[cybertoker2001]

I have a 64gb hard-drive and I still have a little slow-down sometimes when doing images that size or larger. I would also suggest closing all unnecessary programs in your systems tray, I know if I only have like 8-14% of my systems resources or lower, I get a lot of slowdown in photoshop, or painter, or what have you. I make it a rule not to run any other software while in photoshop, except when twain acquiring or something.

Hope this helps.
I'm an artist, not a computer genius.

Take it easy,
CT2001

[tone]

There are alot of tweaks you can do to improve your performance. But tell us more about your system. Did you build it yourself? Or is it a HP, Compaq? etc. What number it is? HP 8400, etc, When it comes to hardware the perfect setup is an open architecture (meaning your video is not integrated, excluding mac's of course - mac's are great machines for this kind of stuff, and your video is not sharing system memory, or your sound card is integrated - even though that is not as much as a concern)

Some things you can do now to get a performance increase is to ensure you are taking advantage of your hard drives UltraDMA. Under 95/98 right click on My Computer and under Device manager/Disk Drives you can check the box UDMA (or is just says DMA). If that is not checked you will see a performace increase. You will get a warning and have to reboot. Some systems do not work well with this setting checked so be warned. It is unlikely you will lose anything but if you are not backing up your stuff already you are just asking for a crash.

Also make sure you designate your Virtual memory. Make it a straight number, so if you have 256 system memory make your Virtual memory about 386 (or higher if you have hard disk space to spare)

And defrag your Hard Drive before you work on such a large picture.

And of course the more memory you have the better. Find out what the maximum amount of memory you can get and max it. Like everyone is saying memory is cheap. Take advantage of that. If you don't have a good video card - get one. I can't recommend a good one for this kind of work. I am a big gamer so I a Voodoo 5 5500. I know that is not the best for this kind of stuff but I do have 32 megs of memory dedicated to each of the two processors on the board so. I do not know what kind of through put that is giving me but......

Besides a Mac...
Windows NT or 2000 are much better at handling memory and processes in general compared to 95/98/ME.
(Don't Use Millenium...All I have had is problems.)

Now I use 98Se because I use some programs that I need the flexibility that 98 offers. Windows 2000 has alot of that flexibility but I just have not had time to test it. And I need to get stuff done. So much to learn.

[jasonN]

lukias, spooge, cybertoker and tone, thank you for your great feedback. I'm sure this thread will be valuable for other people, not only myself.
Craig, when you said you tried a dummy file, are you talking about my 36 by 24 inch file or Dthind's 48 by 42 file?