9 Replies Latest reply: Jan 8, 2009 10:31 AM by dec9 RSS

    Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM

    CShockr Community Member
      I am running Photoshop as part of the CS4 Suite on a bootcamped intel mac pro towers using Vista Business with 4 gigs of Memory. We are running in 32 bit mode because of the Apple screw up with Carbon 64 so that both sides of the house windows and mac match.

      Photoshop is currently only seeing 1639 MB of the RAM instead of the performance on the Mac of about 3000 MB

      So does anyone know what is going on here and how I can get Photoshop and or Vista to recognize most if not all of the RAM installed on these machines.

      Specs are below...

      Adobe Photoshop Version: 11.0 (11.0x20080919 [20080919.r.488 2008/09/19:02:00:00 cutoff; r branch])
      Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit
      Version: 6.0 Service Pack 1
      System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:7, Stepping:6 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2
      Physical processor count: 4
      Processor speed: 2793 MHz
      Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
      Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 x 4294967296 colors
      Video Card Driver: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
      Driver Version: 7.15.11.8048
      Built-in memory: 2037 MB
      Free memory: 1178 MB
      Memory available to Photoshop: 1640 MB
      Memory used by Photoshop: 55 %
      Image cache levels: 4

      Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\
      Temporary file path: C:\Users\MGD\AppData\Local\Temp\
      Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
      Scratch volume(s):
      C:\, 349.4G, 324.0G free
      Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Plug-ins\
      Additional Plug-ins folder: not set
        • 1. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
          Community Member
          >Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit

          You answered your question:
          >We are running in 32 bit mode because of the Apple screw up with Carbon 64 so that both sides of the house windows and mac match

          Use Vista 64.
          • 2. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
            Kwan Parker Community Member
            While Jim's suggestion is the only solution to addressing all your system's memory, I am surprised you only have 2037 MB (built-in) memory. Perhaps you are running processes or have devices attached which are eating into your memory by as much as .5 MBs?

            I also have 4GBs installed ram. Right off the top, Windows strips 1 GIG to reserve space for Video Cards and other devices. I lose another .5 MB to the system.

            This is a well-known limitation of 32-bit systems and like Jim says, there is little to be done except to upgrade to Vista 64. You can remove devices and stop processes and services, but you'll not ever see . . . at very best . . . 3.5 GBs. (Well, you might by using the /PAE switch, but that is more risk than I'm willing to play with.)

            This is what my system looks like:

            Operating System: Windows Vista (Ultimate) 32-bit
            Version: 6.0 Service Pack 1
            System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:7, Stepping:7 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2
            Physical processor count: 4
            Processor speed: 3666 MHz
            Video Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
            Video Card Renderer: GeForce GTX 280/PCI/SSE2
            OpenGL Drawing: Enabled.
            Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
            Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 x 4294967296 colors
            Video Card Driver: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
            Driver Version: 7.15.11.7740
            Built-in memory: 2557 MB
            Free memory: 1281 MB
            Memory available to Photoshop: 1640 MB
            Memory used by Photoshop: 60 %
            Image cache levels: 4

            Thus far, I've not encountered any problem using a 32-bit version. That is partly because I've not done anything with PS or other applications which might cause problems. But, as I do more with the Master Suite I expect that situation to change. Then, I'll upgrade to Vista 64.

            I'm kinda keeping my eyes and ears open about Windows 7. Unless I encounter performance problems, I'd rather wait for the next version. According to rumors, the earliest date would be the end of the year, if not early 2010.
            • 3. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
              CShockr Community Member
              Problem with Vista 64 is that I am in an academic situation and neither of the Ultimate versions are covered by our academic alliance agreement

              So I am stuck with 32 bit Business edition for now until they authorize Ultimate and or a 64 bit Business version of Vista...PAE switch is risky for us also as my IT department doesn't understand how to support it...

              So I'll just tell the students that gee, guess what, Photoshop currently runs better on a Mac as Photoshop can see all of the RAM unlike windoze where we can only see 1.7...arrrgggh!
              • 4. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
                BobLevine CommunityMVP
                That's a load of rubbish...don't make a fool of yourself. That's way too general a statement.

                If you want to make that comparison then get yourself a 64 bit version of Windows.

                BTW, on a bootcamped MacBook I'm seeing built in memory of 2791, 1551 free and 1603 available to Photoshop using Vista Home Premium.

                There's way more to performance than this, though.

                Bob
                • 5. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
                  Community Member
                  If you really wanted to get the best performance from a 32 bit Windows system, I'd go with the smaller footprint of XP on that Mac, just as many might prefer Tiger over Leopard. You'll find few people promoting Vista 32 for optimum performance. Many of us only upgrade to Vista for 64 bit systems. Try turning off the RAM-hungry fluff features like Aero to see if more RAM is available to PS.
                  • 6. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
                    CShockr Community Member
                    Problem is that our Community College System and IT director has forced our hand with moving to Vista (Hasty La Vista as I like to call it!) as all colleges in the system and all departments have to make the move to one Windows operating system for "efficiency"

                    So I am stuck with Vista Business 32 for now, we are going to check the processes to see whats going on and where we are losing RAM and I am looking at how to optimize the Virtual Memory for better performance.

                    John...please share me the secret that you used to get Vista to see all of the RAM...most of my IT people are not Vista Pros and I don't have a lot of resources to fall back on...
                    • 7. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
                      dec9 Community Member
                      Christine,

                      You can set virtual memory to a set size. Right click on my computer, choose properties, then on the left side click on Advance System Settings. The system properties window will pop up. Click on the Advance tab and then click Settings in the performance area. Performance options will pop up. Click on the Advance tab. Look for the Virtual Memory area and click on Change. Look for the drive where you want the paging file to be. Mine is set on C drive on my gaming rig because my games run from D drive. Choose Custom size. Windows will show a recommended size towards the bottom. In my case it is 12285 MB. Then with custom size selected, type in 12285 in both Initial size and Maximum size blocks. Click on Set. Close out of everything and reboot. Doing this, as in XP and Vista, will make your computer run faster and also defrag faster. Your IT people should know this as it is very basic.
                      • 8. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
                        Community Member
                        Check out the 'increaseuserva' switch in BCDEdit. It will let you increase the
                        amount of memory an application sees, up to 3G.
                        --
                        Charlie...
                        http://www.chocphoto.com
                        • 9. Re: Photoshop CS4 on Vista not seeing 4 gigs of RAM
                          dec9 Community Member
                          Switching from Aero to windows classic will save around 40MB of Ram. But having Aero running on my computer that I use PS CS4 on runs the CS4 software better. Some others on here saw different on their systems. Try both ways.

                          Run Explorer with run Explorer window in a seperate process "not Selected". Each Explorer window open uses a lot of ram.

                          Minimise open applications that you are not using. Windows will take back some of this ram for use in other applications.

                          If your IT people will let you: Go into the Bios and turn off items that you do not use. This will free up address space. But be very careful. But most IT people lock the bios entry anyways!! I just don't know why........ lol

                          Here is a nice website for fine tuning but your IT person may not like it. Use at your own risk as a lot of services are tied in to each other and will cause issues. But there is a lot of items in services that if you don't use can be turned off thus freeing up address space for ram.
                          http://www.blackviper.com/