Unexpected upgrades

Sigh.... unexpected upgrades over & above the 2tb internal hard drive I bought for storage.

With my i7 Windows 7 32bit pc with 4gb RAM, I'm having issues with Lightroom & there's some photos it won't even export as JPG as it claims there's not enough memory. Not entirely true according to task manager, but it's upgrade time again. Certain features also don't work in PS.

I'll be ordering this week a 512gb SSD disk, along with Windows 7 Pro 64bit OEM & an extra 8gb RAM. I'll do a fresh install & keep my old disk in case any of my legacy accounting software doesn't work.

Are you sure the "memory" problem is disk space and not working memory?

Edit: I misread that, it seems working mem is the problem.

I'm using Win7 with 8 memory and haven't got any issues even when some PS files are 100 - 450Mb.

Before you order more memory, install the 64 bit Win7, that may solve your immediate problem.

When you install more RAM, check whether your motherboard will benefit with symmetric RAM configurations, that is sets of two (or four in case of server boards). Some MB support faster read/write using 2 or 4 ports. My Xeon MD supports both 2 and 4, so I use sets of 4 DIMMS - I have 16 RAM slots to play with.

Another suggestion is to keep all RAM same speed and same size DIMMS, that helps RAM throughput. Any asymmetry slows the data transfer.

If you're running a Core i7 on a 32-bit OS with only 4GB of system RAM, you're driving your Corvette in second gear with the hand-brake half engaged. The Core i7 is a pretty beastly processor that really needs a 64-bit OS before it can show you what it can do; and the extra memory will give it the breathing room it needs to do that. I think 12GB is the minimum, I'd rather see 16GB, but 12GB will get the job done.

Once you go 64-bit... There's no going back!

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I am running on 8GB and find no problems. Extra memory helps only if an applications needs it, other wise it is a waste of resource. For faster processing more cores would speed up the application (provided it can use them), while extra RAM may not. While reformatting HD video in handbrake all my 8 cores are used and the task just zips through.

When I do satellite data transformation with in-memory algorithms then a lot of memory helps, 8GB is a lot of RAM, and the image has to be more than 2 GB to use up even 6 GB.

aroy said:

I am running on 8GB and find no problems. Extra memory helps only if an applications needs it, other wise it is a waste of resource.

Click to expand...

Photoshop itself doesn't need all that much memory to *run* but get a few layers open and start running some blur filters on a 14-bit RAW file and I won't be able to hear you telling me how 8GB is enough system RAM over the gasping and wheezing of your PC as it struggles for ten minutes to complete the operation. In my opinion, and I've built a lot of PC's for a lot of clients, there's no such thing as "too much RAM"; sometimes you don't use it all, but it's nice to have for those times you do and really, in the grand scheme of the overall configuration, it's pretty cheap.

Just my two-cents...
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Thanks for your replies. As a Microsoft Partner with the Action pack, I get Win 7 Ultimate 32bit, the 64bit is not available as part of the pack. This is why I installed 32bit & have been happy with it for several years. Win 7 64bit is going to be a risk for me as I don't know whether my legacy accounting software will run. This is the reason for the new hard drive, as I can immediately switch back if necessary & look at a virtual pc option.

My motherboard likes pairs of RAM & I have a pair of 2x2gb already. Rather than throw those away, I was going to add a pair of 4gb to take me to 12gb. I may instead get a pair of 2x8gb to give me an option of 32gb if necessary.

Gorf said:

... Win 7 64bit is going to be a risk for me as I don't know whether my legacy accounting software will run.

Click to expand...

No worries, your accounting app will run in x86 mode (32 bit) out of a special folder that will be created for 32-bit applications.
This will happen auto-magically as part of the Win7 64-bit installation.
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Hmm, the legacy software like to install in it's own folder off the root. I'm not even sure that it will install anywhere else, but I'll have a go.

It creates it's own data directory within it's program folder.... (gulp!).

Gorf said:

Hmm, the legacy software like to install in it's own folder off the root. I'm not even sure that it will install anywhere else, but I'll have a go. It creates it's own data directory within it's program folder.... (gulp!).

Click to expand...

You mean it wants to install it's own directory on C:\ ?? There's no option to direct the install to a folder of your choosing?
That *IS* odd...
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I'll have a go on the rebuild & see what options I have.

That will be a fun day!

There is no harm in having multiple OS. I have 4 installation
. Win XP-32
. Win XP-64
. Win7 64 for software trials
. Win7 64 for production
. I am even thinking of adding Linux, which is running on a decade old machine

My son has both Apple and Win on his Mac.

The best upgrade I have on my laptop (i5, 8GB ram) is the SSD - Boots in 5-6 seconds, and when Nik tools creates those 180 MB TIFF files it takes no time to read / write them. I don't keep them on the SSD though, once I'm happy with them they go off onto my NAS.

SteveH said:

The best upgrade I have on my laptop (i5, 8GB ram) is the SSD - Boots in 5-6 seconds, and when Nik tools creates those 180 MB TIFF files it takes no time to read / write them. I don't keep them on the SSD though, once I'm happy with them they go off onto my NAS.

Click to expand...

SSD are heaven sent for fast I/O, but to be safe, use them only for OS and as a temporary storage. Nothing beads HDD for long term storage.

I'm sure one of the geeks will chime in but I thought with a 32 bit is 4gb or so was the most it can address?

That's the whole point of the upgrade, Bill.

While I'm doing a clean install, I may as well put in an SSD.

I've managed to get LR to save JPG files. Any editing at all in LR will raise it's memory usage. Closing & reopening LR just for the JPG saving will allow it to do one at a time.

Ruidoso Bill said:

I'm sure one of the geeks will chime in but I thought with a 32 bit is 4gb or so was the most it can address?

Click to expand...

The particulars of this limitation are more complicated than a lot of people realize but, generally speaking, 32-bit operating systems running an x86 processor can't access more than 4GB of system RAM; the particulars I mention have to do with things like video RAM, the motherboard and how it's made, and the I/O functions of the whole system. In short, it's complicated. That being said, and while there are exceptions, you are correct in that 32-bit operating systems/x86 processors really can't access more than 4GB of system RAM.

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If you take into account the other memory mapped resources - Video, Bios etc, then practically you can directly access around 3GB. But you can always create a virtual disk with the excess RAM (that was how we used extra RAM even in DOS days), and that is much faster than even SSD. It is only when an application that is designed for 64 bit systems and uses a lot of RAM that it makes sense to increase the RAM. The best method of checking RAM usage is to start the Task Manager and see how much of the 8GB or 16GB is used by all programs, and how much by a particular program.

Gorf said:

Hmm, the legacy software like to install in it's own folder off the root. I'm not even sure that it will install anywhere else, but I'll have a go.

It creates it's own data directory within it's program folder.... (gulp!).

Click to expand...

That sounds to me like your legacy is old 16-bit DOS/Windows 3.1 software. If that's the case, then x64 Windows won't run it. Instead, you'll get this error message when you try to run it:



However, there is still an option for you. x64 Windows 7 includes a feature "XP-Mode". XP-Mode runs a 32-bit version of Windows XP inside a virtual machine. (Note: since Microsoft has now dis-continued support for Windows XP, they may have changed XP-mode to run 32-bit Windows 7 and changed the name too).

Even if your old software is 32-bit, you may still run into trouble as early on, there were meny 32-bit programs that still used a 16-bit installer. In that case, even though the software would run, the installer wouldn't, preventing you from installing the software. Again, you can use XP-Mode to work around this. You can also take a look at the installation disk to see if you can manually install the software. Back in the day, many of those old installers did nothing more that copy files from your installation media to the destination directory.

XP-mode brings along its own issues. It is a complete XP installation that is installed on a sizable virtual disk, and needs 2G or more of RAM when it's running. So, it's a pretty resource intensive way to run your old software.

If your legacy software is indeed DOS based, then there's a chance you can use a free product call DosBOX to run it. DosBOX is a DOS emulator written to support old DOS games. However, I've found it to be quite good at running most old DOS applications. It is much much less resource intensive than XP-mode.

Here's a way to check if your old software is 16-bit on your current 32-bit system.

1) exit all your legacy applications.
2) start the task manager.
3) in task manager, go to the Processes tab look and kill for any process named ntvdm.exe
4) With Task Manager still up, start your legacy program.
5) If your legacy program is a 16-bit application, then a new ntvdm.exe process will start when you start your legacy program. This is because 16-bit applications are run inside of ntvdm.exe when you're on 32-bit windows.

@dslater

Good advice, thanks. I think I may need that tip for installing the software! One of the two legacy apps runs ntvdm.exe!