Lightroom and ram: I just bumped my ram to 8 gb, the max my puter takes, and it made a huge difference over trying to run it on 4 gb. All functions are nearly instantaneous, no delays...

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

I just bumped my ram to 8 gb, the max my puter takes, and it made a huge difference over trying to run it on 4 gb. All functions are nearly instantaneous, no delays or hanging. it was only 51 bucks landed.

les_stockton Loc: Eastern Oklahoma

Luckily, I didn't face this issue when I first got Lightroom, because my wife had just bought me a new computer with lots of ram. It's good to know for others though, that they might want to upgrade slightly for better performance.

Lupine Loc: SF Bay Area

Yeah, RAM makes a difference. I have 8GB right now, but I'll probably boost it to 16GB in the near future. It helps when you have a lot of files open, especially image files. Batch processing goes a lot faster, as well.

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

Lupine wrote:

Yeah, RAM makes a difference. I have 8GB right now, but I'll probably boost it to 16GB in the near future. It helps when you have a lot of files open, especially image files. Batch processing goes a lot faster, as well.

If I could have bumped it higher I would have put the max possible. LR is a dream now that it isn't hesitating and hanging.

Picdude Loc: Ohio

I just found out that one of my RAM sticks is damaged and it's amazing how slow it suddenly made my computer. I need to follow you to the computer store ;)

Jer Loc: Mesa, Arizona

This only works is you are using Windows 7 (I don't know about Mac's). Xp can only go to 4 gig but doesn't always use all 4 for processing. To make it use a full 3 gig you have to change some stuff in the config file. I was running out of memory for Photomatrix and that's what their techs told me since I was running XP.

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

Jer wrote:

This only works is you are using Windows 7 (I don't know about Mac's). Xp can only go to 4 gig but doesn't always use all 4 for processing. To make it use a full 3 gig you have to change some stuff in the config file. I was running out of memory for Photomatrix and that's what their techs told me since I was running XP.

True but LR 4 does not run on XP so we are talking about W7 by default.

Jer Loc: Mesa, Arizona

The original post didn't say LR4. My three year old motherboard says it will take 8 gig but that irrelevant since the operating system won't allow that much.

MattSeven Loc: Scotland UK

Although I inserted 8gb of RAM about a month ago- I only just upped the percentage for Elements to 85% yet strangely the dialogue shows only my original 3gb when in fact it is actually 12GB....

PS: Please view my first panorama planet picture (and please comment)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattalexan/

Phreedom Loc: Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

MattSeven wrote:

Although I inserted 8gb of RAM about a month ago- I only just upped the percentage for Elements to 85% yet strangely the dialogue shows only my original 3gb when in fact it is actually 12GB....

PS: Please view my first panorama planet picture (and please comment)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattalexan/

Your machine or the OS will only see so much RAM. You could put 64 GB of RAM in but if it was meant to handle up to 3 GB then that is all it will see/use and the rest is wasted.

Do an on-line search. Input the brand name and operating system and you'll soon find out the maximum usable size.

Jer Loc: Mesa, Arizona

Here is a link so you see Windows operation systems ram limits:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

gmcase wrote:

I just bumped my ram to 8 gb, the max my puter takes, and it made a huge difference over trying to run it on 4 gb. All functions are nearly instantaneous, no delays or hanging. it was only 51 bucks landed.

What sort of Graphic card are you running? do you have 1 or 2 gigs of dedicated graphics memory? I ask because I have just been talking to Toshiba Tech support and he said that my laptop with only 1gig would struggle to run Lightroom 4. Its an i5 2.66gig processor with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 and at present I am running 6gigs of RAM. If any one out there can advise me if my laptop will run LR4 with that configuration well then I would appreciate your feed back.

Jer Loc: Mesa, Arizona

Here are some links but I couldn't find anything about video cards other than they have to support your monitors native resolution.

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom/tech-specs.html

http://mansurovs.com/lightroom-4-vs-lightroom-3

altheman wrote:

quote=gmcase I just bumped my ram to 8 gb, the ma... (show quote)

MattSeven Loc: Scotland UK

I do have 12 GB ram- and my iMac Intel does see that- it appears to be Elements only that doesn't for some reason....

Phreedom wrote:

quote=MattSeven Although I inserted 8gb of RAM ab... (show quote)

altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

altheman wrote:

quote=gmcase I just bumped my ram to 8 gb, the ma... (show quote)

I have downloaded LR4 and it seems to run ok on my laptop but that's only working on one pic at a time