Question about RAM (Page 3): Adding more RAM minimizes swapping to disk, which is desirable and increase performance -- especially if you load multiple programs and switch between...

rpena2860

Adding more RAM minimizes swapping to disk, which is desirable and increase performance -- especially if you load multiple programs and switch between them. If you have a good SSD drive, the performance hit may be minimized, although the IDE/SATA buss is technically much slower than the memory system buss. Also, remember that SSD drives have a fixed read/write life and swapping due to low RAM leads to a whole lot of reading/writing to the disk, thus shortening your SSD life.

woodworker2012

One of the key things to remember about RAM, as applications are opened that content or information begins running in memory ( and due to the nature of the beast aka programming there are memory leaks in each program that can continue to run after closing the app). The program remains on the hard drive. The information can be accessed faster from memory. Less memory means more data must be pulled from the hard drive. You always want less activity on the hard drive so it will last longer. That is why more memory in a system helps to run faster.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

johneccles wrote:

My PC normally has 8gb RAM installed (2 x 4gb), recently I gave one 4gb module to my wife to boost her PC upto 8gb.
I have been using my PC since with only 4gb installed and to be honest I cannot detect any difference in performance even when using my PP software.
How import is RAM when doing photo editing, I am considering increasing my RAM upto 16gb (the maximum I can use), would there be any point?

Very important, if you tell your software it is there... if Ps is told to use 2.4 GB, but you have 32 GB installed, it isn't using more RAM. Look through prefs...

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

rmm0605 wrote:

You need at least 16GB to do PP in Photoshop and Lightroom. Put it in and you'll marvel at the improvement in performance.

It improves speed. But Ps/Lr will run on 4GB, at least on a Mac. I have used them on 8GB since 2010 with zero problems.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Bobspez wrote:

With Photoshop you allocate the amount of RAM it w... (show quote)

If working on very large files, very often, you may want 24 or 32 GB RAM and as many processor cores as can fit in the computer. A large, fast SSD helps, too.

But hobbyists can live with much less.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Dupe

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Peterff wrote:

Is your PP software 32bit or 64bit? If 32bit, the most RAM it could access is <= 4GB, so even if you have more in your system you wouldn't see a difference. With 64bit sw you would see a difference. This is at the application level as well as the OS level. Can you provide both OS and application details regarding 32 or 64 bit?

Thanks

Exactly!

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

jccash wrote:

I upgraded my wives HP laptop to 16gig RAM and 1TB SSD drive. Her computer boots up in 25 seconds and made everything seem faster. Did the same with my MBP i7 and had same results.

Wives? How many do you have?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

johneccles wrote:

MyPP app is 64 bit, using Windows 10, 128 gb SSD and 500gb HDD used for storage.

Your PP ap may be 64 bit, but is your Windows 10 OS 32 bit or 64 bit? That's the key question.

flathead27ford Loc: Colorado, North of Greeley

johneccles wrote:

My PC normally has 8gb RAM installed (2 x 4gb), recently I gave one 4gb module to my wife to boost her PC upto 8gb.
I have been using my PC since with only 4gb installed and to be honest I cannot detect any difference in performance even when using my PP software.
How import is RAM when doing photo editing, I am considering increasing my RAM upto 16gb (the maximum I can use), would there be any point?

Ram and its performance is also effected by how many applications you have open at one time. The more applications open, obviously the slower things will happen. Cheers.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

johneccles wrote:

I do in fact have a 128gb SSD, which could explain why that now I have only 4gb RAM installed there doesn't appear to be any diference in speed.

If you didn't sense any difference when you dropped from 8 to 4, then adding more back won't help noticeably.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I upgraded my PC to 32 GB Ram work better in LR and PS

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

johneccles wrote:

My PC normally has 8gb RAM installed (2 x 4gb), recently I gave one 4gb module to my wife to boost her PC upto 8gb.
I have been using my PC since with only 4gb installed and to be honest I cannot detect any difference in performance even when using my PP software.
How import is RAM when doing photo editing, I am considering increasing my RAM upto 16gb (the maximum I can use), would there be any point?

If you are a light user of software that does photo editing then 4GB is fine. What I mean by light is that you don't layer or if you do you don't layer a lot, you crop, adjust a few things and save. You don't have a lot of windows open at the same time. You aren't listening to or watching videos as you edit. There are many things that factor into needing or wanting more RAM. My last computer had 16gb. My new computer has 24gb. I don't notice much difference. The big difference is having a SSD drive instead of a spinning hard drive that Windows and my photo editing programs run from. About the only time I notice a lag is when I'm saving a multi-layered Photoshop image after I finish or I'm near finished editing. It sometimes takes it 20 seconds to save before I can close the app or close that file and start a new one. I could start a new one while it's saving, but I don't like to do that in case I corrupt the saving file.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

PHRubin wrote:

If you didn't sense any difference when you dropped from 8 to 4, then adding more back won't help noticeably.

Except to save stress on the drives, if a lot of swapping is occurring.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

IMHO, a 64-bit OS, 16 GB RAM minimum (8GB possible, but not optimum) and a large enough SSD to hold the OS, Aps, and swap space, is the minimum. Swapping to disk because of insufficient RAM, even with SSD (and especially to rotating media HD) is a huge performance killer - the worst thing possible for performance, worse than a slow processor, etc.