Been using Photshop for about 3 years now, gradually upgradinb my PC along the way.

Since the recent upgrdade from CS to CS2 I've noticed quite a considerable drop in performance especially if i have the Bridge and Photoshop open at the same time.

Currently running a AMD Athlon 2800+ processor with 1.5Gb Ram and 3 IDE HD's (2 with scratch disks on).

I'm looking at upgrading the old PC again in stages and was wondering which, if any, a faster processor or more RAM would speed things up initially.

My current Mobo can go upto 3GB, but I'm also looking at a mobo/cpu swap out to somthing like a AMD 64 3500+

Any recommendations what to do first?

(I know the mobo/cpu/ram upgrade altogether will probably make more difference, but getting this past the boss, read wife!, will be a problem!!)

I am a member of NAPP, (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). I was having the same problem (with CS) so I contacted them, and according to Peter Bauer,

" You should have Photoshop installed at the default location (C:\ Program Files). Complex software, such as Photoshop, should never be installed anywhere else -- especially not on a drive other than the startup drive. Once you've re-installed, you can make a separate partition (15GB is plenty) on your second internal hard drive (not an external drive) and use that as a dedicated scratch disk for Photoshop. The Preferences should then show your dedicated partition as the first scratch disk and None/None/None for the other three options. Pete NAPP Help Desk".

You didn't state how your cpu was set up, but if you want to increase performance, this would be the correct set up. Initially, I had Photoshop on a second internal hard drive, and after I corrected it, it sped up considerably. Hope this helps.