Building Photoshop System

J
Posted By
jahcells
Jul 15, 2004
Views
338
Replies
4
Status
Closed
Hi everyone,

I’m preparing to put together a system geared towards editing large files in PS as well other graphic-based functions. I was hoping for some input on the potential build which includes:

Processors:
Dual AMD Opteron Model 146, 1MB L2 Cache 64-bit Processors

Motherboard:
TYAN "Thunder K8W

Memory:
6 GIGS of Crucial 400DDR.
Allocated as follows – 2 for Photoshop, 3 for RAMDISK for PS scratch disk, and 1 FOR OS.

Hard Drives:
2 Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA in RAID 0 and a Western Digital 200GB 7200rpm SATA for deep storage

DVD/CD ROM:
NEC 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive & Lite-On Black 52X32X52X16 Combo Drive

Video Card:
ATI RADEON 9600XT

Power Supply:
Antec 480W

Questions:
1. Any recommended alterations to the above?
2. Is the 3 GIGS to RAMDISK for the PS scratch disk valuable move since editing large files?
3. What other motherboard, without PCI-X, could be substituted for the Thunder K8W? (Keeping in mind the amount of SATA drives (4), and the amount of ram (6 sticks).)
4. Would it be beneficial to use socket 939 chips instead of 940.
5. What advantages, if any, would there be if an ATI 9800
(XT/PRO/ETC) is substituted for the 9600XT in a PS environment?

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts,

Scott
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W
Waldo
Jul 15, 2004
Why a 3 GB RAM drive for a scratch disk? You can also assign that extra for Photoshop… Because if the RAM drive is full, it will need to write to one of your ATA drives anyway, which is the same as reserving 4 GB straight to Photoshop without a RAM drive.

Waldo
EG
Eric Gill
Jul 15, 2004
"Waldo" wrote in
news::

Why a 3 GB RAM drive for a scratch disk? You can also assign that extra for Photoshop…

No, you cannot. Photoshop currently will use no more than 2GB (minus a bit that varies depending on OS). When true 64-bit OS implementations show up, we’ll still have to wait for Photoshop to be re-coded to use more RAM.

Because if the RAM drive is full, it will need
to write to one of your ATA drives anyway,

….whatever doesn’t fit in the RAMDisc. Still much faster than relying on a mechanical drive alone.

<snip>
A
adykes
Jul 15, 2004
In article ,
Ashley wrote:
Hi everyone,

I’m preparing to put together a system geared towards editing large files in PS as well other graphic-based functions. I was hoping for some input on the potential build which includes:

Processors:
Dual AMD Opteron Model 146, 1MB L2 Cache 64-bit Processors
Motherboard:
TYAN "Thunder K8W

Memory:
6 GIGS of Crucial 400DDR.
Allocated as follows – 2 for Photoshop, 3 for RAMDISK for PS scratch disk, and 1 FOR OS.

Hard Drives:
2 Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA in RAID 0 and a Western Digital 200GB 7200rpm SATA for deep storage

DVD/CD ROM:
NEC 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive & Lite-On Black 52X32X52X16 Combo Drive

Video Card:
ATI RADEON 9600XT

Power Supply:
Antec 480W

Questions:
1. Any recommended alterations to the above?
2. Is the 3 GIGS to RAMDISK for the PS scratch disk valuable move since editing large files?
3. What other motherboard, without PCI-X, could be substituted for the Thunder K8W? (Keeping in mind the amount of SATA drives (4), and the amount of ram (6 sticks).)
4. Would it be beneficial to use socket 939 chips instead of 940.
5. What advantages, if any, would there be if an ATI 9800
(XT/PRO/ETC) is substituted for the 9600XT in a PS environment?
Many thanks in advance for any thoughts,

Scott

I assume XP/pro. Since it’s limited to 4GB, split 3/1 for the OS and the apps, I’m not sure how the extra 2GB is going to be used. Within the 4 GB, you don’t really get to decide that photoshop "gets 2GB". The OS is all-knowing. Let it manage memory.

Assuming XP/pro+RAMdisk drivers can’t handle more than 4GB memory, I’d buy 1GB ram in the initial configuration and learn how to use perfom.exe (in XP) which is the system tuning tool to see if memory is your bottleneck. I’m not big on ramdisk in a modern general purpose workstation and operating system.

IMHO I think you spend too much money on memory and not enough on disk I/O performance. For this kind of money I’d look at a SCSI subsystem. I’d put an inexpensive PCI-X SCSI card in the machine and put two 35GB 10k disks on it, one for the OS and applications, another for TEMP, SWAP, and the PS workfile folders.

You need to mirror your "deep store", or better yet mirror it to a second machine, once a day. Your PC could catch fire or get stolen. Put a big SATA disk on each SATA interface on the motherboard and mirror them. I think this mobo supports only two disks, but could be wrong.

FWIW you don’t need a 3D card for photoshop. I’ve heard that the Matrox 2D cards are very good for high accuracy color work.

You didn’t mention the display, or a printer. The LCDs for high accuracy color work are quite expensive.

—
Al Dykes
———–
adykes at p a n i x . c o m
W
Waldo
Jul 18, 2004
Eric Gill wrote:

"Waldo" wrote in
news::

Why a 3 GB RAM drive for a scratch disk? You can also assign that extra for Photoshop…

No, you cannot. Photoshop currently will use no more than 2GB (minus a bit that varies depending on OS). When true 64-bit OS implementations show up, we’ll still have to wait for Photoshop to be re-coded to use more RAM.

The old memory barriers 🙁

Because if the RAM drive is full, it will need
to write to one of your ATA drives anyway,

…whatever doesn’t fit in the RAMDisc. Still much faster than relying on a mechanical drive alone.

Might be, but I am really happy with 90 MBps of my two ATA drivers in striping (sight, what would it be with 4 drivers…)

Waldo

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