do you have knowledge with XP? help!!

Well, the computer I'm on right now is a 3.0 with 2 gigs, and along with everything else running (about 8 other programs and 5 instances of IE), CS2 still runs like butter.

Your PC needs another 512MB of RAM. window XP is a memory hog.

Of course, you could ditch Windows and run GNU/Linux, and run Photoshop from Wine. Funny thing is Microsoft Windows is slow, and bloated and handles memory very poorly. Unixes use RAM much more aggressively (and better) imho. What really makes me laugh is that Wine seems to run most Windows applications faster than they do natively in Microsoft Windows!

As others have said, more RAM is needed. At least a gb, probably 2gb these days. Your CPU is fine. A newer dual core AMD would be an improvement, especially with an optomised Photoshop install I suspect.

Also, if you have anti virus software running whilst you're doing image editing, turn it off. Just remember to turn it back on.

Another thing to consider hardware wise is hard drives. If you want fast performance, go to SCSI. It costs more, but it'll leave ata/ata33/ata66/ata100​/ata133 and sata (both 1 and 2) hard drives for dead. Disk throughputs make a lot of difference as well.

Some food for thought!

Dave

I would like to correct dpastern regarding SCSI HD. SCSI HD are expensive for home user. S-ATA drive are the fastest compare to SCSI. SCSI are used strictly for high end servers that require raid setup. S-ATA drive is the new standard for all motherboards on the market. S-ATA HD have 16MB ram cache on board which speed up data read and write tremendously in conjunction with more RAM for your motherboard.

Without appearing to be rude picard, I'm quite right in what I've posted - SCSI drives are faster than SATA and SATA II drives. They're also more robust, most brands offering a 5 year warranty I might add. Yes, they are more expensive I do admit, but they most certainly outperform ATA and SATA drives. This is an Australian site (and overpriced I might add), but it'll give you some idea:

http://www.auspcmarket​.com.au/show_image_pro​ducts.php?input[catego​ry_id]=1221

Something like the 2nd item in the list on that page, the Seagate Cheetah 36Gb U320 LVD SCSI HDD, 68pin drive, 15,000 RPM drive would be a good choice if you really want to boost the speed at which your system works. You'll also need a high quality SCSI card, adaptec makes some good ones, but they aren't cheap. You won't need a super huge hard drive, since you're really only going to format the drive and install Photoshop onto it My (and others) comments on RAM are just as important in helping improve performance.

SCSI drivers are not just strictly used by high end servers, many people use them in their computer systems (well those that really value ulitmate performance). And yes, they are quite commonly used for RAID setups, but that's because most ATA and SATA raids are totally crap (both in reliability and performance)

Now - standards. Yes, SATA (and now SATA II) is basically available on nearly every modern motherboard, but then so is ATA (usually ATA 66 through to ATA 133). If you notice, motherboard manufacturers aren't ditching support for ATA drives. Technically speaking, it's PATA (parallel advanced technology attachment), and SATA (serial advanced technology attachment). SATA offered a maximum of around 5-10% speed performance over ATA133, SATA II doesn't really offer that much more in all honesty. The same can be said for DDR-2 RAM. Mostly hype with a very small performance increase, designed to make more money on computer illiterate people falling for it and spending their hard earned cash when it doesn't need to be spent. Just my very honest 2.2c inc. GST worth here.

There is some more information from the Seagate website on the hard drive that I linked to above that you might find interesting:

http://www.seagate.com …family/cheetah/​index.html

I've actually spent time working in the IT industry, have you?

Dave

I considered SCSI drives for my system, but SATA offered greater storage for the money, and a minor decrease in read/write speed. I'll admit, though, that read write wasn't a major concern since my system is set up RAID 1 (mirrored). Storage space - with decent performance - suited my needs, and SATA along with dual core processing, 4 GB RAM and a fast FSB was a cost effective solution.

I've been building pc's for 10 years or more... Here's a few tips for a faster CS2. Setup you memory in a dual channel configuration(most modern motherborads support this). Min of 1 gig of system memory on XP. Go with a 7200rpm sata or sataII, scsi is just not going to make that much of a diffrence in CS2 to justifiy the price.. Plus you could allways pick up a WD Raptor 10,000rpm 75gig drive for $130.00 .... that just screams FAST!!! Or add 2 in a striped raid formation.... Now your flying. Use the raptor for your system drive and move your pictures to your old system drive. Also... make sure you set your scatch disks to a non system drive in CS2... seems to help. As far as graphics cards go, any out by nvidia or ati in the last year or so will be fine... Graphic cards really don't help that much... unless your gaming or doing some type of video editing. Photo editing is mostly about the cpu speed, cpu cache size, FSB speed, and how fast your memory is. Just a few suggestions based on my experience's. The machines I build are for pure raw performance... Basically... to play games... lol

On my PC. It came with 256 RAM. I purchased 1 gig. I installed it and night became day.
Not really, But, photoshop worked much better and the number of photos I could work with also increased. You need to go the the search area of your tool bar and type in your Cputer and find out what and how much ram you can add.

Yes, you could, but as I said, Microsoft Windows usage of memory leaves a lot to be desired. It will typically avoid using system RAM and go straight to your hard disk cache. No other operating system I've ever used does it this way. Just because the bios on the motherboard supports it, doesn't mean Windows will take advantage of it

Yes, for the price, that's a very good option. If price isn't an option, SCSI will outperform both ata/sata and sata II.

yes, you could do that, but you still have issues with bottlenecks - if reading and writing to the drive is slow, running a raid will only partially help. It's like putting a bandaid on an arm that's been cut off to stem the bleeding. It helps a bit, but doesn't solve the problem! But yes, it'll help a bit.

I would actually recommend installing photoshop onto the faster drive, and setting the swap as well to the faster drive. Regular defrags of said drive helps as well. Of course, you could use a file system that doesn't suffer from such basic issues as file defragmentation (sadly, Microsoft doesn't support them, only it's own file systems, which despite what Microsoft will tell you, aren't that great).

Up the RAM is a definite good idea. If you do have money, one of the new AMD dual core CPUs is a very good choice as well. Go AMD over Intel. Intel's new 64 bit CPUs are pricey, and rather slow in the performance stakes compared to their AMD competition.

Yup, totally agree with you here. Most modern cards are geared for 3D and gaming, not 2D performance. If you want really good 2D performance, go ATI. But, be warned, they are very expensive cards.

http://www.ati.com/pro​ducts/workstation.html

They are professional 2D graphics cards and they outperform their 3D brethren quite nicely.

It all comes down to whether you really want to spend the money. For the average person, a 10,000 rpm sata drive like UnDo said is a very good idea (make sure that the drive has at least a 8mb cache, if not 16mb). RAID on ata/sata is generally very poor, both in performance and reliability. If you're serious about RAID, you'll run SCSI. You get what you pay for. Pay cheap, get cheap.

Dave

edited: This is the output of cat /proc/meminfo on my Linux system:

See how it uses all of the memory? Compare that to Windows...RAM is ALWAYS going to be faster than disk cache. ALWAYS. Also note how much swap drive I have, and how much is free.

Dude, just forget about everthing people are writing here for now and concentrate on one thing - upgrade the memory. Either contact the place where you got your computer in the first place, they should know what you need to upgrade it, or see if you have a manual that has any information about the RAM you need.
Find a decent computer store, where you can actually get some help, and buy a lot more of it.


My mother board broke down slightly a few months back, so only one memory bank worked, so I was stuck with 512 meg of RAM just like you -CS2 was sooooo slow! Got another mother board, and put my 1.5 gig back again. Made a huge difference I can tell you. So just get the memory first, that the easiest thing, and that's the one thing that will truly change the speed of CS2. If you're still not happy, then start thinking about a new hard drive and other things.

You will see a huge difference in speed with more than one scratch disk (I've 4 - final one is source drive). best if you can spread your scratch disk over a few hard drives but even a one hard drive will make a difference

I'd think that would depend on drive configurations. I don't think that a seperate EIDE would be faster than a SATA system drive, as long as there was enough free space. Could be wrong though.