Athlon Processor & CS2

[coachgns]

I recently installed CS2 on my desktop, and, as slow as PS7 was on my machine, this slows it down even more.

I noticed however that Adobe says that it requires Pentium III or IV. It says nothing about Athlon. My computer uses an Athlon XP3100 @ 2.2 GHz, with 448 MB RAM.

Adobe also says that if you are doing multiple applications, 1 G of RAM is needed. But I think this applies to multiple Suite appliactions, doesn't it, not CS2 plus, for example, IE7?

Any advice on this?

Thanks

[masdog]

Hi Coach,

The Athlon is the equivalent of the Pentium series, and in some cases, it is actually superior to a Pentium.

There can be many reasons why PS appears to be running slow. Your operating system, and some of it's more advanced settings (like page file size and number of running processes including applications), will effect the speed of any application that is running.

The Adobe website lists the software's requirements as follows:

Windows

* Intel® Xeon™, Xeon Dual, Intel Centrino™, or Pentium® III or 4 processor
* Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 4, or Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or 2
* 320MB of RAM (384MB recommended)
* 650MB of available hard-disk space
* 1,024x768 monitor resolution with 16-bit video card
* CD-ROM drive
* Internet or phone connection required for product activation

When they state recommending up to 1 GB of RAM when running any other program, they probably mean any other program, not just CS2 programs. As your system only has 448 MB of RAM, you're just barely above the recommended, and when you factor in the minimum requirements for your operating system and other software you're running in the background, you're probably running short on system resources.

My two recommendations are as follows:

1) As you didn't give us many details about your system (operating system, manufacturer, software you frequently run when you also run Photoshop), my best recommendation is to add more RAM to your system. This will improve it's performance and make it easier for you to run multiple programs at once.

2) Provide more information about your system. Tell me about your video card (it does make a difference...especially if it is an OEM as onboard video can "steal" some of your system memory for it's own use), operating system, and other programs you like to run. Then I can help give you some customized tips to improve your system performance.

[coachgns]

Thanks for the help.
System in an HP Pavilion using WIndows XP with all updates.
I don't know about the Video card - how do I find that info?

Usually ahve IE7 and Thunderbird open at the same time. Sometimes use Breeze Browser at the same time (But that was more common when I was using PS7 than now with CS2), and occasionally MSN Messenger.

Task Manager shows 47 processes running, witrh a CPU usage of 7% most of the time. The largest are IE & Thunderbird. Page File usage 814 MB.

What I do not understand (also) is the odd amount of RAM - Where does 448 come from? This was a 512 computer - what happened to 64K of RAM? Is there a way to see if there is a bad 64K chip, and do you think that would make a difference?

[masdog]

Which version of XP? Home? Professional? Media Center? Tablet PC?

Thunderbird has some major memory leaks. On my system, it currently uses about 50 MB. I don't know about IE7's memory usage or behavior because I use Firefox. Windows runs a lot of services that you may not need...check out this page for more information.

The 64 MB that are missing from your usable system RAM have been assigned to the graphics chipset. It sounds like you have onboard graphics, and systems with onboard graphics give up some of their main RAM to render graphics.

For the time being, I recommend that you don't run other programs while running Photoshop. Also look at having a video card installed on your system if you have an AGP or PCI-E slot (an interface for video cards, you can only find that out if you open the case) and additional RAM installed.

[Medley]

You can also get into Preferences>Memory and Image Cache and increase the amount of memory dedicated to Photoshop. It's set at 70% by default- 313 MB in your case, which would be below minimum. Do this in small increments though, to make sure it doesn't interfere with your other applications. There's also a Cache Levels setting. Mine's set to 6 levels (don't know if that's default or not). More levels mean more memory and vice versa.

-Joe U.

[masdog]

Medley,

I really wouldn't recommend messing with those memory settings just yet. Since Coach only has 448 that is available to use by the system and quite a few running processes, it is not ideal to play with memory settings.

Like I said, the best bet right now is to add memory to your system.

[dave sz]

get 2gb of ram ASAP. It really MAKES a difference with PS..

[Sushigaijin]

I built my computer about 6 or 7 years ago, it has an athlon xp 1800+ (1533 mhz) and 768 mb ram, and an AGP nvidia GPU with 128 mb RAM onboard...it's an old rig and below spec for CS2, but it was a ferrari when I built it. It ran PS7 efficiently, but has started to drag on CS2. Photoshop is extremely power hungry for a single program, but I can still run it with some minimal lag (filters usually drag for a second or two, and sometimes the program takes its sweet time to complete some complicated processes). Take recommended system requirements with a grain of salt; they are suggested for optimum performance, but my budget won't allow that at this point and CS2 runs fine - not perfect, but fine. If your system is dragging, that's probably normal. If it bothers you, upgrade.

[masdog]

Erik,

You're still near the middle of the bell-curve for CS2's specs, and in some cases, you easily surpass them.

In the case of some Adobe products, the requirements on the box are the minimum. Have you ever tried to install a CS2 demo on a machine that didn't have enough RAM? It won't let you. A message box pops up telling you that you don't meet the requirements and exits the install.

Dave,

The OP never said how old his system was, so I'm not sure it will support 2GB of RAM.

[coachgns]

The system will support 4GB the specs say.
I increased the memory to 90% & it sped things up considerably, but with only a slight slowdown noticeable (if any at all) on other programs running.

Thanks for the assistance. More than I received from Adobe. This was the 2nd time I wrote them via their Support page, and their page said I'd be receiving a reply within 24 hours. But no reply either time.

[dave sz]

Erik,

You're still near the middle of the bell-curve for CS2's specs, and in some cases, you easily surpass them.

In the case of some Adobe products, the requirements on the box are the minimum. Have you ever tried to install a CS2 demo on a machine that didn't have enough RAM? It won't let you. A message box pops up telling you that you don't meet the requirements and exits the install.

Dave,

The OP never said how old his system was, so I'm not sure it will support 2GB of RAM.

most if not all k7(athlon xp) boards support 2gb of RAM.......

[masdog]

most if not all k7(athlon xp) boards support 2gb of RAM.......

But since I don't know the specific model the poster had, just that it was an HP, I didn't want to tell the person to buy a specific amount of RAM in case it turned out to be the wrong amount.

However, if the poster does decide to upgrade his system's RAM, he can easily find out the amount and order the product at www.crucial.com