

Welcome Yamaha83 to 7 Forums.

Most of the Graphic artist here have at least 4 gigs of ram but you need to let us know what graphics card you have.
Post back and let us know.

 

[cluberti]

If that's the Thrive edition of the dv6780 (hence the "se" at the end), it will be 3GB RAM, a T5450 Core2Duo, 250GB HDD, and an Nvidia 8400GS (256MB) onboard, if the HP site is correct. That should be more than sufficient to run Windows 7 (x86 or x64), so things being incredibly slow will need to be investigated. So, we'll start with basic questions - how long does it take to boot? What kinds of applications are you running on a regular basis? If you are doing a lot of Adobe CS work, this laptop might indeed not necessarily be up to the task (especially if you're filling up the drive with data and fragmenting it heavily).

 

[The Howling Wolves]

If that's the Thrive edition of the dv6780 (hence the "se" at the end), it will be 3GB RAM, a T5450 Core2Duo, 250GB HDD, and an Nvidia 8400GS (256MB) onboard, if the HP site is correct. That should be more than sufficient to run Windows 7 (x86 or x64), so things being incredibly slow will need to be investigated. So, we'll start with basic questions - how long does it take to boot? What kinds of applications are you running on a regular basis? If you are doing a lot of Adobe CS work, this laptop might indeed not necessarily be up to the task (especially if you're filling up the drive with data and fragmenting it heavily).

Great advice cluberti,
Should have read his first sentence and googled it.
Need more caffeine before helping others.
Not sure if 256 GB Nvidia 840GS will handle Adobe CS workload.

 

[yamaha83]

system info says Geforce 8400M GS. and for applications i mostly always have lightroom 3 and CS5 open and google chrome with a few tabs open. my hard drive is currently really full with 10 gig of free space. need to move some stuff to an external. but i didnt think a full HD would cause this many problems with slow downs and complete system unresponsiveness?

the thing that gets me is that i can be doing some retouch work on a picture and it work completely fine, then all of a sudden it slows to a crawl. or i can work on one image and it work and then work on a very similar image and it slow everything down? i should also mention that im working with 24mega pixal images from a full frame DSLR... so the file sizes are a little larger then normal.

 

[The Howling Wolves]

system info says Geforce 8400M GS. and for applications i mostly always have lightroom 3 and CS5 open and google chrome with a few tabs open. my hard drive is currently really full with 10 gig of free space. need to move some stuff to an external. but i didnt think a full HD would cause this many problems with slow downs and complete system unresponsiveness?

the thing that gets me is that i can be doing some retouch work on a picture and it work completely fine, then all of a sudden it slows to a crawl. or i can work on one image and it work and then work on a very similar image and it slow everything down? i should also mention that im working with 24mega pixal images from a full frame DSLR... so the file sizes are a little larger then normal.

You might want to PM PooManUK and see if he can help out..He is an awesome graphics artist here in 7F and would be more than happy to help you.
Arc is another artist to check with.

 

[yamaha83]

will do! thanks for the help! ill report back here with any insight i get just in case anyone else searching finds this.

 

[cluberti]

Once you get under 15% free space, it becomes very fragmented causing that hard drive to slow down (most laptop drives are also 5400RPM drives, which suffer a bit from spindle speed compared to desktop 7200RPM HDDs). They also become very difficult to defragment for the same reason - there's not enough contiguous free space to write the files out elswhere to defragment them.

Also, having those types of programs open at once is likely to use quite a bit of memory, and I would bet most of that 3GB of RAM is used - you may now be paging to disk back and forth to move things in and out of RAM to make space for those programs, especially lightroom and CS5. You should probably upgrade to 4GB if possible anyway, but 4GB may not even be enough to have those two heavy programs loaded at once.



Recommendations would be:

1. Move all of your user files off to another external drive (which is probably most of what is stored on that HDD)
2. Disable your paging file temporarily in the Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings > Advanced tab > Performance/Settings button > Advanced tab/Change button > choose "No paging file" and click the "Set" button
3. Reboot
4. Defragment - there are lots of good programs out there for this, although I prefer defraggler and Puran Defrag for heavily fragmented drives (and in that order - run defraggler first, reboot, and then run a second pass with Puran)
5. Re-enable paging file in the location from step 2 (click "Automatically manage..." checkbox" and click "OK" button)

At this point, you should have a relatively low level of fragmentation and Windows itself should run fine. You will have to determine what to do with your files long-term, as well as changing your usage habits if possible to not run Lightroom and any other CS5 programs at the same time (for starters). Otherwise, you will need a much beefier machine (probably a desktop or a laptop with 8-16GB of RAM, a discreet nVidia or ATI video chipset, and an SSD).

 

[PooMan UK]

Hiya Yamaha pal.

One of the problems with allot of graphics packages PS being one of them is they use a scratch disk. This is used by Photoshop to replace physical RAM. This is defined in Photoshop's preferences. To work best the program needs free space on the scratch disk equal to about 4 times your file size. If you do not have this much free space you may get an inadequate memory message while editing your picture. Normally it is best to either have a very large hard drive to work with or have a separate disc for use in image editing.
If you’ve got 4GB and are still hitting the scratch disk, you will probably see significant benefit from adding RAM. You could get up to a 40% speedup when working on large files that hit the scratch disk by increasing RAM from 4GB to 6GB.

Hope this helps a bit

 

[yamaha83]

ok, im going to clean up my HD and see if that helps! also, mem is pretty cheap but do you think it would be worth it to get the extra gig? since i have 2 slots and 3 gig... im assuming one slot has a 1 gig chip that i can replace with a 2 gig? or would it be better to get 2 2gig chips and replace both?

 

[PooMan UK]

If I was you I would increase your memory by as much as you can afford and by as much as your motherboard can take, it will be money well spent.

 

[yamaha83]

Hiya Yamaha pal.

One of the problems with allot of graphics packages PS being one of them is they use a scratch disk. This is used by Photoshop to replace physical RAM. This is defined in Photoshop's preferences. To work best the program needs free space on the scratch disk equal to about 4 times your file size. If you do not have this much free space you may get an inadequate memory message while editing your picture. Normally it is best to either have a very large hard drive to work with or have a separate disc for use in image editing.
If you’ve got 4GB and are still hitting the scratch disk, you will probably see significant benefit from adding RAM. You could get up to a 40% speedup when working on large files that hit the scratch disk by increasing RAM from 4GB to 6GB.

Hope this helps a bit

the problem is that i have 3 gig and i think my laptop can only hold 4? can someone help me confirm this? if this is not the case i would happily go buy 2 4gig chips, clean up the HD and call it good!

also, on the scratch disk, is it better to have the scratch disk be a deferent disk then that which the picture is saved on? so would it be better to have all my pics on an external drive, and have the itnernal drive be the scratch disk? or vise versa? i have a laptop with only one drive so that would be my only option.

 

[PooMan UK]

Well unfortunately you haven't filled in your system spec so it's difficult to tell what the max memory your lappy can take. But I presume the max is 4gb. So it looks like you will most proberly have to go with 2x2Gb sticks. As for the scratch disk it's recommended to use a different hard drive to your main drive where the OS is installed. You can have up to 4 scratch disks.

 

[yamaha83]

in the third post it was listed what i have but ill have to go fill the info in on my profile as well. thanks for reminding me! so if i go get 2 4gig sticks and replace what i have. get an external drive and set it as the scratch disk as well as clean up my internal drive should i get a lot better performance? or just a little? does the scratch disk need to be empty? or can i set it as the same external drive im going to try and store the bulk of my media files?

also, thanks for all the help everyone!

 

[PooMan UK]

Pal your lappy might not be able to use 2x 4gb sticks you will have to check your specs. The scratch disk doesn't have to be empty but the more free space you have the better, and cleaning up your main disk is always a good thing.

 

[yamaha83]

Pal your lappy might not be able to use 2x 4gb sticks you will have to check your specs. The scratch disk doesn't have to be empty but the more free space you have the better, and cleaning up your main disk is always a good thing.

sorry, i meant to say 2 2gig sticks :banghead:

 

[cluberti]

According to HP, that laptop can handle 4GB RAM at a maximum, so probably 2x2GB.
Product Specifications - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

 

[stormy13]

According to HP, that laptop can handle 4GB RAM at a maximum, so probably 2x2GB.
Product Specifications - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Which also means that unless the bios has the memory remap option in it, then adding a 4th gig won't make any difference as it will still be limited to around 3 GB regardless of whether he runs 64 bit or 32 bit Windows.

 

[DarkXeno]

The other item you can look into is using Windows 7 ready boost. By using a 4 gig USB drive you can give your system an extra 4 gig of "ram" to be used with your 3 gig you have in the system. I know it sounds crazy but I use it myself for my HP DV7 and it does help a bit when using programs that want more memory.

 

[drmaddogs]

I've problems with RAM myself, ,, have custom sys with I7 920 and have used multiple $500 video cards, ssd drives and no matter what "resources" I throw into the computer, with 12 gigs ram(6 sticks), 4 gigs seem to be researved for the O/S(operating system) and 8 gigs show up when checking available Ram... but the problem is that when utilizing windows task manager when the computer freezes up, it shows the lock up around 4 gigs in memory usage...
Towit.. going by all reporting window tools, it seems that 4 gigs of ram out of the 12 are not used.
I use some complex algorithms in a stock trading program that I run in multiple. It would be indicative of needing much more ram/chips maybe a server setup except for that whole thing with not showing in "task", more than 4 gigs ram memory when lockup happens. Some how, there is a limitation on access the system has towards ram built into windows 7.