Graphic card upgrade

[lwt11137]

Hi can any brother advice on wheather replacing the onboard graphic card of the PC to a better external PCI graphic card will speed up in PS CS2 editing. Lately find editing relatively slow, thank in advance.

[diver-hloc]

Originally Posted by lwt11137 Hi can any brother advice on wheather replacing the onboard graphic card of the PC to a better external PCI graphic card will speed up in PS CS2 editing. Lately find editing relatively slow, thank in advance.

I think adding more RAM will work better.....

A good graphic card is more for Video editing.....

[lwt11137]

Originally Posted by diver-hloc I think adding more RAM will work better..... A good graphic card is more for Video editing.....

thank brother, upgrading pc soon therefore thinking of upgrade the graphic card now still can be use on new pc later.

[blackdrakes]

If you get new ram you may be able to use it on your new pc too.
Now most computers using DDR2, should be able to work with your new computer.

[Octarine]

Originally Posted by lwt11137 Hi can any brother advice on wheather replacing the onboard graphic card of the PC to a better external PCI graphic card will speed up in PS CS2 editing. Lately find editing relatively slow, thank in advance.

"Relatively slow" is very blur and a subjective thing. Nothing to make a good recommendation. Definitely, any new graphics card will not improve editing pictures in a large scale. It's all only 2D rendering and there is not much graphics power needed for that. Any old 32MB PCI card can easily do this job. The main processing is done in CPU. But fast CPU doesn't help without fast peripheral components (RAM, HDD, internal Bus). You could add more RAM to your system but if you think it's good to upgrade the whole PC then you better don't do. Newer systems have different RAM modules.
Secondly, be aware that nowadays most PCI cards are PCI-E (Express) which is different from PCI.
You could also spend a day or so and re-install your computer. That will speed up things since Windows is known getting slower and slower over the time.

[adiknaim]

yeah..for photoshop..its either ur CPU or ur RAM will make the most difference... a fresh Windows is oso effective..

[lightning]

Uninstall 10 programs from your computer and do defregmentation of HDD will speed up your PC and PS. This method is FOC.

[diver-hloc]

Originally Posted by lightning Uninstall 10 programs from your computer and do defregmentation of HDD will speed up your PC and PS. This method is FOC.

True.... but the effect won't last long and there are limits on how much programs one could keep delating....

[greenieadi]

Maybe if you can provide us with the PC hardware specs, it's easier for the rest to give advise.

Processor type :
Mainboard type :
Ram type and size :
Hardisk size :

More than 4gb ram also no use. 32bit Windows OS (XP/Vista) don't use anything more than 4GB even if you install 4 x 2GB Ram. Dedicated Graphic cards is always better than onboard ones as they don't share memory from mainboard Ram.

[dennisc]

Depends on your processor. RAMs helps too but to an extend no use if processor is slow. Get a PCI-E graphic card helps too (PCI graphics are very old, I doubt you're using that) to an extend. Or better yet get a new system, helps tons. Just around 280-350bucks for a spanking new Dual Core CPU starting from 1.8ghz (4500ghz, I've benchmarked), you can rely on onboard, zero lag. No need to get graphics.

[theRBK]

I doubt a new graphics card is gonna improve photoshop processing times... but one thing to keep in mind... the operating system uses a certain amount of RAM to "duplicate" the amount of RAM on your graphics card, allowing for the swapping of data from main memory and graphics memory (even for cards which only use dedicated graphics memory)... what this means is that, the more graphics memory your graphics card has, the more main memory your OS might need to set aside for it... this is one of the reasons why you won't see the full 4GB of RAM on a system operating say XP 32bit... this is true at least for a 32bit OS...

[peekarwe]

theRBK, you dun see 4GB of ram on a 32 bit system because of the memory addressing system limitations of a 32 bit system, not because it's used for graphics memory shadow. A 32 bit system can only address up to 3 GB of RAM.

Memory shadowing of the graphics card is a thing of the past (286-386 era) and only the video bios is shadowed. Not the entire memory addressable on the graphics card.

[woojacky]

Originally Posted by peekarwe theRBK, you dun see 4GB of ram on a 32 bit system because of the memory addressing system limitations of a 32 bit system, not because it's used for graphics memory shadow. A 32 bit system can only address up to 3 GB of RAM. Memory shadowing of the graphics card is a thing of the past (286-386 era) and only the video bios is shadowed. Not the entire memory addressable on the graphics card.

One can actually tweak the WINXP startup command to allow it to see 4Gb and use it.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;888137

But I've use this on my servers running 2003 so far and not on desktops.

[Ah_K]

Photoshop makes full use of quad-core CPUs. so if you got the budget, I heard they are slashing the price of Q6600. and lotsa RAM 4GB and above (with a 64bit operating system). That should give u a fast enuff system for editing photos

[peekarwe]

For that hack, you are risking driver compatibility. People who write drivers for specifically just 32 bit system will have no care to address DMA access to higher than 3 GB ram. The 3GB limit was to address compatibility issue...

[AsPiRiN92]

try overclocking your processor by a reasonable amount?

[theRBK]

Originally Posted by peekarwe theRBK, you dun see 4GB of ram on a 32 bit system because of the memory addressing system limitations of a 32 bit system, not because it's used for graphics memory shadow. A 32 bit system can only address up to 3 GB of RAM. Memory shadowing of the graphics card is a thing of the past (286-386 era) and only the video bios is shadowed. Not the entire memory addressable on the graphics card.

actually it shouldn't be due to the limit of a 32-bit system... a 32-bit system should technically allow for 4GB of RAM... its due to the coding required for backwards compatibility that some parts of the old way of handling memory, like that for graphics card memory and various other hardware components, still hang-on... booted up my 32-bit XP just to check out, and under device manager, viewing resources by type, one can see the memory allocation (in hexadecimal)... did some calculations and lo and behold, my graphics card has 318,898,172 bytes assigned to it (guess what card it is... there is only one with that amount of memory) although some of the RAM is shared with other components...

to TS, sorry for the OT...