Poor performance.

2

20inchthomas

Registered
Hey all,

U have a macbook, with 512mg ram and for some reason performance is really crap with the adobe cs2 suite. I understand its a graphics program, and wont be that quick on a laptop with a small amount of ram, but even performaning very simple tasks within the software its crap!

Also for some reason when i have indesign and illustrator open, they seem to cause each other to crash randomly. However independently, they are stable.

Any experinced this?

Cheers and thanks in advance.
-Tom
 
When you have 512 MB RAM on that Mac, it will have about 450 MB RAM available for the RAM use - the rest is used for graphics. As OS X itself is a bit RAM hungry already, that does not leave much for the other RAM hungry programs.
With 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM CS Suite will run a lot smoother.
 
Hi Tom,

You should probably read Adobe's support notes for the Intel Macs:

http://www.adobe.com/products/pdfs/intelmacsupport.pdf

They advise that you should have at least 1GB of RAM installed if you're planning to run more than one Creative Suite app at the same time.

So your having only 512MB installed might explain why you're experiencing the crashes as all the CS apps are quite memory hungry, even more so under Rosetta (I believe the normal benchmark is that an app will need around double it's normal memory requirements under Rosetta. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong there).

When I first got my MacBook I only had 512MB installed and was having problems similar to yours. Now I have 1GB everything's fine.
 
Thanks for your replies. However i understand with the ram, but i dont think thats the problem. As ram shouldnt cause a program to crash i wouldnt think ... and i have a friend with the same model laptop with 2gb of ram, does the same thing.
 
We don't see a lot of posts here with this problem (CS2).

I wouldn't even try to run a CS2 app on the G4 Powerbook with only 500MB ram (and it runs native on the Powerbook). The first thing you need to do is up the memory (probably another 1GB) then see what happens.

What happens on your friend's machine is not really relevant to your problem.
 
I have a MacBook with 2 GB RAM, and my Adobe CS 2 apps rarely crash. I usually have 3 or 4 of them open at any time. It really *IS* a RAM related problem, believe us and Adobe if we tell you that 512 MB of RAM for running two Adobe CS 2 apps in Rosetta is simply not enough.
 
It is really ram related, i bought a 20" imac with 512mb and it was soo slow word and msn mess and itunes couldnt all work together at the same time...so i upgraded to 1gb and its great and really fast. I do suggest that you upgrade your ram like everyone else as said, i dont understand why in this day and age computer companies are still shipping computers with 512mb ram!!
 
If you don't have enough RAM to run a particular program, then it's just not going to run properly if at all. Those are just facts. Plus, if it's running under Rosetta (the PowerPC emulation environment for non-Intel-native OS X apps) then it's going to be slower. Once the next version of CS comes out, it will most likely be Intel native in the form of a Universal Binary (native to both PowerPC and Intel). But the hefty requirements for memory might still be there, so you're going to have to do what everyone has been suggesting: upgrade the RAM.
 
The high RAM requirements stem from the fact that Rosetta creates a separate thread (requiring a lot of memory) for each Rosetta-emulated application. I expect the Adobe CS 3 apps to require _less_ memory, because of that. Of course the main factor with Adobe's apps still is what files you actually work with. If you meet the absolute minimum (1 GB, as has been said, for this case), you'll happily work on screen-resolution files in Photoshop, but might run into problems if you need to do serious work for print. Similarly, if you use Illustrator to create some easy drawings or logos, that might work very well, but as soon as you start to apply various effects and throw tons of paths into an illustration with several layers etc., it'll mean that the Mac has to put lots of stuff into virtual memory (on the harddrive), which will slow the apps down considerably. This will, of course, get better with Adobe CS 3 as well - if as expected its memory requirements go down because the Rosetta-threads can be left out. (I personally also hope that Adobe this time tries to concentrate on performance. I don't really need more features right now.) ;)
 
fryke said:
I personally also hope that Adobe this time tries to concentrate on performance. I don't really need more features right now.
Click to expand...

Adobe's approach towards “performance” has always seemed to be “well, the next generation of machines will be more powerful so we don't need to care about optimizing code, the machines will catch up”.
 
yeah, as in the age-old joke: "Photoshop makes computers slower as they get faster." Or something like that. ;)
 
simbalala said:
What happens on your friend's machine is not really relevant to your problem.
Click to expand...

I think its very relevant .... as everyone is saying its a ram issue .... fair enough. However its the same laptop , only difference is more ram ... and it hasnt solved the problem for him.
 
I don't know about the crashing and what causes it, and I'm hesitant to blame RAM for it. It could well be that Adobe apps are slightly dodgy when run under Rosetta? Perhaps the best thing to do would be to tell us the steps to take so that people with Adobe CS can try to reproduce the crash? That's the only way forward, I think as others are saying that Adobe CS apps run fine on their system.

For acceptable performance with the new Macbooks, I definitely recommend upgrading your RAM. I really do not understand why Apple ships the Macbooks with only 512 MB RAM, as you really do need about 1 GB before the mac feels smooth. Prior to upgrading, I'd hardly be able to run 3 - 4 apps before the whole machine felt sluggish. This weren't exactly demanding applications, a few terminals open, Safari with about 5 tabs, Mail, Adium and textwrangler. Yet, Cmd-Tabbing between apps was sluggish. I'd imagine Adobe CS is far more intensive than the apps I'm running, and it's also running under Rosetta emulation, doubling/tripling the memory requirement. In that scenario, 512 MB is most definitely not enough to get an acceptable level of performance. Go for 2GB ...
 
Yep agreed, i need more ram ,as performance is poo.

But for the crashing, iwouldnt blame the ram from my experince with computers.... my imac only had 256 when i first got it, and the same thing shit performance, but never crashed.

If anyone would like to try and replicate it on a intel based system, its adobe CS2, and if you open indesign with a document, and then illustrator, and just a blank document (not causing any load), and then work in indesign, one or the other will crash within a couple of mins.

I also updated the OS and CS2, no difference.

Cheers,
-Tom
 
20inchthomas said:
Yep agreed, i need more ram ,as performance is poo.

But for the crashing, iwouldnt blame the ram from my experince with computers.... my imac only had 256 when i first got it, and the same thing shit performance, but never crashed.

If anyone would like to try and replicate it on a intel based system, its adobe CS2, and if you open indesign with a document, and then illustrator, and just a blank document (not causing any load), and then work in indesign, one or the other will crash within a couple of mins.

I also updated the OS and CS2, no difference.

Cheers,
-Tom
Click to expand...

Your comparison about the iMac with only 256 MB of RAM doesn't apply since it probably isn't running Adobe CS2 (as it might not run at all with that little memory), so you're comparing apples to oranges. I've also run Mac OS X on a 600 MHz iMac with Jaguar and also with Panther, only having 256 MB of RAM. And yes, everything is dog slow when just running apps like Firefox or anything else. Also remember that the iMac is a PowerPC based Mac, one that would truly run CS2 natively even if it had enough RAM to run it, which would rule out the use of Rosetta. Since you're on an Intel Mac, you're running it under an emulated environment that would need even more system memory to be available in order to perform the x86/PPC translation and run the application. Right now, you're not providing that with only 512 MB or RAM. As fryke mentioned, he's not getting these issues with 2 GB or RAM (although you're probably even safe with the 1 GB that Giaguara mentioned).

Also consider that if you're running a bunch of other applications that AREN'T Intel native along with the non-Intel-native CS2, all those PPC-based apps are running under instances of Rosetta, which would probably require more RAM and would be questionable as far as stability is concerned, hence all of the crashes. If all of the apps you mentioned in those steps are not Universal Binaries, then there's the rub. They're all trying to function under Rosetta, and only with 512 MB of RAM. It's just not going to happen.

And for the record, I also have extensive experience with computers, so believe me and everyone else when we tell you it's most likely a RAM issue. ;)

Just try and see about upgrading the RAM and see if the problems go away. And remember not to overload your Intel Mac with a bunch of non-UB apps. Although it might not be an issue on a PPC Mac, Rosetta is still new and might not handle all those applications open with much stability.
 
I never did the upgrade to CS2. I'm still at CS1 and on my BlackBook with stock 512 MB of RAM it runs amazingly fast. I don't know much about the difference in build but I'm sure it wouldn't be much. 2 GB of RAM will definately take care of whatever turtles you have.

You should also note previous posts about Adobe's insight into Universal builds. That will make a difference that can be seen in hundreds of other applications that have switched already.
 
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