RAM and Windows

windows xp doesnt use enough ram, and xp64, in my opinion, is virtually worthless because a complete lack of driver support.

I assume that almost everyone will create vista drivers eventually, whereas the xp64 drivers really just wont come out ever.

Vistas problems will eventually be solved most likely, so I would go that direction instead of towards an unsupported OS.

On the other hand, I am done with HP printers because of their failure to create drivers for relatively modern printers on new operating systems. Thats a whole nother issue, really, but check to see if all of your peripherals are vista compatible before committing...

XP is far from "unsupported".

You should consider a Quad Core with more level 2 cache. I just got an off the shelf Acer Veriton 6900Pro with 8mb L2 cache, 1066MHz bus, 4G Ram, 250G HD, XP Pro. It was $980 but is now up to $1028 at buy.com. Put in a second drive (500G Seagate Barracuda at Circuit City for $120) and am doin' fine... t

Hi Carter,

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa366778.aspx

I run XP64 as my core post-processing system, and it runs beautifully (quad-core extreme edition CPU, 4GB FAST Corsair RAM 680SLi MoBo, twin GTX 8800 graphics cards, dual 150GB WD Raptors, dual 400GB Seagates (mirror). Having said that, you will want to check that 64 Bit drivers are available for the things that you need them for.

Although XP64 is a full64 Bit OS, the problem you face is that Photoshop isn't - so even with 128GB RAM, photoshop isn't going to use more than 3GB (although the good news is that you can tell photoshop to use all available RAM, not the default 55%). WinXP64 will assign unused RAM as an extended disk cache, but I doubt you'll see much performance increase between 4GB and 8GB.

Keep in mind also that if you install a 32bit OS, you'll actually have less than 4GB to play with - the system can only address 4GB - but that doesn't mean that all 4GB are yours -> the system reserves some of the address space for it's own use, so you'd actually be closer to 3.5GB.

Photoshop does support quad core, but it's not suited to all PS tasks - technically you'd go faster most of the time with a dual core clocked to a higher frequency, but the difference isn't great - biggest performance gains come from removing bottlenecks - RAM is one big one, HDD performance is another (Hence the reason I strung a couple of 10,000 RPM raptors in a RAID 0 (striped array) config.

I've had a fair bit of experience with Vista in a professional capacity now - it's "OK" if you know how to tame it, but if I were building a PC solely for post-processing I'd still stick with XP64 (Vista is like a car with a trailer and 15 tons of accessories - you have to know which ones to turf, and which ones to keep). It should be a lot better after SP1 is deployed.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Colin

Whats interesting is with NT 4 the recomended ram is only 16megs; 24 with Internet explorer; and one can use it on a box with 2 gis of ram. Thus with a simple box with NT4 and 2gigs of ram; there is alot of actual ram available; and the number of active processes about 15 to 20. A laptop at Walmart with Vista with 1 gig of ram shows at idle 65 percent of the ram use and 78 processes going.

Kelly,

A lot of those Vista processes are supporting non-OS apps - The Vista PC I'm on right now is down to only 33 processes. A clean XP install usually has in the region of 28.

Personally, I'd like to see Vista come with a configuration wizard that disables unneeded services (like bluetooth wireless stacks, windows media player network streaming management, indexing etc).

Biggest issue with Vista is that it's just so resource hungry - a collegue of mine has just put Vista 64 on a PC with 8GB RAM - he said that "Finally it's performing like XP).

Thanks to everyone for this information. It seems that I might be best off with 4GB RAM and XP32 at this point, maybe not the best performance but should run just fine. My real intention was for this machine to just handle image manipulation and not be connected to the scanner or my 7800, so I was not as concerned with the latest driver support. Since I can't get the quantum leap in performance due the the RAM and Photoshop limitations, I feel like I will be better suited to get a good perfoming machine that is well supported.

Hello Carter... IMHP, you should stick with 32bit system for now, even if you choose to go with a dual-processor. The main issue with choosing a 64-bit OS is that then you would want to buy 64-bit Apps to run on it. And you might have problems finding a 64-bit version of the apps you want.

About XP, you can run a 32-bit version of Windows XP PRO on a dual-64 bit processor, like the AMD Turion64x2 processor, found in some Gateway laptops. I have been running Windows XP Pro on my Gateway AMD Turion64x2 laptop since the spring of this year. Aside from one hard drive failure, it has been a stable system. But the tech that set it up did say that the hardest part was locating all the correct drivers needed by all the specific components, so he advised me to make a DVD backup of the drivers folder, just in case we had to do this again.

If you select Vista, I would recemmend that you get the 32 bit version of Windows Vista Business Edition. I suspect that that version is more robust and fail safe than say, the Vista Home Edition.

You *can* run 32bit Windows Vista Business Edition with just 1GB RAM, as I'm doing that right now on a 2nd laptop, which is a Lenovo IBM Thinkpad. But, I dont recemmend that. On my Thinkpad, out of the box, the system was starting up over 70 processes. So, just booting the laptop, and getting logged in, but before running any apps, my system was already using up about 70% of that 1GB of RAM. Which doesnt leave a lot of space for major apps like Photoshop & your (big) digital image files. Eventually, I had to go in there, to Control Panel & Admin Tools, and (carefully) turn off quite a few non-essential services, just to get the # of background processes down to about 60. I eventually plan to upgrade to 2GB of RAM on that laptop.

So, my suggestion is to let 2GB of RAM be your MINIMUM, whether you choose XP Pro or Windows Vista. 3 or 4 GB RAM would be better (of course), but, in my opinion, 8GB is probably overkill.

I would also recemmend that you set the Page File on the system to be 2.5 X your amount of RAM. That way, if the kernel does detect that you might be getting close to running out of space in RAM, it can begin moving idle unused code from RAM to the Page File, and it will have plenty of page-file space to work with. That might be important if you start working with multiple # of image files with a major app like Photoshop, all in the same session.

If you dont have enough RAM, you'll see a lot of what's called 'disk-thrashing', as the system continually moves data back and forth from RAM to DISK (page file), and back again. That condition REALLY slows down the apps you are trying to run, and performance will greatly deteriorate.

Another issue with Vista is that some older pieces of equipment, like older HP flatbed scanners, are not supported under Vista, but are supported under XP Pro. (I found that out when I bought a used HP Scanner from a local thrift store. I found drivers for it for XP Pro, but HP said it would not support this product under Vista). This might be an issue for you, if you have older peripherals, like that scanner. In that situation, XP PRO would have the advantage.

Another suggestion is to *not* use disk RAID, as that, IMHO, is simply overkill. Instead, use that disk space for all your photography projects. It sounds like you are a pro, and will therefore be working lots of shooting projects. Its going to take a lot of space to store all the pics, associated files, and secondary files for each project. If you dont use RAID, you'll have 2X the practical disk storage capacity.

Finally, make sure you get at least a DVD burner drive, so you can make regular system backups of all your photography project folders. And a package like NERO 8 will provide all the tools necessary to back up your pictures on a regular basis. If you are going to be using this as a commercial system, it is wise to make a full backup ONCE A WEEK. You can use USB Thumb Drives to make short-term temporary backups of the projects you actually work on each day. Then, on Saturday or Sunday, run your weekly backup to DVD Disk, and backup everything.

My experince has been that both XP PRO and VISTA BUSINESS EDITION are stable operating systems. The VISTA has a lot more Flash & Polish, and some extra (sometimes irritating) security features. But you pay for the extra functions with more background processes that eat up more memory and compete for your system resources.

Probably the most irrating thing I've seen yet in Windows Vista is what I call the account level audit control. Unless you turn it off (and you can), Vista prompts you to confirm (ie, give your permission) for it to do what you just told it to do.

For example, if you run Spybot SD (anti-spyware freeware), and you run the program from the deskstop, Vista stops and prompts you to Confirm that you really want to run SpyBot. Likewise, if you do a simple task like create a new folder & rename it, Vista runs you through a gauntlet of about 4 additional prompts, each asking you 'are you sure?'. And you have to answer affirmatively to each query, BEFORE Vista will create that new folder and rename. This is a security feature, so no hacker can connect to your system and run something w/o your "OK". But it sure gets tedious after a while. In fact, I will probably turn that off in the near future.

So, to summarize my suggestions... 1. Use a 32 bit OS even if you run 64bit single or dual processor. 2. Consider 2GB of RAM the Mimimum. 3 or 4 is better. 3. Dont use disk RAID. Use secondary disk drives for project work. 4. Get DVD Burner, and do regular weekly Full Backups. 5. If you select XP, get XP PRO w/SP2. 6. If you select Vista, get Vista Business Edition. 7. Check frequently for new updates for your Windows Updates, your anti-virus software updates, and your anti-spyware updates.

"The main issue with choosing a 64-bit OS is that then you would want to buy 64-bit Apps to run on it. And you might have problems finding a 64-bit version of the apps you want. "

WinXP x64 edition will run 32 bit apps just fine.

"If you select Vista, I would recemmend that you get the 32 bit version of Windows Vista Business Edition. I suspect that that version is more robust and fail safe than say, the Vista Home Edition."

It's no different in this regard.

"If you dont use RAID, you'll have 2X the practical disk storage capacity. "

It depends on the RAID level - RAID 0 will double the performance of the disk system with no loss of storage capacity (but no redundancy either).

Carter,

If I were you, I'd do a bit more research. If you run XP32 on a 4GB system then you'll only have about 3.5GB in total addressable - the system will gobble a fair slice of that up leaving you with less than 3GB for your apps - and photoshop will only let you select a portion of that - so you're really shooting yourself in the foot. If you run XP64 the system sees the full 4GB - Photoshop can see the full 3GB MAX (with the /3GB switch) - and you'll get the best performance.

I don't use a scanner, but my XP64 system runs my Epson 7800 Printer just fine - system NEVER crashes - 100% stable. All advantage, no disadvantage, SO LONG AS YOU HAVE ALL THE DRIVERS YOU NEED (which is where the research comes in).

In looking through many of XP32 recommendations above it seems that most of the advice is coming from people who have never run a 64 Bit OS professionally - honestly, it's no big deal - AND it's the way ALL OSes are heading (Vista 32 will be the last 32 bit OS).

Colin: What is the "/3gb switch" you refer to?