Computer Specs

[eugenetyson]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if people here could give me some backing on computer specs for designing.

About 6 months ago I gave in specs for a new computer to run InDesign CS3, Photoshop and Illustrator and Acrobat from. I generally need all 4 products running all the time. But when I handed in the specs to the IT department, they and the Accounting department chopped it to bits and took off and reduced some of the specs I suggested.

Now it's come around again, I spent 50 minutes PDFing a 800 x 2000mm display banner and I spent much time last night getting it to PDF as I kept running out of memory.

So here's what I need, can others here just put down some specs that are needed to run all 4 programs simultaneously and produce large format prints.

I work on a Windows operating system. 2.13ghz Dual Core, 2gb RAM and a 256mb Quadro FX graphics card. It's not handling the stuff.

Recommendations?

[TORCH511]

Your computer specs are in line with a computer I built for my dad (Ironically my did works for an IT department, yet he has me build his computers). My parents have gotten an embroidery buisness going and use Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDrawX3 as well as CorelDRAWings. I had all 4 programs up and running and was putting Illustrator and Photoshop throught their paces and performace was really good, I mean really really good.

I wonder if the issue is not so much of processor/memory/video issue as it is a hard drive issue or a virtual memory scratch disk.

Another Gb of ram would be nice but you should still have pretty decent performance with that setup.

[eugenetyson]

Today I turned off the manual paging settings. I set it to system managed. I don't know why IT people do things. But it seems to have helped with performance speeds. I was thinking of getting a quad core thrown into the specs...

[The Repro Kid]

I think 2gigs of memory is minimum to get Photoshop, illustrator and Acrobat to run smoothly at the same time, but performance would only be really really good only when working with small files. Once you start introducing Banner sized art, performance will slow down dramatically. For the time being, your best bet is to quit out of Photoshop periodically throughout the day after working with any large files. This helps your machine free up memory, as even after you close large files, photoshop will hold on to the memory it was using and will also have a tendency to muck up your systems virtual memory as well.

[GuyB]

Without closing Photoshop, you can make a purge (Edit/Purge...) once in a while. You can purge the undos, the clipboard, the histories or all the three at once; it clears space in memory.

[The Repro Kid]

Having recently come from a job with too little memory on the workstation, I will say that yes that does work GuyB to free up memory in photoshop itself. However, when you have too little memory for programs, modern operating systems need help from virtual memory from the system, and purging in photoshop frequently does little or nothing to help the system problems that soon follow when maxing out the three programs running simultaneously as mentioned. However, quitting Photoshop itself does wonders to free up the overtaxed system.