Will RAM upgrade speed up Photoshop in my case? [closed]

Question

using CPU-Z i can find this info about my 2 year old Lenovo laptop.

Its got Intel Celeron M 430 @ 1.73 GHz CPU and 2 RAM modules of 512MB DDR2 each [one is 266MHz & another 333MHz].

The motherboard is Lenovo F50X Intel Chipset i943/940GML.

My problem is PSD files larger than lets say 20/30 MB take quite a bit of time to open in Photoshop, and files around 80/90 MB give me a nightmare. Otherwise this computer works pretty well.

So if i upgrade my RAM to either 1GBx2 or 2GBx2 sticks of same frquency it should help me i suppose?

And how can i verify if my Motherboard will support the upgrade?

What would be the ideal MHz/frequency i should opt for, 333MHz or higher?

If this is the correct page for my motherboard http://www.intel.com/Products/Notebook/Chipsets/940GML/940GML-overview.htm then it says something like i can have max 2GB of RAM, is my understanding correct?

[4GB is max i want to/can go as i use winX.]

Answer 1

Usually, laptops have two memory slots, so you can use two sticks.

You need to check your model specification at Lenovo web site to see what kind of memory it supports. I have a suspicion that 2 GB 533MHz is the max you can install as your laptop is old.

Again, check with Lenovo.

Answer 2

I suggest going to crucial and using their memory upgrade tool to figure out exactly how much ram your laptop can take.

While upgrading the ram will help, your processor isn't doing you any favors for working with big (and potentially complex) files in photoshop. YMMV.

Answer 3

As for the meomry support, check with Lenovo.

To speed up photoshop:

*More memory
*Higher frequenzy on memory
*Hard drive that can ready and write fast. High cache.

Answer 4

When I look at the specs of your laptop I'd say memory isn't your only problem. As for loading files the hard drive speed probably matters much more than the amount of memory (provided no swapping will be necessary; but even PSD files around 80 MiB should fit into 400–600 MiB of memory uncompressed, usually).

Also for serious editing of very large images I'd say your CPU is a bit weak as well.

While you can usually upgrade RAM and the HDD without problems, especially in Lenovo laptops, the CPU is another matter. But if you're only concerned about loading speed of the images, then it shouldn't matter too much; I'd suspect the HDD there.

Older laptop HDDs may have transfer speeds around 30 MiB/s while newer ones easily exceed 70 MiB/s.

Answer 5

A memory upgrade would be marginal at best, unless you have a too many background apps running.

I think that the main bottleneck is the CPU. I've used Photoshop on a Celeron-M as well as a Pentium M at 1.7 GHz each, and going from that to a Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz boosted speed by at least 4x.

The issue is that you're running a single-threaded CPU, which means ANY background applications or processes running will interfere with your foreground process -- in this case loading Photoshop files. The first thing you can do is make the jump to a dual-core CPU. The second piece is that the Core 2 Duo is a much more efficient architecture and has instructions specifically designed to handle Photoshop-type processing. The last and final thing is core speed increase (in MHz).

Photoshop should realistically be able to run well on a system with only 1GB of RAM, although again, it will depend on how many background apps you have running that will take away RAM otherwise available to Photoshop.

Answer 6

Thank you guys for all the suggestions. I checked with Lenovo & Intel for my laptop specs and found it can only use upto 2 GB of 533 MHz memory, so i invested in 2 new 1GB modules. Earlier i had 1 512MB[333MHZ] + 1 512MB[266MHz].

And got some slight boost in speed, nothing significant of course but good enough for Photoshop to open a lil faster.

So hopefully i can still continue to use this amazing laptop for couple of more months until i save enough for a core i7+genuine Win7 monster :)