new computer or new video card needed?

I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm
shooting in RAW. I am using Capture NX to do intial
adjustments to the raw image and then saving it as a tiff.
I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open.
And my computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very
very slowly, pictures are being drawn slowly and changes are
previewed....slowly. It is only slightly better if I close
Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow
and I am constantly waiting for large files to open and to
adjust to changes. I find the transition from Capture NX to
opening the tiff in CS3 to be extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or
whether it is simply that my graphics card isn't up to the
tasks I am now presenting to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large
seagate hard drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with
128 meg of memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E
Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is
the the video card the main bottleneck? If the video card
is the bottleneck, do I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of
ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not use the AGP slot
at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the
slowness for another year when I will feel more ready to buy
a new computer. But if not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise

louise wrote:
I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm shooting in RAW.
I am using Capture NX to do intial adjustments to the raw image and then
saving it as a tiff. I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open. And my
computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very very slowly,

CS3 is a hog with 10MP. You'll probably get better advice on a photoshop
group like alt.graphics.photoshop, comp.graphics.apps.photoshop You can
check ctl-al-delete Task Manager, Performance tab to see if it's a CPU
or page-file hard disk problem for lack of RAM. Clear your history if
you are doing lots of edits, assign a separate partition or drive for CS
paging. CS3 is annoyingly slow but not quite as bad as you describe
perhaps on my 5 year old laptop Pentium M 1.5 ghz with 1GB RAM and a jam
packed hard drive. I went back to CS1.

pictures
are being drawn slowly and changes are previewed....slowly. It is only
slightly better if I close Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough
to be frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow and I am
constantly waiting for large files to open and to adjust to changes. I
find the transition from Capture NX to opening the tiff in CS3 to be
extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or whether it is
simply that my graphics card isn't up to the tasks I am now presenting
to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large seagate hard
drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with 128 meg of
memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is the the
video card the main bottleneck? If the video card is the bottleneck, do
I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of ram or do I get a regular PCI card
and not use the AGP slot at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What
specs should I look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the slowness for
another year when I will feel more ready to buy a new computer. But if
not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise




--
Paul Furman Photography
http://www.edgehill.net/1
Bay Natives Nursery
http://www.baynatives.com

It won't be your video card.

My first guess is your processor but how much free space is on the disk
used for swap for PS and is this disk also used for other things?

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography
http://www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Personal art site http://www.cosshall.com/



louise wrote:
I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm shooting in RAW.
I am using Capture NX to do intial adjustments to the raw image and then
saving it as a tiff. I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open. And my
computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very very slowly, pictures
are being drawn slowly and changes are previewed....slowly. It is only
slightly better if I close Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough
to be frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow and I am
constantly waiting for large files to open and to adjust to changes. I
find the transition from Capture NX to opening the tiff in CS3 to be
extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or whether it is
simply that my graphics card isn't up to the tasks I am now presenting
to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large seagate hard
drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with 128 meg of
memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is the the
video card the main bottleneck? If the video card is the bottleneck, do
I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of ram or do I get a regular PCI card
and not use the AGP slot at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What
specs should I look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the slowness for
another year when I will feel more ready to buy a new computer. But if
not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
It won't be your video card.

My first guess is your processor but how much free space is on the disk
used for swap for PS and is this disk also used for other things?

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography
http://www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Personal art site http://www.cosshall.com/



louise wrote:
I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm shooting in
RAW. I am using Capture NX to do intial adjustments to the raw image
and then saving it as a tiff. I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue
editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open. And my
computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very very slowly,
pictures are being drawn slowly and changes are previewed....slowly.
It is only slightly better if I close Outlook and Firefox - it is
still slow enough to be frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow and I am
constantly waiting for large files to open and to adjust to changes.
I find the transition from Capture NX to opening the tiff in CS3 to be
extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or whether it is
simply that my graphics card isn't up to the tasks I am now presenting
to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large seagate hard
drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with 128 meg of
memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is the the
video card the main bottleneck? If the video card is the bottleneck,
do I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of ram or do I get a regular PCI
card and not use the AGP slot at all? I do have an open PCI slot.
What specs should I look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the slowness for
another year when I will feel more ready to buy a new computer. But
if not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise


The disk is 300 gig and there 72 gig are used. Virtual
memory is set for 3069 for intial and max - in other words,
the same.

How do I set the amount of disk space used for CS3 swap?

TIA

Louise

On Sat, 12 May 2007 23:59:59 -0400, louise
wrote:

I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm
shooting in RAW. I am using Capture NX to do intial
adjustments to the raw image and then saving it as a tiff.
I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open.
And my computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very
very slowly, pictures are being drawn slowly and changes are
previewed....slowly. It is only slightly better if I close
Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow
and I am constantly waiting for large files to open and to
adjust to changes. I find the transition from Capture NX to
opening the tiff in CS3 to be extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or
whether it is simply that my graphics card isn't up to the
tasks I am now presenting to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large
seagate hard drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with
128 meg of memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E
Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is
the the video card the main bottleneck? If the video card
is the bottleneck, do I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of
ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not use the AGP slot
at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the
slowness for another year when I will feel more ready to buy
a new computer. But if not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise





My system, Win 2000, P4 @ 1.4Gig (yes really), I Gig memory and an
old Matrox video card , in PS CS2 will open a 30 meg TIFF file in
about 2 seconds. A 12 meg RAW from the camera takes about 15 seconds.

Your system should be faster than that.

Perhaps the only deifference is that I have all my system and program
files on a fast SCSI drive and all the data files (and PS swap files )
on separate ATA drives.

I don't think you need a new system, but perhaps a second hard drive.

"louise" wrote in message
...
I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm shooting in RAW. I
am using Capture NX to do intial adjustments to the raw image and then
saving it as a tiff. I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open. And my computer
is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very very slowly, pictures are being
drawn slowly and changes are previewed....slowly. It is only slightly
better if I close Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow and I am
constantly waiting for large files to open and to adjust to changes. I
find the transition from Capture NX to opening the tiff in CS3 to be
extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or whether it is simply
that my graphics card isn't up to the tasks I am now presenting to it.
Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large seagate hard
drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with 128 meg of
memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is the the video
card the main bottleneck? If the video card is the bottleneck, do I get
another AGP 8X with 256 meg of ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not
use the AGP slot at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the slowness for
another year when I will feel more ready to buy a new computer. But if
not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise

Try disabling your antivirus software. When I bought a new laptop it came
with what the store said was a super antivirus program, PC-cillin. It was
super alright, thought every photo file was a potential virus and had to
check them all before opening/processing them. I use a Canon 10D and use
RAW for everything. With the PC-cillin antivirus software running it took
28 seconds or more to convert, process and save a raw image to a tiff,
without the PC-cillen antivirus software runnung it usually takes 13-14
seconds to convert, process and save a raw image and I have McAfee antivirus
software running.. The PC-cillin antivirus is no longer on my laptop!

Ron

On Sat, 12 May 2007 23:59:59 -0400, louise
wrote:

I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm
shooting in RAW. I am using Capture NX to do intial
adjustments to the raw image and then saving it as a tiff.
I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open.
And my computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very
very slowly, pictures are being drawn slowly and changes are
previewed....slowly. It is only slightly better if I close
Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow
and I am constantly waiting for large files to open and to
adjust to changes. I find the transition from Capture NX to
opening the tiff in CS3 to be extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or
whether it is simply that my graphics card isn't up to the
tasks I am now presenting to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large
seagate hard drive with plenty of space.

I have the same combination and also have a Core2Duo E6600. Both have
2GB RAM. The operating speeds with CS3 and Lightroom are virtually
identical on the two systems. It's just that processing 10MP files is
slow, period.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with
128 meg of memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E
Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is
the the video card the main bottleneck? If the video card
is the bottleneck, do I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of
ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not use the AGP slot
at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the
slowness for another year when I will feel more ready to buy
a new computer. But if not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise

Your computer is adequate but you are asking alot of it.
Two gbs of RAM is adequate and, in fact, adding more in XP will dent your
pocketbook more than improve performance.
NX, PS and CS3 hog both memory (RAM, swap file/scratch disk) and system
resources (the bits any OS uses to keep track of what it is doing, which are
finite). 10mp images quickly swell to 50mbs or more depending on how many
layers and filters you are using.
You are on the right track about shutting down un-necessary background
programs and processes: that is the main software configuration change you
can make that will yield a tangible improvement. Virus programs and
firewalls should not be a problem but might be.
If you do not have at least two physically separate hard drives plugged into
the motherboard then get a second and configure properly for use as a
Windows Swap/photoshop scratch file. There are many source of info about
this, including Adobe.
If you want to upgrade the tasks you are trying to do call out for a dual
core processor. Although each core may be slower than your PIV the OS can
assign programs to alternate processors and some CS3 processes, but not the
whole program, are multithreaded. Even with a dual core processor you still
need at least two hard drives. The same RAM limits apply: XP really cannot
use more than 2gbs effectively.
Whatever you do, do not get Vista (or any 64 bit OS). Although MS claims
32bit Vista can use 4gbs of RAM Vista is slower, buggy and there is a claim
out there that every time Vista gives you the screen blankout, which it does
every time you move a file or do some other innocuous chore, Vista unloads
the monitor calibration data. Easy to reinstall but what a pain.

babaloo wrote:
Your computer is adequate but you are asking alot of it.
Two gbs of RAM is adequate and, in fact, adding more in XP will dent your
pocketbook more than improve performance.
NX, PS and CS3 hog both memory (RAM, swap file/scratch disk) and system
resources (the bits any OS uses to keep track of what it is doing, which are
finite). 10mp images quickly swell to 50mbs or more depending on how many
layers and filters you are using.
You are on the right track about shutting down un-necessary background
programs and processes: that is the main software configuration change you
can make that will yield a tangible improvement. Virus programs and
firewalls should not be a problem but might be.
If you do not have at least two physically separate hard drives plugged into
the motherboard then get a second and configure properly for use as a
Windows Swap/photoshop scratch file. There are many source of info about
this, including Adobe.
If you want to upgrade the tasks you are trying to do call out for a dual
core processor. Although each core may be slower than your PIV the OS can
assign programs to alternate processors and some CS3 processes, but not the
whole program, are multithreaded. Even with a dual core processor you still
need at least two hard drives. The same RAM limits apply: XP really cannot
use more than 2gbs effectively.
Whatever you do, do not get Vista (or any 64 bit OS). Although MS claims
32bit Vista can use 4gbs of RAM Vista is slower, buggy and there is a claim
out there that every time Vista gives you the screen blankout, which it does
every time you move a file or do some other innocuous chore, Vista unloads
the monitor calibration data. Easy to reinstall but what a pain.


I'd like to be able to keep this computer for another year.
I will look into a second hard drive since I only have one
SATA drive and I have the capacity for several.

Can you recommend a good site to explain about
swap/photoshop scratch drive?

Thanks.

Louise

"louise" wrote in message
...
I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm shooting in RAW. I
am using Capture NX to do intial adjustments to the raw image and then
saving it as a tiff. I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open. And my computer
is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very very slowly, pictures are being
drawn slowly and changes are previewed....slowly. It is only slightly
better if I close Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow and I am
constantly waiting for large files to open and to adjust to changes. I
find the transition from Capture NX to opening the tiff in CS3 to be
extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or whether it is simply
that my graphics card isn't up to the tasks I am now presenting to it.
Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large seagate hard
drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with 128 meg of
memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is the the video
card the main bottleneck? If the video card is the bottleneck, do I get
another AGP 8X with 256 meg of ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not
use the AGP slot at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the slowness for
another year when I will feel more ready to buy a new computer. But if
not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise


I use CS3 on a similar spec PC to work on TIFF & RAW files taken with my
Canon 400d and dont notice significant slowdown at all...and my memory is
1gb to your 2gb.
Perhaps you have too many 'hidden' applications working in the background?





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