Are Smart Objects less resource-consuming than separate layers?

Question

I am designing a very large concept layout for a Single Page Application.

I only have CS5, so I don't have access to the concept of linked smart objects, which is unfortunate as this would save my life.

I am keeping a lot of the design in one large .psd file, as many components are re-usable and if I want to change something, I don't want to open 400 files and change each one.

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This file is starting to get very big and so very slow. I am learning about smart objects to see if this will help solve my problem:

Does saving a large layer group as a smart object speed up the general render and handling time? In other words, does Photoshop start unloading some of the payload when my page modules are represented as smart objects?

Supposing I had 10 layer groups with 80 layers in each, would making each of those 10 layer groups a smart object speed anything up, or is there no point?

Answer 1

Converting groups of layers to Smart Objects does improve rendering performance in Photoshop. Once the Smart Object is generated, Photoshop will use the flat bitmap of the group as source for any operation. Therefore, moving objects or showing and hiding is significantly faster.

Answer 2

Is it less resource intensive, depends. Its less resource intensive in that the data is cached. But then your using more memory, ultimately the document can be on disk so its not necessarily burdening your computer. But in a sense its a trade of between more memory used versus rendering speed.

The impact on my computer is minimal tough. But maybe that is because I have lots of memory to spare (I have 64 Gigs). Your situation actually sounds like your paging stuff on disk.