Computer Upgrade Advice

BunZo

Here's what I have:

Core2duo@2.75ghz
2GB Corsair DDR2800
1x150GB Raptor
EVGA 680i SLI
EVGA 7800GT

I am dealing with files that my computer just can't seem to handle. I thought I built a monster, but apparently not.

I am dealing with Illustrator files that include a dozen or more 600dpi .psd files, the .ai files run 500+ MB. I can't have more than 1 open at a time, and can not have Photoshop open at the same time. Which is very inconvienant considering I make edits in Photoshop and the load them up in Illustrator constantly. I often get "can not save the Illustration" and "An unknown error occured" if I have ANYTHING but that one file open.

What should i do?
Go to 4 gigs of RAM? Add a second Raptor?
Any other recomendations?

Poseidon

Hi BunZo, welcome to Dgrin!

I think you answered your question perfectly. More RAM, and a scratch disk sound like the cure to your problems.

Either that or a new Mac Pro, loaded up with all the RAM and HD's money can buy!

BunZo

Do you think that having a seperate hard drive for the scratch data would be better then running 2x150GB raptors RAID 0?

seawolf66

Go for the RAM first and then see how it runs and think about other stuff, I would look at my RAM to see If I could incress the speed on the ram like if you have 3200 go to 4000 maybe Just A wild guess, also think about checking your vidio card to see if your have shared RAM or the vidio card has its own RAM on board If yours is shared I'D get ati or something like it with 256mgs of ram on boardJust food for thought!:D

colourbox

Editing 600 dpi Photoshop files would probably take up 2GB on its own. And you're trying to run Illustrator too. Yeah, I think RAM is the first place to look, then the external scratch disk for Photoshop.

I have 2GB RAM and I long ago realized it's not enough. But I can't put more than 2GB in this laptop. My new desktop has 3GB and the only reason it doesn't have 6GB is that I can't afford it yet.

Poseidon

BunZo wrote:

Do you think that having a seperate hard drive for the scratch data would be better then running 2x150GB raptors RAID 0?

Yes I do.

In a RAID it certainly is safer, but it acts like 1 drive right?

LuckyBob

Poseidon wrote:

In a RAID it certainly is safer, but it acts like 1 drive right?

Not quite. RAID 0 is the opposite of RAID 1 (and is not technicially RAID). Whereas RAID 1 creates one or several live backups depending on the drive count, RAID 0 (striping) splits information up into chunks and spreads it across all the drives in the array, giving {n} drives worth of storage and increased speed at the cost of reliability. RAID 0 controllers request information from all drives at the same time and recombine it for the OS to "see" at a major performance gain; good RAID 0 controllers can just about double performance with two drives, triple with three, etc.

RAID 5/6 are the ultimate solutions which mix speed increases with increased capacity, but the cost can be quite high. RAID 5 gives {n-1} capacity, while RAID 6 gives {n-2} capacity. As far as array stability is concerned, RAID 0 (striped) tolerates NO drive failures, RAID 1 can have *all* drives except one fail, RAID 5 tolerates one drive failure, and RAID 6 tolerates two drive failures.

In answer to the origional question: the most gain to be had will be with more RAM (MUCH more), especially sticks with fast timings. In second place, putting a multi-disk RAID 0 array in place will help when there isn't enough RAM and for load/save times. Thirdly, adding another drive and using it as the OS/software drive and "demoting" the RAID array to scratch will improve performance only somewhat.