Photoshop slowdown on a fast machine - clueless on settings

Photoshop and system optimization

I am curious if anyone here knows how to really optimize the performance of photoshop CS. I am not getting very good performance, but I don’t know what is wrong. I am a pretty savvy user, so I can set settings and understand whatever I need to, I am just ignorant right now of what photoshop needs to really run at it’s best.

My system and setup is such:
-2.8 p4 hyperthreading
-2 gigs 400mhz pc3200 ram
-serial ATA C: drive, 80 gig
-serial ATA D: drive, 80 gig
-120 gig IDE partitioned, S: (10 gig scratch disk) and T: (110 gig storage)
-128meg Geforce 4 ti…

That is the basic setup of my performance parts. Everything is defragged and the computer runs fine.

My windows settings are:
-Processor Scheduling set to Programs
-Memory Usage set to System Cache
-one page file, set to the C: drive, 2000-3000 MB

My photoshop settings are:
-First Scratch is set to the S: drive (10 gig partition)
-Second scratch is set to the D: drive
-Cache Levels are at 8
-Available RAM is 86% = 1528mb

That is the basic setup.

Here is my problem – photoshop runs pretty clunky For instance, I just opened up a 2.17 meg image, first image of the day to be opened. Immediately my scratch indicator in the status bar reads “Scr: 1.91G/1.44G” and the actual file on the S: drive is 1.93 gigabytes. Also, the photoshop efficiency is at 24%. This is all without having done ANYTHING in photoshop so far. I opened the program, opened a 2 meg file, and those are the results I get.

It typically just gets worse from there. I’ll get major slowdowns, my efficiency will drop to 4 or 3%, the Scratch indicator will sometimes read “Scr: 2.31G/1.44G” or worse. Sometimes photoshop locks up for about 20 seconds or more, the title bars all go white like it’s not responding, and then comes back.

So I am at a loss. I have the hard drives, ram, and CPU for photoshop CS to run fast, right? I don’t see what it isn’t, unless I have something totally set to reduce performance in my swap file or scratches or something.

If you have any idea or info, please let me know. I am eager to get this worked out.

Thanks

Does seem strange that with your setup, things are worse than a 4yr old puter.
1st thing I notice is your massive page-file on C drive.
From experience this should be no more than about 400meg. Tops.
And the more RAM you have the smaller this should be (in theory).
Then you need to know if the page-file is contiguous, has been defraged properly.
Raxco Perfect Disk can help you here.

2nd, photoshop still runs best if ram set to 40-50%. Even with gigRAM setups.
(so I have heard) I've always kept mine at 50%, with no dramas.
200meg images I have never seen slow-down while working (slow to load/save only)

3rd maybe you should free some RAM up by disabling some un-needed Services in XP. Alot of services you dont need on average setup, and some downright dangerous.
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
this can tell you whats what, and if its a safe services to disable or enable.

This should be a good start for you Sean.

oh another thing. Cache levels. Set this back to four. No need for eight just yet.
All this does is stores low level preview information. If you only work at zoom levels of 100%, 75%, 50% or 25% (which you should b/c of the resample at these settings) you only need level 4 on cache.