Ram Usage in photoshop

[Nikolai]

Hi everyone,
I have a question regarding the usage of RAM in photoshop.
I have to use photoshop for work, and by the time I build layer upon layer within the files, in 16 bit mode as Tiffs, the files begin to easily reach 100-300 MB and when you do actions such as sharpening or rasterizing, it can at up a lot of your time waiting for this. I would like things to happen much much faster.
What recommendations can you make?
People at work all run on Mac's, but im not willing to spend all that money on a mac, when i know i can get better results on a PC, for a cheaper price.
Im planing on building a new PC, and was wondering what type of RAM to use ... ive read a lot of article on this and comparisons between DDR2 and DDR3, and ive seen gigabyte has a motherboard that is compatible with both (8mb for ddr2, and 4mb for ddr3) ... if getting a processor like the Intel core 2 quad 2.4, and pairing it with 8gb is overkill, then let me know.
Also my concern with gigabytes motherboard is that the DDR2 and DDR3 ram is not compatible, if i get 8gb of DDR2 ram, and then its time for me to move onto DDR3, then i can only use up to 4gb.
Would it be better for me to say get a motherboard that can hold up to like 16gb of DDR2 ram, as its price begins to drop ?
Also is a core 2 quad 2.4 better then a core 2 duo 3.0 gz for photoshop? they seem to cost the same price.
Thanks so much for any suggestions,
Nick.

[gvblake22]

You've raised a lot of good questions, so let me try and answer them all for ya...
That Gigabyte motherboard you are talking about seems to be a decent board. You can read our full review on it HERE... This particular motherboard would only be a bad choice if you plan on getting more than 4GB of DDR3 during its lifespan. So I guess my question to you is this: How long do you plan to (or want to) keep this computer before you upgrade it again?

As for the DDR2 vs. DDR3 debate, it is really too early to be worrying about DDR3. The prices are WAAYYY too high and the speeds aren't yet high enough to provide enough of a performance improvement over DDR2 to warrant the high prices. I would give DDR3 at least another full year before it is even close to becoming mainstream.

The best thing that will improve your photoshop experience is probably a processor upgrade. From what I've noticed in CS2, it doesn't seem to be multithreaded (although I could be wrong and the situation could have changed with CS3), so you are best off getting a processor with higher clock speeds rather than more processing cores. To put it another way, if you are spending ~$300 on a new processor, it would be more beneficial at this point in time to get an E6850 running at 3.0GHz rather than a Q6600 running at 2.4GHz. But if you plan on keeping this processor for more than 2-3 years, the situation may change and the software might be better suited for quad cores.

The next best thing after a faster processor would be more, faster RAM. At this point in time, I would recommend a good 4GB kit of DDR2-800 RAM with a CAS latency of 4. Other than that, a faster hard drive may also improve performance a little, but it isn't going to be by much.

8GB of RAM is probably overkill. But more importantly, you need to make sure you have a 64-bit operating system if you are running more than 2GB - 3GB of RAM. Read THIS for more information on what is happening there.

[Nikolai]

Thanks so much for your reply,
so if i understand, even though some applications in photoshop are multithreaded, that it has be processed through the initial core anyhow, and then its split between the other cores? So a E6850 3.0ghz would in practice deliver better results then the 2.4ghz quad core.
The only thing ive put in and taken out of computers is Ram,dvd/cd drives and harddrives ..... forgive me for asking but if i wanted to buy a new processor in the future, could i just take out the Dual core and put in a quad core once they are more affordable?
I read those link you included, thanks for that ....photoshop cs3 is not yet 64-bit, its still 32-bit but they have said cs4 will likely be 64bit ... but despite this am i correct to understand to use all 4gb of ram i will need vista 64bit? How much more RAM could i upgrade to in a 64bit OS like vista?
Also is dual channel RAM the way to go? would it be better to have 4 X 1gb of quad channel ram then 2X2gb or even one 4gb. Or looking towards a future upgrade, could a 64bit OS handle quad channel 8gb, or 4X2gb?
Thanks again for your help.
Nick.