Boosting performance for Photoshop

I have a Thinkpad x61s with a 1.6ghz Core 2 Duo, 3gb ram and a 500gb 5400 rpm drive and Win XP. Photoshop and Lightroom run slowly and I'm wondering if either of these would likely boost performance significantly:

1) Getting a 7200 rpm drive, possibly the Seagate Momentus XT, or

2) Going to 6gb of ram and Win7 64

I'll probably get a new notebook next year, so I don't want to spend a lot now. I certainly don't want to spend more than the cost of the Seagate drive.

Would one or the other provide a significant performance boost for PS or LR compared to what I have now? Which would help more?

 

What does the performance tab in task manager show for ram usage
BTW You did not mention the amount of ram you have now

 

yes he did 3gb but your system look fine what seem to be missing the most is a decent enough gpu for hardware acceleration

 

@Tomcat: Which lines from the task manager - physical memory, commit charge, page file usage?

@granyte: a new gpu means a new notebook. Are you suggesting there's no good interim move?

 

unless you are hitting the ram limit improving the amount of ram or hdd speed you won't see mch improvement and i fairly doubt you hit the 3gb of ram limit that often i my self have 4gb and i have a hard dar gettin it over 2.6gb of used no mather what i fo

 

only few effects are affected by gpu acceleration:
GPU and OpenGL features and preferences | Photoshop and Bridge | CS5, CS4
if you use those features then a gpu may indeed help
LR and windows xp also do not support gpu acceleration

hdd and memory will have minimal effect on ps unless you are dealing with large files and multitasking a lot.

imho your best bet would still be a faster cpu. again, depending on your work and budget, a cpu with 2+ ghz should give you a good boost.

 

I do peg the CPU at times, especially opening files or using some CPU intensive tasks, such a panoramas.

I often launch PS from LR and almost always have a browser running, but that isn't very intensive multitasking. Even panos from raw files are under 100mb.

Current thought is to get a notebook with an i5 or i7 next year, likely with Win7 64 bit and at least 4gb. Sounds as if there's not much I can do to boost performance before then.

 

with your present noteboook, nope there really isnt much you can do unless you want to upgrade its cpu first, which i dont recommend since youre getting a new notebook.
an i5/7 with win7 64bit and 4gb would def give you a big performance boost from what you have now since ps is 64bit and supports multicores.

 

Among current models, I was thinking of

ThinkPad X201
- $1,019.40
- Intel® Core™ i5-520M (2.40GHz base; 2.93GHz Max Turbo, 3MB Cache)
- Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 - English
- 500GB, 7200RPM Serial ATA 2.5" Hard Drive
- 4GB (2 X 2GB) PC3-8500 DDR3 1067MHz SDRAM SODIMM Memory
- 12.1” WXGA (1280 X 800) LED, W/ 1.3 MP Camera
- Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD

Or get a Intel® Core™ i7-620M (2.66GHz base; 3.33GHz Max Turbo, 4MB Cache) and a 320gb drive for a few dollars more (but then I'd have to buy a larger drive).

Is there likely to be a noticeable difference between the i5 and i7?

 

What do you mean by "slow":
Putting filters in a 100mb image (CPU)?
Opening images(Disk)?
Moving, zooming (GPU mostly)?

Btw you should get a better GPU.

 

You don't state what versions you're using (CS5/LR3?), but even with older versions of PS CS?? (highly recommend LR3 though, over LR1 or LR2).

Also:


Trying to research your machine a little more thoroughly, it doesn't seem to support more than 4GB of RAM.

See:
Lenovo ThinkPad X61s Review

However, this says up to 8GB RAM is supported (and which I recommend for Win7x64):

See:
forum.thinkpads.com • View topic - Maximum RAM for x61?


If you're getting a new notebook closer to 'a year' from now as opposed to 'early next year', then your option 2 is highly recommended (with 8GB RAM instead of 6GB).


The benefits you'll see:

is less HD thrashing as PS works the Scratch Disk less (it uses RAM first...).

smoother multi-tasking - yes, you may not be doing the most intensive multi-tasking, but you are just the same. Having to use LR and PS open at the same time is brutal under a 32bit O/S. Especially if you're running an A/V product (you are right? I recommend MSE for an effective, but light on resources, anti-virus protection).


When you first install Win7x64, consider this partitioning scheme to achieve performance like the link below (50% improvement over the same HD with 'normal/default' partitioning):

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html


See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...le-copy-result-hdds-ssds-easy-comparison.html


In above link, look for the results for the Hitachi 7K500's in the HDD section of results.


For your next system, consider also the cost and effect of using CS5 (or higher) to greatly improve the performance of your Adobe workflow.

See:
Adobe CS5: 64-bit, CUDA-Accelerated, And Threaded Performance : How Should You Accelerate Adobe?


Don't worry about how much CPU % or RAM you're currently using - this is not an accurate reflection of how your software will use it on a new x64 bit system.

Just know that 'work' is only done by the processor in RAM (not the HD), so the more RAM you have and/or the stronger/faster the processor, the more work will get done.

Moving to Win7x64 and 8GB RAM will give you the option to increase one of those parameters and will give you a better cost/benefit ratio than simply increasing the clock speed will.

(As long as your LR and/or PS files and edits are less than the size of the available RAM, the speed increase over the exponentially slow HD will be many times more than the few tens of percent increase you can upgrade your sytem to by installing a new cpu or a faster HD).


Good luck.

 

@tilleroftheearth,

I'm using CS5/LR3

Enough people on forum.thinkpads.com have said the x61s supports 8gb that I believe them

Target date for a new notebook is early in the year.

I'm running MSE

I'll take a look at the partitioning scheme

Are you saying the moving to more ram now (with win7 64bit) will make a significant difference to my existing notebook?

Any views on the i5 and i7 notebooks I'm considering?

 

stick with the i5
buying more ram or an hdd so close to when you will be ultimately buying a new laptop is just a waste of money, unless you can use these in your new laptop and subtract it from the cost; which you probably cant do with the lenovo

 

Like trvelbug said, probably wiser to save your money towards a new notebook next year.

However, only you know when you will ultimately buy one and how much your time is worth to you in the meantime while you're saving/waiting.

With an x64 bit O/S, and 8GB of RAM (or more) PS will more than pay back what you spend in time saved. The partitioning scheme I suggested and use on all my systems helps significantly with PS too when it finally runs out of RAM and needs to use the slow Scratch Disk.

See:
SSD or 8 GB of Memory: Researching Reasonable Upgrade Options - X-bit labs


When you are buying your new system and it is dual HD bay capable: consider using the SSD not as the boot device, but as the (empty) Scratch Disk for PS. I think that is the most efficient use of an SSD for PS right now.

To me, spending around $200 or so for Win7x64 +8GB RAM is a no brainer - even for as little as one month before a new purchase - but I live inside PSCS5 + LR3 + Bibble5 + Capture One, etc....

Good luck.

 

Sounds like I'm a lighter user of PSCS5 than you. I usually only shoot heavily enough to care about PS/LR speed while travelling and our next major vacation isn't until the first quarter.

The notebooks I'm thinking of are single spindle, so it's probably a 500gb 7200 (or whatever's then current) for me rather than an SSD plus HD.

Many thanks to all for the excellent advice. Much appreciated.

 

Tilleroftheearth shoots photography for a living. Unless you're also a professional photographer, or otherwise work heavily in graphic arts, it's very difficult not to be a lighter user than he is.