Extremely Sluggish and freezing PC editing big file

[BE4STY]

I'm currently working on a file (32768x8192) with ~44 layers using ~12.43gb memory according to the ( (WxHx4) x (L+2) ) formula, However in task manager my memory usage from PDN is 28gb out of 32gb with 97-100% usage, 3% CPU and 4% GPU. Yesterday when working on the file only PDN was slightly lagging only when making big edits and had another 24000x8192 project open simultaneously with only minor lag but suddenly after creating a new layer on the bigger one, my whole PC began to become very slow and unresponsive. After reading on these forums I began to delete unused layers from around 65 to 44 as mentioned as someone had reported that over say 60 layers they had memory problems but even after it is still laggy?

Edited August 28 by BE4STY
Grammer

[Rick Brewster]

If your image is that big then yes it will be laggy. I'm not sure what else you could expect in this case.

 

It sounds like you need more RAM, and possibly more CPU cores, and make sure you have a fast NVMe SSD and not a "spinning rust" HDD.

 

At 28 out of 32GB used, you won't have any memory left over for anything else and Windows will have to keep spilling things in and out of physical memory. It uses the disk for that.

[BE4STY]

As I said it was laggy (and very understandable so) before but It was manageable as it was only PDN, after creating that one layer, my whole PC became unresponsive and RAM Usage went from ~19-21gb to 28-30gb

[Rick Brewster]

Yes, I understand that. If Task Manager is saying you're using that much memory then it probably already had to spill things out to disk, and once you reach that point performance will be bad no matter what you're doing. You've hit the limit -- nay, exceeded it -- with how much RAM you have and the size of the images you want to work with.

 

Buy more RAM ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Rick Brewster]

Also, in Task Manager, the number it reports e.g. "Memory: 14.9/61.6GB (24%)" isn't the full story. You have to click into the Memory tab and look at the "Committed" number to see how much memory you're actually trying to use.

"In use" memory is how much physical memory is in use, and won't include anything that was already spilled out to disk.

 

"Committed" is how much memory, physical or otherwise, all of your apps and system services are trying to use. If that number is larger than your total physical memory (32GB in your case), that's where you get into trouble (performance-wise).

 

Memory usage is actually a very, very complicated subject. Don't ever believe anyone who tells you a story about it being analogous to a car's "Empty vs. Full" fuel gauge. There are whole books written on this subject!