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genik
03-16-2007, 07:27 AM
How mutch memory can Pshop CS2 recognize and is it worth filling up my G5 up to 4GB of RAM? Will i see any difference, where, and to what extent? Ive heard that if u put too mutch RAM, Pshop wont really know the difference cause it cant use effectivelly more than 2GB of RAM!
SpugNothuson
03-16-2007, 08:57 AM
I think that this is a PC issue but I've not done a lot of research into the memory usage on OS X.
But if PhotoShop can use 2GB of RAM then it is worth upgrading to 4. The OS needs a chunk of RAM, also any other application that you have open at the same time. If you're running 4 it means that in theory you can dedicate a good solid 2 Gig to PhotoShop and always have it running at maximum power.
hewligan
03-16-2007, 10:46 AM
^^ Basically right.
The maximum amount of RAM you can actually use is down to your OS, but both Windows XP (32 bit) and any Version of OS X can handle 4 gig. The proportion of this that photoshop uses is set in a preference.
So, if you doing anything with PS which justifies that amount of RAM, and the cost of it, then yeah, it's worth it.
PrintDriver
03-16-2007, 12:00 PM
In Photoshop CS2 on a Mac you set the percentage of available Ram you want Photoshop to use.
Ram availability on OSX is determined by the active program(s). You can have six programs open but only the active one(s) is/are actively utilizing RAM. Where having a lot of ram helps is in the processing speed of rendering and if you have other programs working in the background -ie if Photoshop is doing a long render or a large file>open while you are working in InDesign.
What actually helps more with speed in Photoshop is having a dedicated scratch disk that only handles Photoshop scratch files. If the computer doesn't have to search for space to do its thing, it will be much faster. Contrary to popular belief, Mac drives do Fragment and should be optimized occasionally. I use CS2 with 2 gigs of Ram and have a dedicated internal 2nd drive partition to work with and never have problems with the large stuff I work with.
As for Photoshop and 2gig of ram, you may be confusing this with the old 2 gig file size limit in Photoshop.