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Question

Will 32GB RAM have noticeable benefit compared to 16GB?

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
December 9, 2012
4 replies
20487 views

Will 32GB RAM have noticeable benefit compared to 16GB? Reason I'm asking is that I've just built a new PC: 3770K, 32GB RAM, SSD for OS and programs, SSD for scratch, Caviar Black for storage, etc but unfortunately Windows 7 Home Premium only allows 16GB RAM! I have Windows 8 Pro which I could install giving me access to full 32GB but only really want to do this if 32GB will offer tangible benefit to Photoshop.

Would love to hear from those that actually have upgraded from 16GB to 32GB. Thx!

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bekiil

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From what i have read in reviews and on various forums, sell the windows 8 license and get windows 7 pro!.

J

JRP_PhotoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Bekiil: The W8 Pro licence was only $40 - To buy W7 Pro upgrade it is ~$140, so prefer not to spend even more money!

Anyway, I decided to bite the bullet and install Window 8. After doing a clean install it booted up fine. I installed drivers for my graphics card and printer. Manually installing the printer drivers was the most challenging part, but once I'd worked out where the relevent dialogue boxes were hidded on W8, it actually worked without a hitch. Configured the W8 appearence so the new Start/Metro page looks more integrated with the desktop and then installed Design/Web Premium CS6 and MS Office. So far everything is fine - very snappy/responsive (although I didn't play with it much).

I'll install Lightroom, plug-ings, etc tonight and test things out. But so far so good. I think the UI will grow on me a little and there are some aspects which are better than W7, so we'll see.

J

JRP_PhotoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Just thought I'd report back with my experience in case anyone is thinking of using Widows 8.

I was very against W8 based on my experience on a laptop (where I've been using it for 4 months). However, I've had it installed on my destop now for a week and I think it is excellent. I thought originally it was very biased to tablets, but I have a dual 30" monitor set up and it works a dream. Only issue I have is that one of my Nik filters (Dfine 2.0) casues PShop to crash when I use it, but other than that it is a very pleasent, if somewhat unexpected, user experience.

BTW - not sure about others experience with Nik, but they have been very unhelpful in resolving this issue, despite me owning all their filters. Hoping this isn't indicitive of Google winding it down...

Noel Carboni

Legend

By the way, Windows 8 isn't mature yet, so you might take on new problems by upgrading.

Can you upgrade your Windows 7 still via Windows Anytime Upgrade. I would recommend that rather than moving to Windows 8, to be honest.

-Noel

Noel Carboni

Legend

I would say so. My last workstation, up through September, had 16 GB RAM. My replacement has 48 GB.

With an SSD on the job for scratch disk usage, you won't feel it "go virtual" nearly as much (I have an SSD array), but having gobs of spare RAM means you can do reeeeally big stuff and the system just takes it in stride.

I don't know whether you can use it, but if you have a choice I recommend ECC RAM, as it will correct errors or at least let you know (through the BIOS) if there's an uncorrectable one. I would never have another system without ECC myself. EDIT: I see you already have the RAM. Never mind.

-Noel

P.S., I keep 100 History states.

J

JRP_PhotoAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks Noel. I'm not a big fan of Windows 8, but I might have to give it a go to unleash that extra 16GB! (I already have a W8 licence I can use so don't really want to purchase W7 Pro).

Noel Carboni

Legend

I fully understand not wanting to spend more money, but Windows 8 is really that bad that you might want to consider it.

I'm a career software engineer and an incurable technophile, and as such I've always been an early adopter.

I have been running every preview version of Windows 8 in virtual machines, and I presently have the Windows 8 Enterprise release running that way, but I refuse to upgrade my host workstation from Windows 7 Ultimate simply because Windows 8 represents a tangible reduction in usability. And you should know I've written the book on this (literally ).

EVEN IF it were perfect, which it is not (there are many driver problems still), I wouldn't upgrade to Windows 8. That Microsoft chose to degrade the desktop user experience is the prime reason. Is it something you could get used to? Possibly. Are there compelling reasons to do so? Not that I can see.

In your case, the additional memory access may well be that compelling reason. If you do choose to upgrade, have a look at my book. Lots of helpful info on making it lean and stable in there, as well as making the desktop a more productive environment by restoring some of the things Microsoft degraded.

-Noel

A

Anonymous

For a meaningful answer you probably need to give more details of what type of high demand PS jobs you will be doing. For run of the mill operations it will probably make no difference.

J

JRP_PhotoAuthor

Participating Frequently

In response to Curt: Large multi-layer TIFFs. Several images open at one time. Several iterations of filters which take several seconds to run each. 60 history states saved. 1 hour editing per image. Hopefully that gives you some idea.

A

Anonymous

You could also upgrade to Win 7 Professional if you want to say away from Win 8's new look. Win 7 Professional will accept up to 192 gigs.

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