TSB
Computers and Software => Raster and Vector Manipulation Programs, and How to Do Stuff in Them. => Topic started by: Gilligan on March 07, 2012, 02:53:18 PM
-
Built my wife a beast... 6 core AMD with 16gigs of ram, running Windows 7 64 bit.
Problem is, Illustrator is still 32 bit, so it only sees 4gigs of ram.
So we get a LOT of "Can't finish previewing, there isn't enough memory ID= -108" errors. This happens with even the most simple designs open. Obviously this is a HUGE pain and it's worse than when she was running on the 64bit 3gig machine.
As a computer guy it seems like it's fighting for that 4gigs of ram with the OS who thinks "Hey, we got 16 gigs here, lets go crazy" and sucks up the first 4 gigs real quick. It doesn't think it needs to give up any ram for Illustrator because it has 12 gigs that illustrator could use if it wanted. Of course illustrator doesn't know about the other 12 gigs. Conundrum.
I can't be the only one experiencing this sort of mess... what is the solution though?
FYI, this is CS5 if that matters.
-
Get the 64 bit version, problem solved.
-
Get the 64bit version. 32bit version is useless.
I got my photoshop using 20gb. :D But its ok cause I have 24gb. Haha.
-
What version you guys running? I haven't found any info on 64 bit Illustrator release dates. Photoshop, yes. Illy, have only heard rumors on CS6.
-
I was under the impression CS5 was 64bit, I dont get memory errors in it anymore like I did in CS3.
-
What version you guys running? I haven't found any info on 64 bit Illustrator release dates. Photoshop, yes. Illy, have only heard rumors on CS6.
(http://blog.lib.umn.edu/paldr001/myblog/Oh%20Snap.jpg)
Yep, no 64 bit illustrator. What kind of fool do you think I am?
For the record I already clarified that issue...
Problem is, Illustrator is still 32 bit, so it only sees 4gigs of ram.
-
Well mine dont error out at all like CS3 does. HMM...
-
Really.. I thought the entire suite was 64 bit :o
-
Hardly any of it actually is.
-
Well whatever they did with it it's a lot less buggy.
-
It worked great before we moved it from a 3gig system to a 16 gig system.
Obviously we had memory limitations at 3gigs but they were rational.
-
funny, i have no problems with my 12gb. I also run a thumb drive as a readyboost device. Check it out, it works really well. I bought a faster transfer 32gb thumb drive and plugged it in and set it up.
-
At the end of the day I set up her USB 3 external as a primary scratch... we shall see.
-
At the end of the day I set up her USB 3 external as a primary scratch... we shall see.
Externals are generally slower drives (5400pm even a lot of the time), put a faster secondary internal in as scratch disc. In my computers I have a 10,000RPM drive just for scratch disc.
-
Well, mines dead now, but web I installed CS5 in my PC, we had the option of running it in 32 or 64. Since Puerre loaded it, I don't remember what we loaded. I think it was 64.
One thing I had not seen posted yet, is that you will need to "assign a %" of your ram to Illustrator so it knows how much to work with. It will assign an amount by default but I ran Illy and Photoshop CS5 on 8 GB.
Also, what do you guys do with your computer that you might need 24gigs of ram?
Artist who are creation and rendering image files for animation could use something like that, but I can't imagine Photoshop needing more than 8 or 10 but I'm not real familiar with ram and PC. I know a pC uses probably 20% more ram to do the same thing in a Mac. Just stating differences here. Still, 25gigs? Shazam!
-
Well, mines dead now, but web I installed CS5 in my PC, we had the option of running it in 32 or 64. Since Puerre loaded it, I don't remember what we loaded. I think it was 64.
One thing I had not seen posted yet, is that you will need to "assign a %" of your ram to Illustrator so it knows how much to work with. It will assign an amount by default but I ran Illy and Photoshop CS5 on 8 GB.
Also, what do you guys do with your computer that you might need 24gigs of ram?
Artist who are creation and rendering image files for animation could use something like that, but I can't imagine Photoshop needing more than 8 or 10 but I'm not real familiar with ram and PC. I know a pC uses probably 20% more ram to do the same thing in a Mac. Just stating differences here. Still, 25gigs? Shazam!
Illustrator doesn't have a ram setting, Photoshop does. Illustrator and Photoshop though both have scratch disc settings.
24gigs of ram is great, I run sometimes 20-30 programs at once, none of them struggle. SO that's the point, do more, wait less. Very simple. You can get by on much less, but you will wait more and be force to run less programs or at least less efficiently. There is no disadvantage to having too much ram, and folks ram is cheap. My new computer has 32gb of ram. It's epic!
-
ram is cheap, unless you buy the good stuff. I had problems with the cheap stuff failing.
hard disks used to be cheap. I can't even get them from my normal place right now.
I try to by gaming components or higher end when I am repairing systems around here. I also recycle a lot when I kill a system and replace it. Those parts get redistributed if they are better than what is in another system.
-
ram is cheap, unless you buy the good stuff. I had problems with the cheap stuff failing.
hard disks used to be cheap. I can't even get them from my normal place right now.
I try to by gaming components or higher end when I am repairing systems around here. I also recycle a lot when I kill a system and replace it. Those parts get redistributed if they are better than what is in another system.
By cheap I mean in the scheme of things to spend 1-200 on 24gb of ram to be able to run whatever you want, anyway you want, and as much of it as you want is CHEAP. Never had ram fail here. We build our own computers here as well. I dont cheap out. My newest rig the parts a lone were near 2k, just the parts.
-
I don't know if was mentioned yet but loading a ton of fonts can also degrade performance.
-
Has anyone really tried solid state drives yet? They are damn expensive still but seems like a good option in the future.
-
Has anyone really tried solid state drives yet? They are damn expensive still but seems like a good option in the future.
I run a SSD on both my old and my new computer. DRASTIC performance jump.
-
200.00 of ram or 30-50 gigs of ram, something is either cheap or not fast enough. LOL.
Like MK2 said, Fonts or too many of them open can cause problems. Having a stock pile of ram can't be the answer. I'm betting that The processor has much yo do with all this. For example, you may think that having the biggest ad the most will or should enable you to handle having 30 programs open at a time. Pro's might tell you that this thought is inaccurate. I don't know. Just makes sense to me. Overload.
Check font usage,
Check HD to see if it needs defragged.
Check to make sure the file you are wirking on is actually residing on the biggest and fastest HD. Externals and networks are not safe to work from.
I must have forgot that its only Photoshop to where you can allocate more ram but seems like you can do that to all programs on a PC if I remember. Must not be. I'm not in front of a computer at the moment.
-
@Dan... you can install 64 bit all you want, Illustrator doesn't have a 64bit version. (I know you can't right now but,) look at your "Program Files/Adobe" folder and you will see very few programs in there compared to "Program Files(x86)/Adobe" (that is the 32 bit applications).
FWIW, PC's have actually been a head of the curve when it comes to Adobe products recently, this info comes from Mac Users. They can't use Nvidia cards in new systems meaning that they can't take advantage of the tie in to that engine built into Premier (video editor) and there were functions in the Options of PS that were not available to Mac users until recently (I forgot which ones but the user was very stoked about it finally being available for Macs).
I'm not trying to start a Mac vs PC because I honestly have no dog in the fight. I'm just a proponent of truth and there is a LOT of old info out there and misconceptions especially when it comes to the Adobe suite or "doing graphics on a computer." You still need a Mac to use Final Cut which is the defacto standard when it comes to video editing in the big time and I'd only argue that someone should build a hackintosh to save money because my beef beyond the disinformation is the retarded price tag on mac stuff.
As far as why the memory? As others have mentioned, multi-tasking. My wife (used to) constantly have Illustrator with at least 5-8 projects up and PS with several projects open as well as Dreamweaver and then the litany of other apps such as Opera, Firefox, filezilla and Access.
@inkman, she runs a SSD drive for her root drive on that system. It's SATA6 and such... it's OK... not like "holy sh|t" but it's definitely faster.
-
200.00 of ram or 30-50 gigs of ram, something is either cheap or not fast enough. LOL.
Like MK2 said, Fonts or too many of them open can cause problems. Having a stock pile of ram can't be the answer. I'm betting that The processor has much yo do with all this. For example, you may think that having the biggest ad the most will or should enable you to handle having 30 programs open at a time. Pro's might tell you that this thought is inaccurate. I don't know. Just makes sense to me. Overload.
Check font usage,
Check HD to see if it needs defragged.
Check to make sure the file you are wirking on is actually residing on the biggest and fastest HD. Externals and networks are not safe to work from.
I must have forgot that its only Photoshop to where you can allocate more ram but seems like you can do that to all programs on a PC if I remember. Must not be. I'm not in front of a computer at the moment.
She has the biggest baddest processor you could get for a regular desktop at the time. 6 core 3.7ghz?(that might be the "turbo speed").
I'll look at font usage but she I'm pretty sure she had more fonts on the old system.
-
From what I remember about cores and who uses them..you can have all you want but unless you specify who uses what, those extra cores may never get used as the others are being fought over.
-
200.00 of ram or 30-50 gigs of ram, something is either cheap or not fast enough. LOL.
There is nothing slow about DDR3 PC 1333 ram. BTW that's the ram in my "old" computer...lol. My newer PC is DDR3 1600. It's super quick. Photoshop with 1,000's of fonts opens in about 1 second.
Like MK2 said, Fonts or too many of them open can cause problems. Having a stock pile of ram can't be the answer. I'm betting that The processor has much yo do with all this. For example, you may think that having the biggest ad the most will or should enable you to handle having 30 programs open at a time. Pro's might tell you that this thought is inaccurate. I don't know. Just makes sense to me. Overload.
Check font usage,
Check HD to see if it needs defragged.
Check to make sure the file you are wirking on is actually residing on the biggest and fastest HD. Externals and networks are not safe to work from.
I have a few thousand fonts on my computer, Photoshop opens in 2 seconds on my old computer, around 1 second on my newest. Fonts are not a issue with you have ram/processor power. Defragging is automatic on computers for several years now, shouldn't be a problem unless we are talking about relics of computers. Another tip would be not to be working from a hard drive that is your main OS drive, I have all my files on a second Internal hard drive, the drive is only for files, not for windows. I let programs and windows live on one drive, data on another. This speeds up things a bit more. Addition to that even my music lives on its own drive. I don't want to be saving a file on a hard drive that is reading a music file constantly throughout the day, while it might be just minor, if your running windows, programs, music and saving files all on the same drive, performance will suffer, drives only have so much throughput. I can nearly saturate a drives throughput with just one file in Photoshop. I just designed a banner a few minutes ago. Photoshop file is 1.19gb.
You mention overload, I guess I look at that differently. Why would you want to worry about overloading a computer, I want to work efficently all day long, I dont want to worry about what I have open, or what should be closed to be able to do something else faster. How much time is wasted concerning yourself with that stuff? Daily I have all of these programs open 100% of the day. Photoshop (several projects open), Illustrator(several projects open), iTunes, Outlook, AIM (several windows), Calendar, 5-10 Browsers windows/tabs, Vector Magic, Fast Manager, and a few others. Addition to that many days I have open and using Separation Stuido, CuteFTP, Quicken, and a few others. I never have to close anything to run something else or improve its performance.
As far as what Pros would tell you? Who gets to determine who a pro is? I have built computers for longer than I have been into screen printing/embroidery/etc and I am a "pro" at that aren't I? (Note my career before this was going to be a network admin, this is what I went to school for).
I must have forgot that its only Photoshop to where you can allocate more ram but seems like you can do that to all programs on a PC if I remember. Must not be. I'm not in front of a computer at the moment.
Correct, its all good, jut trying to save people from looking for it when its not there.
-
From what I remember about cores and who uses them..you can have all you want but unless you specify who uses what, those extra cores may never get used as the others are being fought over.
That is becoming less and less true... since hyper threading (2002), software has been gradually making the shift to multi-threading. Multi-core processors super sped this up. Before that it was only a select few that were expected to run on multi (physical) processor PC's... 3d software for sure. But even still, Sony Vegas (my video editor of choice) has had an option for how many CPU's to use for years. Lots of other software will have this also. Not very uncommon now.
But it is slightly true that some haven't quite got past 2 or 4... I'm not 100% certain but nothing would disappoint me more than if Adobe wasn't utilizing every core you could throw at it (in modern times).
FWI, I'm not the only one having this memory issue. It's been going on for some time and I've googled around a bit and found lots of other threads with people like me but no solutions. Lots of people saying Adobe refuses to accept they have a problem. Sounds like they need a 12 step program. ;)
-
@Brandt, Yes, we need to move the files and scratch to a faster HD but that's just not economical right now since HD prices are so retarded due to the flood. We are just hanging tight. When I bought this system for her before (the flood), she had two 750's in a raid 1 for her BS file storage and usage because she is so sloppy and won't keep her files on the server like she should. ;)
Sold that system before it was even complete and then prices on HD's doubled. So she's stuck using an external for now.
The thing is, it's not a performance issue... it's a complete glitch that doesn't let you do things.
Example... she had my "new office" layout up (I'll attach it.) That file's art board is like 24x24'ish... not huge. All just some basic vector stuff with a few numbers (the dims... I added the letters in mspaint *rawr*). We were getting the errors just having that file open. PS, closed and all. Pathetic.
Oh, one of the things that the glitch affected is when I said "make those temp walls red"... she did and it didn't show up. She was like "wtf?"... then all of a sudden "boop" the error showed up. It couldn't manage to "preview" the change in color on those few lines.
-
@Brandt, Yes, we need to move the files and scratch to a faster HD but that's just not economical right now since HD prices are so retarded due to the flood. We are just hanging tight. When I bought this system for her before (the flood), she had two 750's in a raid 1 for her BS file storage and usage because she is so sloppy and won't keep her files on the server like she should. ;)
Sold that system before it was even complete and then prices on HD's doubled. So she's stuck using an external for now.
The thing is, it's not a performance issue... it's a complete glitch that doesn't let you do things.
Example... she had my "new office" layout up (I'll attach it.) That file's art board is like 24x24'ish... not huge. All just some basic vector stuff with a few numbers (the dims... I added the letters in mspaint *rawr*). We were getting the errors just having that file open. PS, closed and all. Pathetic.
Oh, one of the things that the glitch affected is when I said "make those temp walls red"... she did and it didn't show up. She was like "wtf?"... then all of a sudden "boop" the error showed up. It couldn't manage to "preview" the change in color on those few lines.
It's for sure buggy, but CS5 seems to be way better so far for me anyway. I got that error almost daily in CS3. I am not sure what they changed, I just know that its working way way better for me so far.
-
Right there with u waiting for HD prices to stabalize before I build my new server. Priced a 1TB last month.. 250 when it was 99 last year.
-
Oddly enough we have a website that we HAVE to edit on my old CS4 machine because Adobe Flash refuses to save it. It crashes every time we try to save it. Not something you really want to completely redo in the newer version. So we are stuck hoping nothing happens to that CS4 machine.
I sometimes think I'd rather be back with CS4 on her machine.
-
Right there with u waiting for HD prices to stabalize before I build my new server. Priced a 1TB last month.. 250 when it was 99 last year.
I literally have 500 gig drives on my shelf that I bought for 49.99 before the flood... after the flood they were 99.99.
Granted, I had bought a 2TB drive before the flood and dropped it in a client's server I built AFTER the flood... that was a nice little bump in profit. ;)
-
Gilligan can you monitor system RAM usage when all this is happening and confirm the system is only using a small percentage of actual RAM? Maybe there is a windows program out there written to help allocate RAM better who knows.
-
Friend was in dire need for a 1TB few months ago, bought an external for cheap and took out the drive and installed it internally. That game didn't last long as the externals have finally caught up in pricing.
-
My professional expertise tells me that you have a GLITCH in your Illy program. LOL.
Another tip would be not to be working from a hard drive that is your main OS drive, I have all my files on a second Internal hard drive, the drive is only for files, not for windows. I let programs and windows live on one drive, data on another. This speeds up things a bit more.
That sounds very smart. I'll look at that also. I did have everything (work files) stored and operating from the main drive. It does make sense to have the main drive freed up for space access.
I can't tell you why, as I'm no computer pro. but I had only 8 gigs of ram while freelancing at a company (on site recently for a short time) and they were using all old macs. Now, I will grant you that they would do far better if they upgraded but they were operating on files that were all (starting at 1.5 gigs of a photoshop file and upwards of 3GB psd files. They were doing all kinds of crazy wrong in file preparation and needed to adjust how they do things, but the point is, these old macs with 8gb or rams were opening and working on files that were that large (and they did this on a daily basis). it was the norm and they had the basics open at the same time, like firefox, acrobat, Illustrator.
(Those were not as old as what I'm using right now. LOL with only 1GB DDR SDRAM on a 1.25 GHz G4 processor. I am using this because my PC motherboard fried last week and am operating just fine for now). I'm sure I can't open 30 programs but I'm working between Illustrator and Photoshop :) In addition, (no punch here) but I am also not getting any out of memory issues between the two. My HD is 80GB. and 70% full. Note, that I also worked on some of this company's 1.5-3 gb files (at home) on my PC that had 8gb of ram but I did have 600GB of HD space on my main drive and then 1TB of external storage space.
(Pro's by the way, can vary in knowledge or more so "expertise" in the same field. For example, experts in the color separation field are not all equal. You have some who are experts in indexing and know nothing else. You have others that are experts in vector color separation and don't work in raster. etc. Same applies everywhere else I'm sure).
If RAM or 30-40 GB of RAM makes all that much difference, than I will be first in line to speed up my next PC when I get it. For the next week or so, I am running my old dependable Mac Mini. cira 2005. I might also mention, that I do still have my old beige table top Mac from 1997 that STILL does operate well but slow. 2BG of ram and a 40GB HD. :) I use it to do some old things in older programs that you can't do in todays programs. It's interesting to note, that the PC that just had the motherboard fried,..was on the same power line in the same one room as these other two MACS that were both on and operating during that time. Both MACS still operate the same. Just say'n is all. Interesting.
The fact that I am going to purchase another $300-$500.00 PC should indicate that I'm not about being ALL MAC all the time. It's money right now as it was back then two years. So. Yes, MACS are far more exp. but again, I still have both my old ones and I'm on my 2nd PC in two years. One might say, It's user error. Could be, but again, just say'n. I don't need repairs and someone to fix my user errors on the Macs.
Let me close by saying, I LOVE PC's. and especially PC users and people who are PC experts. Love'm Love'm Love'm
(Forgot to mention I did have Photoshop close down on me and Illy closed down on me once each, while operating on my old Mac a few days ago). It's not perfect all the time.).
-
My professional expertise tells me that you have a GLITCH in your Illy program. LOL.
Another tip would be not to be working from a hard drive that is your main OS drive, I have all my files on a second Internal hard drive, the drive is only for files, not for windows. I let programs and windows live on one drive, data on another. This speeds up things a bit more.
That sounds very smart. I'll look at that also. I did have everything (work files) stored and operating from the main drive. It does make sense to have the main drive freed up for space access.
I can't tell you why, as I'm no computer pro. but I had only 8 gigs of ram while freelancing at a company (on site recently for a short time) and they were using all old macs. Now, I will grant you that they would do far better if they upgraded but they were operating on files that were all (starting at 1.5 gigs of a photoshop file and upwards of 3GB psd files. They were doing all kinds of crazy wrong in file preparation and needed to adjust how they do things, but the point is, these old macs with 8gb or rams were opening and working on files that were that large (and they did this on a daily basis). it was the norm and they had the basics open at the same time, like firefox, acrobat, Illustrator.
(Those were not as old as what I'm using right now. LOL with only 1GB DDR SDRAM on a 1.25 GHz G4 processor. I am using this because my PC motherboard fried last week and am operating just fine for now). I'm sure I can't open 30 programs but I'm working between Illustrator and Photoshop :) In addition, (no punch here) but I am also not getting any out of memory issues between the two. My HD is 80GB. and 70% full. Note, that I also worked on some of this company's 1.5-3 gb files (at home) on my PC that had 8gb of ram but I did have 600GB of HD space on my main drive and then 1TB of external storage space.
(Pro's by the way, can vary in knowledge or more so "expertise" in the same field. For example, experts in the color separation field are not all equal. You have some who are experts in indexing and know nothing else. You have others that are experts in vector color separation and don't work in raster. etc. Same applies everywhere else I'm sure).
If RAM or 30-40 GB of RAM makes all that much difference, than I will be first in line to speed up my next PC when I get it. For the next week or so, I am running my old dependable Mac Mini. cira 2005. I might also mention, that I do still have my old beige table top Mac from 1997 that STILL does operate well but slow. 2BG of ram and a 40GB HD. :) I use it to do some old things in older programs that you can't do in todays programs. It's interesting to note, that the PC that just had the motherboard fried,..was on the same power line in the same one room as these other two MACS that were both on and operating during that time. Both MACS still operate the same. Just say'n is all. Interesting.
The fact that I am going to purchase another $300-$500.00 PC should indicate that I'm not about being ALL MAC all the time. It's money right now as it was back then two years. So. Yes, MACS are far more exp. but again, I still have both my old ones and I'm on my 2nd PC in two years. One might say, It's user error. Could be, but again, just say'n. I don't need repairs and someone to fix my user errors on the Macs.
Let me close by saying, I LOVE PC's. and especially PC users and people who are PC experts. Love'm Love'm Love'm
I don't have a illustrator issue though ;)
I have computers I have run with much less beefy specs, that's not exclusive to MAC's at all. I own 2 Mac's, they are slow compared to my PC's. Of course my specs on my PC's dwarf the iMac and MacBook Pro I have, so its probably not fair to compare. But I have built computers all of my adult life. I have never put my hands on a Mac I couldn't out build for less money, including the dual processor Macs. Macs used to be out of reach (many years ago) to out build because they controlled their own hardware (proc/etc). Now they all use Intel stuff, because frankly its better, so for good reason.
For sure on Pro's, I keep my mouth shut on stuff I don't know anything about. Computers/specs/how to use one is something I know a good bit about though.
I would suggest steering away from buying a 300-500 computer. Those are not quality mobos, specs are deceiving. If you like I would suggesting buying parts and putting together a more powerful computer yourself or id even do it for you, no cost, just buy parts. I would suggest a larger budget though for some real results. It's all up to how future proof you want to be. There is nothing hard about building a computer yourself really. I can guide you if you need. You'd end up with better quality and ability to upgrade it more in almost every case.
-
What Brandt says.
Unless you spent the same money on your PC as you did your Mac then you can't compare apples to apples. Ok, actually you could spend about 50%-75% on the PC and be more apples to apples... you pay quite a premium for that little logo on there.
I have a 600mhz laptop that I could fire up right now... the hinges are all busted and the screen literally falls out if you move it wrong... but it's still running like a CHAMP! Slow as hell by today's standards so it sits, but just saying you will always have scenarios that are like that or opposite. If you are buying HPs, Dells and the sort for your computer then you are playing with fire. I'm sure they make some decent machines in the high end... but why even play around. Get a shop to build you a good pc (a buddy would be better as we could give you the specs on what to get) and you will have a beast that will run circles around a mac for a fraction of the cost. Aside from your odd ball problem that any computer might have (bad hard drive or ram chip (which would have a lifetime warranty)) you will not have any more problems with hardware then you would a Mac.
Go to any photoediting website and they will all tell you to get a massive amount of RAM... working with Photoshop it would just LOVE to have the RAM.
Oh and Dan.. having the other hard drive isn't so much about space... it's a performance thing. If the OS is accessing files and such on the hard drive to operate (like functions of PS, maintaining the million other systems going on in there) and you are trying to manipulate files on the same hard drive they will have to share access. A hard drive is very much akin to a record player. If you want to hear two songs at once you will have to bounce back and forth with that needle and it just won't really work right? Same thing with the data. But if you had two record players then poof, problem solved you can beat mix to your heart's content.
This stuff holds ESPECIALLY true if you are doing video or music production as those things are constantly feeding off the hard drive while you are working on them. In Brandt's(?) case if he is listening to music all day it makes sense to have it on a separate drive as it's constantly reading that music off the drive (ok, more so sporadically as it buffers but that's not the point). This allows him to not have his music hinder his ability to retrieve or manipulate the data on another hard drive. I personally just keep all my music on my server and it streams over the network for me but that's all the same point.
-
That is a very nice offer and I would take you up on that. Currently, I have Pierre guiding me in the PC world for now. He seems to think these PC's he can get me are equivalent to $1000-1500 PC's like you said but I don't know the details
I never work off of my external drive. I use that for storage or back up. If I want something from that, I copy it over to my work drive (my main drive) being the C drive. But from what I read, I will move all that over to another drive inside my PC rather than my C drive.
-
Right.. that is the way to go... two drives INSIDE. Granted this new USB 3 spec is pretty fast but might as well stick with internal as you don't need to worry about having a mother board with USB 3 (it's still fairly new).
I seen that he recommended a Lenovo on another thread and though I don't have a LOT of experience with these machines I will give you the limited experience I have had.
My wife bought one for her father (before we met) and it was problem problem problems... they had to change out the motherboard (under warranty)... still problems... so we built him a new machine (no issues now, but not my point). So that Lenovo sat around collecting dust to be used for parts. I fired it up and it worked... it's fairly new so had some decent specs. I formatted it and and started using it for my personal machine here at the office... I really only use it to dick around with. Well, poof... crash... poof crash... basically would never stay up over night and often locked up during the day. I said, OK lets change out the RAM (I got tons laying around here)... even though the RAM tested fine (sometimes it's still bad). Still problems.
I've determined there must be something wrong in the memory controller section on the mother board because if you start it and don't run any programs it will run forever. But if you start making it use up some RAM at some point it will get flaky.
This is across multiple installs of various flavors of windows... same copies of windows and same software that runs rock solid on various other machines.
So, though I have no extensive knowledge of Lenovo products, I just have a bad taste in my mouth with them from this one. Granted, I get mad at my brother for doing the same thing with Seagate HD's... he hates them because of a few bad experiences. I don't like them because of their warranty process but they make a decent drive.
-
That is a very nice offer and I would take you up on that. Currently, I have Pierre guiding me in the PC world for now. He seems to think these PC's he can get me are equivalent to $1000-1500 PC's like you said but I don't know the details
I never work off of my external drive. I use that for storage or back up. If I want something from that, I copy it over to my work drive (my main drive) being the C drive. But from what I read, I will move all that over to another drive inside my PC rather than my C drive.
No worries I am sure what he is recommending is ok, but I remember checking them out in a link he posted i think, price was decent, but they weren't that wonderful on specs if I remember right, I think I even posted a comparison to the processor in those compared to what I run and it was drastic. But at the same time it seems like you want something that isn't as beefy as me, to each their own. I prefer raw power. Do as you like, but be informed before you make your choice...
Yes rock a SSD internal or the fastest drive you can afford 10kRPM Vraptor or at the very least a WD Black 7200rpm for your os/programs. Stay away from 5400rpm drives, or any drive with low cache on it, or green drives, read SLOW. Keep all data on a second internal, this will also act as a safety feature as well. If you have to reload windows, your data wont be affected.
-
That is a very nice offer and I would take you up on that. Currently, I have Pierre guiding me in the PC world for now. He seems to think these PC's he can get me are equivalent to $1000-1500 PC's like you said but I don't know the details
I never work off of my external drive. I use that for storage or back up. If I want something from that, I copy it over to my work drive (my main drive) being the C drive. But from what I read, I will move all that over to another drive inside my PC rather than my C drive.
Comparison:
Here is a benchmark score for the processor I just bought vs the one in the one you linked (guessed a little at which c2d it was).
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2600K+%40+3.40GHz (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2600K+%40+3.40GHz)
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Extreme+X9100+%40+3.06GHz (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Extreme+X9100+%40+3.06GHz)
-
Secondary physical ( not a partition ) hard drive should be mandatory for every computer.
I run my OS's page file on the second drive. I still use XP.
Not sure how windows 7 is utilizing page files..which leads me to this:
Gilligan, could it be a page file or scratch disk read/write error you are experiencing?
-
Possible... her OS drive which is her page file is a 60gig SSD. I shrunk the page file because it originally tried to make a 16 gig one... a little stupid.
BUT, it really doesn't touch the page file.
Now scratch discs, maybe. I just moved it last night. I used it today a bit on the office layout and didn't have any issues. I don't task it ANYTHING like she does though.
I can pride myself on knowing more keyboard shortcuts than her. :D But I know probably 2% of what she knows about illustrator.
-
Ha... Nice cat. I wasn't trying to reiterate--just wondering if I was the only one not alpha testing CS6.
That link Pierre posted was for a used computer at an utterly amazing price, right?-Wasn't the whole computer selling for what that i7 2600 goes for? And those Quadro cards *are* pretty sweet.
Inkman: Hit Win+R and type "resmon", you can get info on memory, disk, and CPU usage.
I only have six gigs on the new-ish laptop, and I can't seem to use over half of it without trying really hard. Go figure. Anyone have screen shots of resmon, and how they're killing ten or twenty gigs of memory?
Dan: It's quite possible, as discussed in the other thread, that the power supply had something to do with your Mobo being fried, if that's what happened. Bad power can fry just about anything, and a power supply that's going bad can do amazingly crappy things to your computer. You can destroy just about any electronic component with 'dirty' power, or power that is out of range--many would-be techs have discovered that with their own body's electricity.
It's really too bad more power supplies don't have proper line filtering capacitors.
-
Did alot of reading on win7 tonight, as I'll be running it soon enough.
win7's pagefile is supposed to be equal to your ram in size.
( 16gig sounds ridiculous, but let'er go for it )
I run 1.5x my ram in XP ( 4 gig on the board ), which would be 6 gig.
I let the system manage it, on the secondary drive,
and it usually hovers around 3.5 gig,
which is what I can access of my physical ram anyway.
( 32 bit OS restriction, and a 512meg dedicated vid card sucking up some addresses as well )
Love to hear any progress you make on this issue.
What works, what doesn't, whatever.
Cheers
-
Well, we only have a 60 gig SSD in there for the OS drive. With 7 and CS5 being such disks hogs I have no choice but to limit it down. Besides when will I ever even get very much into a page file with 16 gigs of ram in there?
-
Ha... Nice cat. I wasn't trying to reiterate--just wondering if I was the only one not alpha testing CS6.
That link Pierre posted was for a used computer at an utterly amazing price, right?-Wasn't the whole computer selling for what that i7 2600 goes for? And those Quadro cards *are* pretty sweet.
Inkman: Hit Win+R and type "resmon", you can get info on memory, disk, and CPU usage.
I only have six gigs on the new-ish laptop, and I can't seem to use over half of it without trying really hard. Go figure. Anyone have screen shots of resmon, and how they're killing ten or twenty gigs of memory?
Dan: It's quite possible, as discussed in the other thread, that the power supply had something to do with your Mobo being fried, if that's what happened. Bad power can fry just about anything, and a power supply that's going bad can do amazingly crappy things to your computer. You can destroy just about any electronic component with 'dirty' power, or power that is out of range--many would-be techs have discovered that with their own body's electricity.
It's really too bad more power supplies don't have proper line filtering capacitors.
A 2600 goes for a good amount but that's not the point. The poster was being led to believe it the deal was a powerful rig. It was several years ago in reality, but technology moves quick and maybe he didn't realize that. It's like buying a 10 year old vette... Sure it's faster than a Honda civic but it's a dog compared to a new vette... Pick your poison.
Ill give you a screen shot tomorrow if you want using 20 gigs of ram on photoshop alone... Again not the point. Photoshop like many 64bit apps will use what you let it. I could limit it to a couple gigs if I like and it would just use that much. But I bet if I allow it more ram, it will work faster... Ram is faster than scratch disc use.... So while you can throw a slow computer at a program and limit its ram use and claim you can't get it to use more ram its not because it doesn't want to, it's because your not letting it or your not doing anything that requires it. I for one use a lot of ram and it speeds up everything and is pretty cheap, certainly cheaper than my time. One can either choose to wait longer on a computer and get less done or spend some cash and save time... It's really that simple. Easy choice for me.
-
Lots of programs are now ATTEMPTING, I say that because not all are very good at it, to use as much ram as you can give it and then give it up when another programs use it.
Linux is the king of doing this, it does it at an OS level. If you look at "used ram" on a linux system it will be 100%, but in reality most of that is "cache" and it will give it up when needed. You will also see that the swap file will hardly ever get used unless you REALLY use that physical ram up. Not just cache it up.
What Brandt says is true. It was quite common back through the 90's and just as much so today, just that most people don't notice it because they aren't "power users" like us. The cheapest way to speed up a PC is to dump more ram in it.
Granted for most ppl they come with 4-8 gigs now a days and that is plenty for your average home user. But when you start talking about PS usage... well, you really should double that to reach that same "marginal" ROI. But it's still relative. Like Brandt says, it's cheap... fill it up and not worry about it again.
-
A good analogy would be square footage for your shop.
You don't "NEED" 5,000 sqft to run a successful screen printing shop, but if you could go from 2,500 to 5,000 for only a little bit more, wouldn't you? Would you blame someone that paid even a little more to go to 7,500?
-
One of the simplest ways to speed up illustrator is to keep you vectors clean with a minimum amount of nodes & individual objects. There are ways to clean up the most complex paths. Also as with it an photoshop there are 5 ways to do anything choose the ones adding the least to the file size of the document & are that are less memory intensive.
-
One of the simplest ways to speed up illustrator is to keep you vectors clean with a minimum amount of nodes & individual objects. There are ways to clean up the most complex paths. Also as with it an photoshop there are 5 ways to do anything choose the ones adding the least to the file size of the document & are that are less memory intensive.
All true, but with memory, you dont have to worry about any of that.
You can go around the mountains, or drive over them with the right tools. Ill drive over them, save myself some time....
-
All true, but with memory, you dont have to worry about any of that.
But if you do all that and still have memory to barrel over stuff, imagine what else you can put that memory to use to pull off in a design. :D
-
Yeah, but the square footage analogy would only work if you had some microsoft and adobe engineers telling you what you could do with the extra space. ;)
Linux analogy is great, it's too bad Adobe won't touch it.
I'm with Derek, that it's not that hard to learn how to create lean fast files, and if you already have the best processor you can get, nothing will make it work faster--a leaner file will work faster period, no matter what computer you own..
And more RAM is great--I'm not trying to say you shouldn't get more RAM if you can use it, only that you shouldn't be worrying about getting more RAM if you don't.
If you feel you need a processor that came out last year instead of three years ago, by all means, fork over the money. I'm not trying to step on anyone's buyers pride/remorse. Just seems odd to me that people who may keep the same computer for 3 or even 5-10 years would want to spend 3X the amount of a two or three year old awesome computer for a this year awesome computer--unless they're planning on getting a new awesome computer every year. I guess my point was, when the whole computer costs what another CPU goes for, seems like a 3-4x difference in speed is a decent value either way--whether or not you have the bucks to drop on the fast one.
Just my opinion, not trying to tell anyone what to do...
-
Yeah, but the square footage analogy would only work if you had some microsoft and adobe engineers telling you what you could do with the extra space. ;)
Linux analogy is great, it's too bad Adobe won't touch it.
I'm with Derek, that it's not that hard to learn how to create lean fast files, and if you already have the best processor you can get, nothing will make it work faster--a leaner file will work faster period, no matter what computer you own..
And more RAM is great--I'm not trying to say you shouldn't get more RAM if you can use it, only that you shouldn't be worrying about getting more RAM if you don't.
If you feel you need a processor that came out last year instead of three years ago, by all means, fork over the money. I'm not trying to step on anyone's buyers pride/remorse. Just seems odd to me that people who may keep the same computer for 3 or even 5-10 years would want to spend 3X the amount of a two or three year old awesome computer for a this year awesome computer--unless they're planning on getting a new awesome computer every year. I guess my point was, when the whole computer costs what another CPU goes for, seems like a 3-4x difference in speed is a decent value either way--whether or not you have the bucks to drop on the fast one.
Just my opinion, not trying to tell anyone what to do...
I agree that it's not for everyone....
My usage is clearly in the power user range. I could get by with less, hell much less, but the fact is I would have to sacrifice the way I use and WANT to use a computer. For me that means NEVER worrying about if the computer can do what I am about to ask of it, never having to close something so there are more resources for some other program/function, AND while that's happening all the programs open still have all of the resources they need to run perfect. I wanna jam music, have 30 files open, email, quoting software, several browser windows, and so on. My computer never so much as blinks at this.
Creating lean fast files would only be needed if you don't have the horsepower so I agree if someone lacks power go for it, but I have always had the power so no need to do that. I love to keep extra layers, many versions, and so on in a single file so I can come back and use parts of or revisit a concept. Others do this by creating a new file, or so on. I find that slower. So I don't. Doesn't mean your way or others way is wrong, its probably not for a slower computer. But if you have the power why work lean.
This computer I am on was sub 2k, I have been using it for 3ish years now. It's still very fast by today's standards and will continue being used for several years to come. How fast will the computer being recommended be in 3-4-5 years? Its already very slow in comparison and he's not even bought it yet. Food for thought.
In my time as a geek, I have see a lot of people that have no clue how much time they can save with a well configured computer. I always try to steer people to making smarter choices with these things. For me a fast computer is like a auto. I can print manually at X speed, or I can buy a auto and print much faster and spend free time on something else. Same applies here to a computer. Spend more money, have more time. I assure you its noticeable.
-
A lean file that's half the size is twice as fast--whether you have an i7, or a PIII. As for saving copies, gigabytes are even cheaper on hard drives than they are in RAM.
Not to say you can't value minutes of your time adding up in hundreds of dollars if that's all you do. Again, not telling you to do anything.
-
A lean file that's half the size is twice as fast--whether you have an i7, or a PIII. As for saving copies, gigabytes are even cheaper on hard drives than they are in RAM.
I disagree, I see no delay be it a small file or a large file. I can work with files 100's of mb or 1mb they run the same, by your same thought process a computer with less specs will be slower. I am certainly not going to change how I work over a $100 bucks in ram. I mean seriously how much do you value your time? I bet I could justify that ram cost in less than a week in time savings.
Not to say you can't value minutes of your time adding up in hundreds of dollars if that's all you do. Again, not telling you to do anything.
We design every day, often 8hrs a day. It doesn't take long or much at all to justify a powerful computer here, time saved is drastic by working the way you want, not having to have a computer dictate how you work with it. I find big value in that. I have computers from slow to fast, I have came from shitty to awesome, I know exactly the differences. I now enjoy running what I want, as much of it as I want, and having big ole honkin' files that take no time at all to deal with on my computer. It's not that expensive to be able to do that either IMO.
If I was only doing minor design work, or not much design work I am sure it would be less critical, however that's not the case here.
-
I disagree, I see no delay be it a small file or a large file. I can work with files 100's of mb or 1mb they run the same, by your same thought process a computer with less specs will be slower. I am certainly not going to change how I work over a $100 bucks in ram. I mean seriously how much do you value your time? I bet I could justify that ram cost in less than a week in time savings.
We design every day, often 8hrs a day. It doesn't take long or much at all to justify a powerful computer here, time saved is drastic by working the way you want, not having to have a computer dictate how you work with it. I find big value in that. I have computers from slow to fast, I have came from shitty to awesome, I know exactly the differences. I now enjoy running what I want, as much of it as I want, and having big ole honkin' files that take no time at all to deal with on my computer. It's not that expensive to be able to do that either IMO.
If I was only doing minor design work, or not much design work I am sure it would be less critical, however that's not the case here.
You've taught me a great lesson on valuing my time--I'll try not to post any observations that are contrary to yours. I'm glad we can agree on the second part though. ;)
-
I disagree, I see no delay be it a small file or a large file. I can work with files 100's of mb or 1mb they run the same, by your same thought process a computer with less specs will be slower. I am certainly not going to change how I work over a $100 bucks in ram. I mean seriously how much do you value your time? I bet I could justify that ram cost in less than a week in time savings.
We design every day, often 8hrs a day. It doesn't take long or much at all to justify a powerful computer here, time saved is drastic by working the way you want, not having to have a computer dictate how you work with it. I find big value in that. I have computers from slow to fast, I have came from shitty to awesome, I know exactly the differences. I now enjoy running what I want, as much of it as I want, and having big ole honkin' files that take no time at all to deal with on my computer. It's not that expensive to be able to do that either IMO.
If I was only doing minor design work, or not much design work I am sure it would be less critical, however that's not the case here.
You've taught me a great lesson on valuing my time--I'll try not to post any observations that are contrary to yours. I'm glad we can agree on the second part though. ;)
Look at it this way, if you had a faster computer you could spend more time on this topic. LOL
;D
-
I think both of you guys are correct.
The file would be much faster... problem is the scale in which you are measuring it on. On a pIII with a gig of ram it would be seconds (maybe minutes) but on that i7 with 32gigs of ram we are talking about milliseconds if not less of a difference. Basically it's not perceivable to Brandt at that point so it's a moot point.
Granted, it's obviously better practice to create a more fit file than a bloated one. This is why things are so ridiculous everywhere in the computer world. "hey, ever user has like 4+ gigs of ram and a terabyte of storage... who cares how many resources our product uses" Boom you have CS5 taking up 15gigs of space and windows needing 20gigs for a basic install. That's ridiculous!
For the record that 6 core cpu w/ 16 gigs of DDR3 ram and a 60gig SSD sata6 hard drive, mobo with USB3 and other bells and whistles and a bad a$$ super cool (temp wise) case... ran me about $600 bucks. This doesn't count the dual 24" monitors she runs, but those are system independent.
-
I think both of you guys are correct.
The file would be much faster... problem is the scale in which you are measuring it on. On a pIII with a gig of ram it would be seconds (maybe minutes) but on that i7 with 32gigs of ram we are talking about milliseconds if not less of a difference. Basically it's not perceivable to Brandt at that point so it's a moot point.
Granted, it's obviously better practice to create a more fit file than a bloated one. This is why things are so ridiculous everywhere in the computer world. "hey, ever user has like 4+ gigs of ram and a terabyte of storage... who cares how many resources our product uses" Boom you have CS5 taking up 15gigs of space and windows needing 20gigs for a basic install. That's ridiculous!
For the record that 6 core cpu w/ 16 gigs of DDR3 ram and a 60gig SSD sata6 hard drive, mobo with USB3 and other bells and whistles and a bad a$$ super cool (temp wise) case... ran me about $600 bucks. This doesn't count the dual 24" monitors she runs, but those are system independent.
Sort of the point I was making Gilligan, your $600 buck computer would run a circle around that one being recommended and is only marginally more expensive.
Real world example just happened today. I decided today that my computer is good enough, so that new one I built: i7 with 32gb of ram and 240gb SSD and 1.5tb of data space, I gave it to our new employee to use since he is doing the bulk of design work now. He was blown away at the difference. He said he was having to close out files/programs to allow others to run better. BTW the computer in question he was using was a several year old HP Q6600 Quad Core, 8gb of DDR2, 10krpm Vraptor, with a 1tb black WD data drive. Night and day was his words. He can now work however he likes, rather than having to stop, close things or not open them to start with. He finished several hundred in design work today already. His increased output will pay for that 1.8k computer in no time.
-
???
Perhaps some of my problem is lack of reference--when I checked out that 2600 stepping CPU on Newegg, it ran over 300$. Once you throw together that couple hundred bucks of RAM, a mobo, case, drives, and a power supply to match up, I was figuring even close to 1K would be cheaping out a little on components. Of course, I'm not getting components wholesale either.
If you can build a solid computer from the mentioned 2600K stepping i7 for under a grand, I'm fully in agreement with you--if you can build your own computer with those specs for 600, paying 300-400 for one that's 1/4 the speed wouldn't be a good deal, unless you only have 300-400 bucks to spend, and/or you can't build your own computers.
-
???
Perhaps some of my problem is lack of reference--when I checked out that 2600 stepping CPU on Newegg, it ran over 300$. Once you throw together that couple hundred bucks of RAM, a mobo, case, drives, and a power supply to match up, I was figuring even close to 1K would be cheaping out a little on components. Of course, I'm not getting components wholesale either.
If you can build a solid computer from the mentioned 2600K stepping i7 for under a grand, I'm fully in agreement with you--if you can build your own computer with those specs for 600, paying 300-400 for one that's 1/4 the speed wouldn't be a good deal, unless you only have 300-400 bucks to spend, and/or you can't build your own computers.
Of course, if he has only 3-400 to spend the point is moot. But, I think he should understand what he was recommended is very dated which was my original point. I am not in any way trying to suggest he could build a i7 with a 2600 for anything close to 3-400. BUT, I do think for 5-6-700 he could be in something way, way, way better. I am not saying that it's crap either that he was recommended. I just for one couldn't justify buying a computer that runs a dual core 2008 processor running only a 160gb hard drive and call it my work computer.
To each their own, just know what you are buying. I was under the impression some context could help him. So I gave some.
Here is some more thought. At $700 here is a computer with a lot more ram, a lot more processor power, 2 x 1tb drives, dual monitor graphics and all:
(http://www.graphicdisorder.com/pcconfig.JPG)
Processor comparison:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-2300+%40+2.80GHz (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-2300+%40+2.80GHz)
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Extreme+X9100+%40+3.06GHz (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Extreme+X9100+%40+3.06GHz)
-
And hard drive prices are outrageous right now... that should be about 100 bucks or MORE cheaper.
-
And hard drive prices are outrageous right now... that should be about 100 bucks or MORE cheaper.
Ya HD's should be a little cheaper, if he was to wait a bit that price would probably be a bit cheaper. You could even skimp on a few other specs on this computer and still be a good bit ahead of the other one that was being discussed.
These prices are right on Newegg.com btw.
-
I must be getting good coupons from New Egg.....I just got a Seagate Barracuda LP ST3500412AS 500GB 5900 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive for 31.99 with free shipping......
-
I must be getting good coupons from New Egg.....I just got a Seagate Barracuda LP ST3500412AS 500GB 5900 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive for 31.99 with free shipping......
Good price, but 5900RPM drive....that's why its cheap. Performance on something like that will be really slow.
-
Oh yea? Well, I just got a duel 6x6 4 ton 3.62 ( on the floor) sims with 12 prong copper mine pins with a 4000k "double" metal halide HD and a 220 connector, out the door.... with free shipping for only $80.00). Really it was 79.49 but you know. Rounding up. ;). Oh and they tossed in a free flux capacitor.
If I knew half what you guys knew about computers, I could rule the Internet...again!
-
I'll trade lessons with you Dan. ;)
-
If one fills up alot of their ram with data, the OS will slide stuff in and out of the pagefile
while shuffling it around in physical mem adresses.
They're designed this way ( operating systems ), if I'm not mistaken.
I'm thinkin' that a page file on par with size of physical ram is still a good thing.
Even if it seems ridiculous in size. Have more power, will use more power
I'm not so sure about using a flash-disk stick as a pagefile.
I'd imagine the sata pipeline of data is faster than USB, and the read/write speed/reliability
of a mechanical drive far surpasses the flash ram in the stick.
.02
-
We check the RAM usage... it doesn't exceed it... either way it only will shuffle to page file what it NEEDS to. I'd have to "NEED" 32 gigs to use a 16 gig page file.
I'm using USB 3 (which is pretty fast) and it's not a usb flash drive, it's a external HD.
I'm only using it because I have it... vs internal HD's. When prices come back down to normal I'll pick up some drives for a raid 1 but for now she'll have to do.
-
How is the external doing?
I like that idea, I just kinda cringed when I read about using a usb stick when that became an option,
and assumed some actually were.
I'm not trying to argue, I'm trying to learn something.
;)
Cheerz.
-
A USB stick would work too actually. I'm just not keen on read/writing that much to a flash drive (it has that name for a reason). They have a limited amount of writes.
So far she hasn't seen the issue pop up again. This is a bandaid to the issue right now, but it's what we got.
We are in the computer business to make money, so I'm not gonna use up too much of what I got for personal computers right now. This is why I still use a Lenova workstation that I inherited that blue screens at least once a day due to memory controller issues (I suspect). :)
-
Frequent saves my friend.
Gotta hate it when the circuits go bad...there's too many to trace.
Heck, I get mad when a vehicle's wiring harness gets funky, and that's some stone aged tech.
:)
-
I don't do any "real" work on my PC... I just play on it. LOL