Mac Or PC

[AndrewRodney]

Originally Posted by Noel_Carboni

In my case, with a lifetime of PC experience I would find it difficult to change from the PC to Mac UI.

You just don't want to be labelled a "Switcher" ;-)

I do hear more and more PC users who suggest its not hard, but I have no such experience. I do run Windows a few times a year on my Mac (Vista, I'm such a wimp) and its not that hard for me to get hip to its system although I really don't prefer it and find some aspects a bit frustrating and the overall UI kind of cheesy. I did run XP under Virtual PC and liked that better but couldn't stand Virtual PC. If you want to know why I went to Vista, it wasn't my idea. I had to do tech support and was told by someone of a higher order (Mr. Schewe) "I'll do XP, you do Vista".

And there are the myriad other programs I use that would have to be researched to find a Mac equivalent. On the other hand, with virtualization technology being what it is, it's possible to run a virtual PC inside a Mac quite well.

I'm actually shocked at how fast Vista and the app's I use run on just a lowly iMac. No, I'm NOT putting Windows on my new shiny MacPro with 10 gigs of ram, even though I suspect it would be real, real fast. Anyway, the argument these days is kind of moot. With BootCamp, you're running a Windows machine.

It's kind of like considering switching from Nikon to Canon or vice versa. Lots of things to consider, no hard and fast answers.

IF Canon doesn't come out with a newer camera that can shoot under high ISO like the new Nikon, you may find me switching! Wouldn't be the first time (in the 80's, Nikon was the only camera system pro's used).

[Jerry Skrocki]

Originally Posted by AndrewRodney

Jerry, we're getting OT here since the original question was about the Mac and PC. But I think your original statement is confusing and incorrect:

The only thing I may have misquoted is the use of the word Leopard. The OSX performance increase is for 10.4 and above.

This has absolutely nothing to do with 64 bit OS and point in fact, Photoshop doesn't and can't access more than the 3 gigs of ram. The OS will not allow this functionality. Now what can be done (and has been done for years) is using the OPTIONAL VM Plug-in that will use some of the additional Ram (3 gigs or so) as a temp scratch disk before going to full scratch disk (unlimited only by size of the drive). And yes, it is faster. But its only useful for taking the additional memory and using a pretty small amount as a VM scratch disk and in no way does this have anything to do with the OS or the amount of bits it can address. That said, people I know inside of Adobe, working with an upcoming version (my NDA doesn't allow me to say more) might tell you that the differences with a 32bit versus 64-bit version of Photoshop does provide some increases in speed IN MOST OF THE APPLICATION (maybe 8-10%) but this isn't the same as using the VM plug-in in OS X with CS3 which is a 32 bit app. So the point above "Leopard is a true 64 bit OS and as such can..." is confusing the issue. Its got nothing to do with an optional plug-in and that said, a true 64-bit application would address far, far more memory and do so pretty much across the board.

I think we are pretty much OT since the OP asked which computer system would be faster.

If you read the Adobe Tech notes I posted earlier for each OS, you will see that they do specify the need for a 64bit OS and 64bit processor for accessing additional ram for use as Photoshop scratch disk space.

Windows: "When you run Photoshop CS3 on a computer with a 64-bit processor (such as a, Intel Xeon processor with EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, or Opteron processor) running a 64-bit version of the operating system (Windows XP Professional x64 Edition or Windows Vista 64-bit) and with 4 GB or more of RAM, Photoshop will use 3 GB for it's image data. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance preference to 100%. The RAM above the 100% used by Photoshop, which is from approximately 3 GB to 3.7 GB, can be used directly by Photoshop plug-ins (some plug-ins need large chunks of contiguous RAM), filters, or actions. If you have more than 4 GB (to 6 GB), then the RAM above 4 GB is used by the operating system as a cache for the Photoshop scratch disk data."

OSX: "Allocating Memory above 2 GB with 64-bit Processors
When you run Photoshop CS3 on a 64-bit operating system, such as Mac OS X v10.4 and later, Photoshop can access up to 8 GB of RAM. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance preference to 100%. The RAM above the 100% used by Photoshop, which is from approximately 3 GB to 3.7 GB, can be used directly by Photoshop plug-ins (some plug-ins need large chunks of contiguous RAM), filters, and actions. If you have more than 4 GB (to 8 GB), the RAM above 4 GB is used by the operating system as a cache for the Photoshop scratch disk data."

This would indicate that a Windows 64bit OS can access up to 6 gigs of ram while a Mac 64bit OS can access up to 8 gigs of ram before going to the hard drive for scratch disk. In my opinion this would give Mac the edge.

Jerry

[AndrewRodney]

Originally Posted by Jerry Skrocki

If you read the Adobe Tech notes I posted earlier for each OS, you will see that they do specify the need for a 64bit OS and 64bit processor for accessing additional ram for use as Photoshop scratch disk space.

Not so, and I did say originally that 64 bit OS IS necessary for actual usage of more than 3 gigs of ram, not a scratch disk only. From this Adobe tech note:

On Macintosh computers, Photoshop can directly access up to about 3.5GB. When there is more than 3.5GB of document data, Photoshop writes data to its scratch files as necessary. On a computer with 4GB or less of RAM, the data is transferred directly between the scratch files on disk and the Photoshop RAM. On a computer with more than 4GB of RAM, Photoshop tells the operating system to use the extra RAM as a buffer for the Photoshop scratch file. In this case, when document data no longer fits in the 3.5GB of Photoshop RAM and is written to the scratch file, the operating system stores it in the extra RAM and can retrieve it from there much faster than it could be read from disk. This lets Photoshop take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM to significantly increase performance with very large documents.

OSX: "Allocating Memory above 2 GB with 64-bit Processors
When you run Photoshop CS3 on a 64-bit operating system, such as Mac OS X v10.4 and later, Photoshop can access up to 8 GB of RAM. You can see the actual amount of RAM Photoshop can use in the Let Photoshop Use number when you set the Let Photoshop Use slider in the Performance preference to 100%.[/quote]

Well I sure can't and I have 10 gigs of ram on my Leopard system.

[Jerry Skrocki]

These two links (in addition to the Adobe Tech Notes) are very helpful in explaining how memory is used by both the OS and by Photoshop.

http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/psw...ion_export.pdf

http://homepage.mac.com/boots911/.Pu...Basics2.4W.pdf

[jeffcable]

Originally Posted by AndrewRodney

Well I sure can't and I have 10 gigs of ram on my Leopard system.

Just a thought Andrew... Have you enabled the .psb file format? I ask because I do recall that it permits Photoshop to handle data files up to 300,000 x 300,000 pixels, which would equate to something approaching an 83.33 feet square image at 300ppi.

I am not attempting to teach you to suck eggs, Andrew. I had just wondered if enabling the ability for Photoshop to handle .psb files (I believe that Adobe referred to this as Photoshop's large document format) would then permit the software to access more RAM.

In my view it does not make very much sense to permit a 4GB file to reside in only 3GB of RAM. This set up would continually invoke the use of the scratch disk. If any image processing of such a file was carried out, then 4GB of RAM would prove to be completely inadequate. I tend to think of image files as requiring 4x the RAM memory... dictated by their native file size and the desired resolution of the image file.

Jeff

[AndrewRodney]

Originally Posted by jeffcable

Just a thought Andrew... Have you enabled the .psb file format? I ask because I do recall that it permits Photoshop to handle data files up to 300,000 x 300,000 pixels, which would equate to something approaching an 83.33 feet square image at 300ppi.

Nope, that's got nothing to do with memory allocation. Also, the preference here is whether to include backwards compatibility with these formats (essentially, do you want to include a flattened version within the format when saving layered documents). Its a good idea to have that on, in my case its set to always.

[AndrewRodney]

Its pretty clear, OS X, 32 bit application, 10 gigs of ram, this pup is only going to allocate 3 gigs as seen here. Even if you try to force the issue (I typed in 6000), you get a dialog that sets you straight.

[Pro Photo Store]

Visit the B&H Pro Photo Store for the best Gear Prices and regular specials!

Brilliant Color for any Digital SLR
White Balance Cap
The Pros Agree on ColorRight
What People Are Saying