need advice on new computer

What’s your advice on some models I should take a look at? Some have said Dell and some have said Sony.

Custom built or build it yourself. A custom build is much easier to update down the road.
Either use a place online or have it built locally.
http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/

http://www.madmousergraphics.com
web design, print design, photography

I have a top consumer-line Dell with 1 Gb and it has been great with PS Elements & MS Flight Simulator.
Get a flat video monitor with on-screen setup features
Get all the RAM you can afford.

"howldog" wrote in message

Hi all

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. We already have a Mac, now we need a new PC. We’d like a top of the line unit, 132 mb video card, pentium 4 or equivalent, at least 512 mg of RAM, big hard-drive or preferably two big drives, nice soundcard.

What’s your advice on some models I should take a look at? Some have said Dell and some have said Sony.

Any suggestions?

thanks

howldog wrote:

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. We already have a Mac, now we need a new PC. We’d like a top of the line unit, 132 mb video card, pentium 4 or equivalent, at least 512 mg of RAM, big hard-drive or preferably two big drives, nice soundcard.

512mb of RAM is lean for "big graphics". Round it up to a gig! :).

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

In article ,
com says…

Hi all

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. We already have a Mac, now we need a new PC. We’d like a top of the line unit, 132 mb video card, pentium 4 or equivalent, at least 512 mg of RAM, big hard-drive or preferably two big drives, nice soundcard.

What’s your advice on some models I should take a look at? Some have said Dell and some have said Sony.

Any suggestions?

thanks

I concur with those who say, "build it yourself… " or have someone do it for you. For PS, vid-card is not that big a deal. Spend $ on RAM, and on several fast HDD’s. Two are better than one physical drive. RAID is great, whether SATA or SCSI, but if you go the "striped" route, get a 250GB separate HDD for images and Scratch Disk space. On RAM, I’ve not stop till I had 2GB. Dual- processors are not bad, though limiting as to MB’s available. Hyperthreading doesn’t seem to do much for PS alone.

Hunt

howldog wrote in
news::

Hi all

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. We already have a Mac, now we need a new PC. We’d like a top of the line unit, 132 mb video card, pentium 4 or equivalent, at least 512 mg of RAM, big hard-drive or preferably two big drives, nice soundcard.

What’s your advice on some models I should take a look at? Some have said Dell and some have said Sony.

Any suggestions?

Lots.

Major brands tend to be poor buys, though I’ve had the least trouble with Dell.

You’ll probably get more bang for the buck with Athlon 64s than P4s.

You’ll want more RAM than that; 2 GB is the least I’ll consider for a layout unit that is not a laptop.

Socket 939 with PC-Express motherboards (NFORCE Chipset) have a very rich feature set, speed, value, and four RAM slots, for Window’s current max of 4GB.

Three hard drives – one boot, swapfile and software disc, two drives RAIDed together (striped for speed) for working. More drives are desireable, though cost starts to bite soon.

Drives should be 7.2K SATAs, or faster SATAs. Ultra SCSI 320 is even better, but lots pricier.

The amount of video RAM isn’t very relevant. A good dual-head card will have 64 or 128MB, eaither is enough for 2D. The Matrox Parhelia is the best of the breed, and will drive three monitors to boot, but both the ATI and NVIDIA cards in the $150 price range are quite good these days.

Firewire external drives as backup, unless you have a file server (I still use exeternal FW drives as backup, just hooked to the server).

"howldog" wrote in message

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. […]

Somebody want to whip up a FAQ on this one? It’s asked so often.

Dual-processor, top-o-the-line Wintel (or 3+mhz anyway), four _fast_ spindles and 1.8gb RAM.

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 21:28:48 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

Hi all

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. We already have a Mac, now we need a new PC. We’d like a top of the line unit, 132 mb video card, pentium 4 or equivalent, at least 512 mg of RAM, big hard-drive or preferably two big drives, nice soundcard.

What’s your advice on some models I should take a look at? Some have said Dell and some have said Sony.

Any suggestions?

Lots.

Major brands tend to be poor buys, though I’ve had the least trouble with Dell.

You’ll probably get more bang for the buck with Athlon 64s than P4s.
You’ll want more RAM than that; 2 GB is the least I’ll consider for a layout unit that is not a laptop.

Socket 939 with PC-Express motherboards (NFORCE Chipset) have a very rich feature set, speed, value, and four RAM slots, for Window’s current max of 4GB.

Three hard drives – one boot, swapfile and software disc, two drives RAIDed together (striped for speed) for working. More drives are desireable, though cost starts to bite soon.

Drives should be 7.2K SATAs, or faster SATAs. Ultra SCSI 320 is even better, but lots pricier.

The amount of video RAM isn’t very relevant. A good dual-head card will have 64 or 128MB, eaither is enough for 2D. The Matrox Parhelia is the best of the breed, and will drive three monitors to boot, but both the ATI and NVIDIA cards in the $150 price range are quite good these days.
Firewire external drives as backup, unless you have a file server (I still use exeternal FW drives as backup, just hooked to the server).

thank you

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 15:45:06 -0600, "jjs" wrote:

"howldog" wrote in message

We’re looking to get a new PC computer for doing big graphics, like photoshop. […]

Somebody want to whip up a FAQ on this one? It’s asked so often.
Dual-processor, top-o-the-line Wintel (or 3+mhz anyway), four _fast_ spindles and 1.8gb RAM.

whats a spindle?

howldog wrote:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 15:45:06 -0600, "jjs" wrote:

Dual-processor, top-o-the-line Wintel (or 3+mhz anyway), four _fast_ spindles and 1.8gb RAM.

whats a spindle?

A hard drive.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 11:57:56 +1300, Nicholas Sherlock
wrote:

howldog wrote:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 15:45:06 -0600, "jjs" wrote:

Dual-processor, top-o-the-line Wintel (or 3+mhz anyway), four _fast_ spindles and 1.8gb RAM.

whats a spindle?

A hard drive.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

howldog wrote in
news::

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

In a perfect world, you would have:

1st RAID Array – Boot disc, software

2nd RAID Array – Windows swapfile

3rd RAID Array – Photoshop scratch disc

4th RAID Array – Working files

(Or maybe one of the uber-expensive RAMDisc cards for one of the temp drives, i.e., swapfile or scratch disc).

Each RAID Array would be SCSI U320 (best Adaptec card(s) you can lay hands on), powered through PCI-Express, at least three 15K RPM drives (large) each.

Why:

Multiple arrays: dramatically better perfomance if the hard drive heads of one drive are working on just one file transfer at a time.

SCSI U320: fastest standard going, and likely to keep that title for a while.

Adaptec card: SCSI adaptors are intelligent, and take quite a bit of the load off the CPU that IDE or SATA imposes. Adaptec is pretty much king of the hill, though YMMV.

PCI-E: Fast RAID arrays can actually push the bandwidth limits of plain PCI. PCI-E not only increases the max bandwidth by roughly half again, it gives that much bandwidth *to each card*. You can get (mostly) the same thing with PCI-X as well; PCI-E is pretty certainly the emerging standard for anything but high-end servers.

15K U320 SCSI drives: The faster the platters spin, the faster data is moved past the read/write heads, ergo the faster the transfer. Also, higher capacity drives (in general) means the data is stored in a much smaller area, meaning the heads don’t have to move as much. The difference can be noticeable.

Of course, such a system is godawfully expensive. Thus the compromises we’ve been discussing.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:55:16 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

In a perfect world, you would have:

1st RAID Array – Boot disc, software

2nd RAID Array – Windows swapfile

3rd RAID Array – Photoshop scratch disc

4th RAID Array – Working files

(Or maybe one of the uber-expensive RAMDisc cards for one of the temp drives, i.e., swapfile or scratch disc).

Each RAID Array would be SCSI U320 (best Adaptec card(s) you can lay hands on), powered through PCI-Express, at least three 15K RPM drives (large) each.

Why:

Multiple arrays: dramatically better perfomance if the hard drive heads of one drive are working on just one file transfer at a time.
SCSI U320: fastest standard going, and likely to keep that title for a while.

Adaptec card: SCSI adaptors are intelligent, and take quite a bit of the load off the CPU that IDE or SATA imposes. Adaptec is pretty much king of the hill, though YMMV.

PCI-E: Fast RAID arrays can actually push the bandwidth limits of plain PCI. PCI-E not only increases the max bandwidth by roughly half again, it gives that much bandwidth *to each card*. You can get (mostly) the same thing with PCI-X as well; PCI-E is pretty certainly the emerging standard for anything but high-end servers.

15K U320 SCSI drives: The faster the platters spin, the faster data is moved past the read/write heads, ergo the faster the transfer. Also, higher capacity drives (in general) means the data is stored in a much smaller area, meaning the heads don’t have to move as much. The difference can be noticeable.

Of course, such a system is godawfully expensive. Thus the compromises we’ve been discussing.

yeah, this is out of my range. I can see the 1.5 gig of Ram and the fastest processor. Would i see any benefit from having two hard drives, one to load the programs on, and the second to work on?

In article ,
com says…

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:55:16 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

In a perfect world, you would have:

1st RAID Array – Boot disc, software

2nd RAID Array – Windows swapfile

3rd RAID Array – Photoshop scratch disc

4th RAID Array – Working files

(Or maybe one of the uber-expensive RAMDisc cards for one of the temp drives, i.e., swapfile or scratch disc).

Each RAID Array would be SCSI U320 (best Adaptec card(s) you can lay hands on), powered through PCI-Express, at least three 15K RPM drives (large) each.

Why:

Multiple arrays: dramatically better perfomance if the hard drive heads of one drive are working on just one file transfer at a time.
SCSI U320: fastest standard going, and likely to keep that title for a while.

Adaptec card: SCSI adaptors are intelligent, and take quite a bit of the load off the CPU that IDE or SATA imposes. Adaptec is pretty much king of the hill, though YMMV.

PCI-E: Fast RAID arrays can actually push the bandwidth limits of plain PCI. PCI-E not only increases the max bandwidth by roughly half again, it gives that much bandwidth *to each card*. You can get (mostly) the same thing with PCI-X as well; PCI-E is pretty certainly the emerging standard for anything but high-end servers.

15K U320 SCSI drives: The faster the platters spin, the faster data is moved past the read/write heads, ergo the faster the transfer. Also, higher capacity drives (in general) means the data is stored in a much smaller area, meaning the heads don’t have to move as much. The difference can be noticeable.

Of course, such a system is godawfully expensive. Thus the compromises we’ve been discussing.

yeah, this is out of my range. I can see the 1.5 gig of Ram and the fastest processor. Would i see any benefit from having two hard drives, one to load the programs on, and the second to work on?

Yes you will, especially in PS. I runs best, when the Scratch Disk(s) is on a separate physical drive, not just a logical, i.e. partitioned, drive. Probably the ultimate system would be six HDDs, striped (one p, or 2?) into 3 arrays – one for OS/Programs, one solely for Scratch (PS CS will use all you can give it), and one for image storage. You might change the RAID array for that one to give redundancy, rather than speed). I agree with SCSI U-320, but as noted, you start to spend some serious $ that way. ATA’s are very inexpensive, and more RAID controllers are becoming available. Check out that it/they can handle all the drives you want to use. May need several controller cards, plus on-board.

Hunt

On 16 Nov 2004 16:19:35 GMT, (Hunt) wrote:

In article ,
com says…

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:55:16 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

In a perfect world, you would have:

1st RAID Array – Boot disc, software

2nd RAID Array – Windows swapfile

3rd RAID Array – Photoshop scratch disc

4th RAID Array – Working files

(Or maybe one of the uber-expensive RAMDisc cards for one of the temp drives, i.e., swapfile or scratch disc).

Each RAID Array would be SCSI U320 (best Adaptec card(s) you can lay hands on), powered through PCI-Express, at least three 15K RPM drives (large) each.

Why:

Multiple arrays: dramatically better perfomance if the hard drive heads of one drive are working on just one file transfer at a time.
SCSI U320: fastest standard going, and likely to keep that title for a while.

Adaptec card: SCSI adaptors are intelligent, and take quite a bit of the load off the CPU that IDE or SATA imposes. Adaptec is pretty much king of the hill, though YMMV.

PCI-E: Fast RAID arrays can actually push the bandwidth limits of plain PCI. PCI-E not only increases the max bandwidth by roughly half again, it gives that much bandwidth *to each card*. You can get (mostly) the same thing with PCI-X as well; PCI-E is pretty certainly the emerging standard for anything but high-end servers.

15K U320 SCSI drives: The faster the platters spin, the faster data is moved past the read/write heads, ergo the faster the transfer. Also, higher capacity drives (in general) means the data is stored in a much smaller area, meaning the heads don’t have to move as much. The difference can be noticeable.

Of course, such a system is godawfully expensive. Thus the compromises we’ve been discussing.

yeah, this is out of my range. I can see the 1.5 gig of Ram and the fastest processor. Would i see any benefit from having two hard drives, one to load the programs on, and the second to work on?

Yes you will, especially in PS. I runs best, when the Scratch Disk(s) is on a separate physical drive, not just a logical, i.e. partitioned, drive.

Ok, so if i did this, say i had a 20 gig drive and put all the progams on it, the C drive, then i had another drive, say a 60 gig or 100 gig or whatever, and put the work files on it… which one would i make the scratch disc? the big one with the work files?

I dont really think i’ll be able to afford, nor will i need, these really hi-powered RAID arrays you guys advocate. I’m sure they are great and very very fast. I just dont need that power for what I’m trying to do.

howldog wrote in
news::

Ok, so if i did this, say i had a 20 gig drive and put all the progams on it, the C drive, then i had another drive, say a 60 gig or 100 gig or whatever, and put the work files on it… which one would i make the scratch disc? the big one with the work files?

Yeah. Windows swapfile on the boot disc, Photoshop scratch on the second. The idea is to keep them away from each other.

But get a larger C: drive than 20GB. A good 80 GB, 7200 RPM SATA is pretty cheap, and worth the few extra bucks for faster boot, software load and swapfile access.

I dont really think i’ll be able to afford, nor will i need, these really hi-powered RAID arrays you guys advocate. I’m sure they are great and very very fast. I just dont need that power for what I’m trying to do.

<shrug> If your files are small enough they will stay in the 1.5GB of RAM you’ll be getting, you won’t see a whole lot of difference no matter how much money you spend on extra toys. And you know better than any of us what your workflow is.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:08:42 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

Ok, so if i did this, say i had a 20 gig drive and put all the progams on it, the C drive, then i had another drive, say a 60 gig or 100 gig or whatever, and put the work files on it… which one would i make the scratch disc? the big one with the work files?

Yeah. Windows swapfile on the boot disc, Photoshop scratch on the second. The idea is to keep them away from each other.

But get a larger C: drive than 20GB. A good 80 GB, 7200 RPM SATA is pretty cheap, and worth the few extra bucks for faster boot, software load and swapfile access.

good to know, thanks.

I dont really think i’ll be able to afford, nor will i need, these really hi-powered RAID arrays you guys advocate. I’m sure they are great and very very fast. I just dont need that power for what I’m trying to do.

<shrug> If your files are small enough they will stay in the 1.5GB of RAM you’ll be getting, you won’t see a whole lot of difference no matter how much money you spend on extra toys. And you know better than any of us what your workflow is.

good point.

In article ,
com says…

On 16 Nov 2004 16:19:35 GMT, (Hunt) wrote:

In article ,
com says…

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:55:16 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

In a perfect world, you would have:

1st RAID Array – Boot disc, software

2nd RAID Array – Windows swapfile

3rd RAID Array – Photoshop scratch disc

4th RAID Array – Working files

(Or maybe one of the uber-expensive RAMDisc cards for one of the temp drives, i.e., swapfile or scratch disc).

Each RAID Array would be SCSI U320 (best Adaptec card(s) you can lay hands on), powered through PCI-Express, at least three 15K RPM drives (large) each.

Why:

Multiple arrays: dramatically better perfomance if the hard drive heads of one drive are working on just one file transfer at a time.
SCSI U320: fastest standard going, and likely to keep that title for a while.

Adaptec card: SCSI adaptors are intelligent, and take quite a bit of the load off the CPU that IDE or SATA imposes. Adaptec is pretty much king of the hill, though YMMV.

PCI-E: Fast RAID arrays can actually push the bandwidth limits of plain PCI. PCI-E not only increases the max bandwidth by roughly half again, it gives that much bandwidth *to each card*. You can get (mostly) the same thing with PCI-X as well; PCI-E is pretty certainly the emerging standard for anything but high-end servers.

15K U320 SCSI drives: The faster the platters spin, the faster data is moved past the read/write heads, ergo the faster the transfer. Also,

higher

capacity drives (in general) means the data is stored in a much smaller area, meaning the heads don’t have to move as much. The difference can be noticeable.

Of course, such a system is godawfully expensive. Thus the compromises we’ve been discussing.

yeah, this is out of my range. I can see the 1.5 gig of Ram and the fastest processor. Would i see any benefit from having two hard drives, one to load the programs on, and the second to work on?

Yes you will, especially in PS. I runs best, when the Scratch Disk(s) is on

a

separate physical drive, not just a logical, i.e. partitioned, drive.

Ok, so if i did this, say i had a 20 gig drive and put all the progams on it, the C drive, then i had another drive, say a 60 gig or 100 gig or whatever, and put the work files on it… which one would i make the scratch disc? the big one with the work files?

I dont really think i’ll be able to afford, nor will i need, these really hi-powered RAID arrays you guys advocate. I’m sure they are great and very very fast. I just dont need that power for what I’m trying to do.

I understand the budgetary considerations. What I’d suggest is that you opt for a bit larger C:, so Win + programs can reside on it, then get the largest D: (second physical, not a partition), and use it for image files, and Scratch Disk. The image file area will only be read from/written to on Open & Save, so PS will have pretty much unobstructed use of the rest for Scratch Disk space. You might want to partition it into D: – E: with the largest partiton going to PS. I’ve been seeing the 250GB 7200 RPM ATA units for about US$200, and you could allocate 50GB to D: for image files, leaving 200GB for PS Scratch. I know that it seems like a bunch of "empty" space, but PS will appreciate it, especially with 1.5GB RAM. By partitioning, also, you have less of a hassle with fragmentation, which will occurr on an image file disk, as you Save. A big empty partition will almost always be wiped clean when you exit PS and any de-frag will be minimal.

Hunt

On 16 Nov 2004 23:11:06 GMT, (Hunt) wrote:

In article ,
com says…

On 16 Nov 2004 16:19:35 GMT, (Hunt) wrote:

In article ,
com says…

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 01:55:16 GMT, Eric Gill
wrote:

howldog wrote in
news::

are these hard drives separate, or combined together, in some sort of RAID array?

In a perfect world, you would have:

1st RAID Array – Boot disc, software

2nd RAID Array – Windows swapfile

3rd RAID Array – Photoshop scratch disc

4th RAID Array – Working files

(Or maybe one of the uber-expensive RAMDisc cards for one of the temp drives, i.e., swapfile or scratch disc).

Each RAID Array would be SCSI U320 (best Adaptec card(s) you can lay hands on), powered through PCI-Express, at least three 15K RPM drives (large) each.

Why:

Multiple arrays: dramatically better perfomance if the hard drive heads of one drive are working on just one file transfer at a time.
SCSI U320: fastest standard going, and likely to keep that title for a while.

Adaptec card: SCSI adaptors are intelligent, and take quite a bit of the load off the CPU that IDE or SATA imposes. Adaptec is pretty much king of the hill, though YMMV.

PCI-E: Fast RAID arrays can actually push the bandwidth limits of plain PCI. PCI-E not only increases the max bandwidth by roughly half again, it gives that much bandwidth *to each card*. You can get (mostly) the same thing with PCI-X as well; PCI-E is pretty certainly the emerging standard for anything but high-end servers.

15K U320 SCSI drives: The faster the platters spin, the faster data is moved past the read/write heads, ergo the faster the transfer. Also,

higher

capacity drives (in general) means the data is stored in a much smaller area, meaning the heads don’t have to move as much. The difference can be noticeable.

Of course, such a system is godawfully expensive. Thus the compromises we’ve been discussing.

yeah, this is out of my range. I can see the 1.5 gig of Ram and the fastest processor. Would i see any benefit from having two hard drives, one to load the programs on, and the second to work on?

Yes you will, especially in PS. I runs best, when the Scratch Disk(s) is on

a

separate physical drive, not just a logical, i.e. partitioned, drive.

Ok, so if i did this, say i had a 20 gig drive and put all the progams on it, the C drive, then i had another drive, say a 60 gig or 100 gig or whatever, and put the work files on it… which one would i make the scratch disc? the big one with the work files?

I dont really think i’ll be able to afford, nor will i need, these really hi-powered RAID arrays you guys advocate. I’m sure they are great and very very fast. I just dont need that power for what I’m trying to do.

I understand the budgetary considerations. What I’d suggest is that you opt for a bit larger C:, so Win + programs can reside on it, then get the largest D: (second physical, not a partition), and use it for image files, and Scratch Disk. The image file area will only be read from/written to on Open & Save, so PS will have pretty much unobstructed use of the rest for Scratch Disk space. You might want to partition it into D: – E: with the largest partiton going to PS. I’ve been seeing the 250GB 7200 RPM ATA units for about US$200, and you could allocate 50GB to D: for image files, leaving 200GB for PS Scratch. I know that it seems like a bunch of "empty" space, but PS will appreciate it, especially with 1.5GB RAM. By partitioning, also, you have less of a hassle with fragmentation, which will occurr on an image file disk, as you Save. A big empty partition will almost always be wiped clean when you exit PS and any de-frag will be minimal.

Hunt

very good info, thank you

That spec might just need an air conditioning suite and earplugs

plus seatbelts…

Aerticus

"

"Hunt" wrote

I understand the budgetary considerations. What I’d suggest is that you

opt

for a bit larger C:, so Win + programs can reside on it, then get the

largest

D: (second physical, not a partition), and use it for image files, and

Scratch

Disk. The image file area will only be read from/written to on Open &

Save, so

PS will have pretty much unobstructed use of the rest for Scratch Disk

space.

You might want to partition it into D: – E: with the largest partiton

going to

PS. I’ve been seeing the 250GB 7200 RPM ATA units for about US$200, and

you

could allocate 50GB to D: for image files, leaving 200GB for PS Scratch. I know that it seems like a bunch of "empty" space, but PS will appreciate

it,

especially with 1.5GB RAM. By partitioning, also, you have less of a

hassle

with fragmentation, which will occurr on an image file disk, as you Save.

A

big empty partition will almost always be wiped clean when you exit PS and

any

de-frag will be minimal.

I’ve been doing some shopping around myself thinking about a new system, and the most cost efficient way to go seems to be an off-the-shelf box with an extra HD and RAM as needed. Given that most basic boxes except the very cheapest come with 100+ GB for the C: drive, would it make as much sense to put your image file partition (or just directory) on that physical drive leaving the 2nd physical drive for Scratch (and maybe more storage)? And also, what the heck _does_ PS use 200 GB of scratch space for, and how does the amount of RAM influence the needed scratch space (and when you say "especially with 1.5 GB" do you mean with all that oodles of RAM or with that tiny little bitty RAM :-)? Not doubting your recommendation, just trying to understand it more fully.