Photoshop CS3 not seeing 3 GB RAM?

[Dtox]

"Available RAM" means just what it says-"available", not total system RAM.
However, if you have 3GB and it's only saying 1699 is available and you don't have another app running that's using the rest, you should check your task manager to see if there's some service going that's sucking it up.
If so, you need to slim your running processes down. Just watch your task manager to see what's using the most RAM. If you don't need it, kill it and set it to manual in the services snap-in.
If that's not the case, then there's a few other possibilities.

Did you install the RAM in pairs? What are the chips used? 3 individual 1GB chips?
Because that's how it's supposed to be installed. You're not supposed to have, say, 2-512 chips and then 2-1GB chips. Especially from different manufacturers.
This isn't always immediately apparent, and I've seen it done with no problems. But for best results and reliability you shouldn't do it.
Another possibility is that 1 or more of the chips runs at a different clock speed than the others. When you bought the new RAM, did you buy the exact same chips as the system already had in it? All RAM isn't created equal. Say your system came with a 1GB PC3200 DDR400 non-ECC SDRAM chip made by Kingston, and when you bought the new RAM you got the same chip only it was made by Samsung. Theoretically you shouldn't have a problem. But that's not always the case. The new RAM could also be ECC RAM instead of non-ECC, which would cause a problem. It's always best to get the EXACT same chip as what's already in there. Or to totally replace ALL chips completely.
It's also recommended to use even numbers of RAM. Like 2 or 4GB instead of 3 or 5. I've never really seen a problem arise from that, but alot of tech guys swear by the rule. It's hit or miss I guess.
Also, 3GB of RAM doesn't equal 3000MB. 1GB=1024MB, so your system should read 3072MB RAM total.
Some systems truncate that for some reason, like maybe a video card that uses system RAM instead of its own onboard memory. That's usually on very low end systems which I assume yours isn't.
Make sure your mainboard supports 3GB of RAM too.
If it's a lower end mainboard it might have a limit on how much RAM it can support, but that seems unlikely in this day and age.

Did you install the RAM yourself? If so, did you discharge any possible electro-static?
That can fry a RAM chip easily!
You're supposed to ground yourself either with a grounding wrist wrap, or by grabbing the power supply for a second or 2 before touching the chips. And NEVER do it while standing on carpet. The chips should also be transported in ESD bags.

If you can figure out if PS is seeing less RAM than the system actually has, then try taking the chips out and re-inserting them 1 by 1. Booting up between each chip insertion and checking PS beefore inserting the next.

[nickgod]

Without any external tools, Photoshop CS2.0 and CS3.0 does not support more than 1,7 Gbytes of Ram.

You can check Google, there are many related topics.
I don`t remember the URL, but there was a blog of one of the creator of Photoshop, who wrote very big post about this subject...

[Dtox]

Mine says Available-1963MB

I have 2GB total.

[BoBoZoBo]

Windows XP 32 bit will not recognize more than 2.5 GB in the system utility or other viewer options.

I would not worry too much though, your system IS using it, just nbot very efficiently.

If you are going to be running more than 2GB RAM, it make the move to 64bit and pop it up to 4GB. Especially if you have a dualcore

[simmsimaging]

Even with xp64 Photoshop will only directly use the first 2-3 GB of RAM, the next 2 or so gets used by plug-ins, the rest (if you have it) goes idle. The best use of high RAM capacity in a x-64 system is to buy ramdisk software (I used Superspeed's and it works great) and create a ram disk to use as your primary scratch disk. Leave 2-3 for system and PShop, and whatever else you have use for the ramdisk (I use 6GB for mine, leaving 6 for the OS).

This gives you almost the same bang for the buck as having Pshop use the whole lot on it's own. Works great for me.

b

[BoBoZoBo]

True, but photoshop in general will run much better as the system can now take advantage of the additional RAM.

The RAMdisk is an excellent idea. I use it myself and absolutely dont know what i did without it.

[simmsimaging]

True, but photoshop in general will run much better as the system can now take advantage of the additional RAM.

The RAMdisk is an excellent idea. I use it myself and absolutely dont know what i did without it.

Yep, true enough.

I agree - have no idea how I got by for so many years without that Ramdisk.

b

[MikeS369]

Mine says Available-1963MB

I have 2GB total.

Mine says Available RAM: 2690MB

XP Pro 3GB switch
4GB RAM

[Neil]

XP Pro 3GB switch
4GB RAM

I have 1GB ram and PS runs fine ;)

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.