In trying to build the ultimate computer to run Photoshop 7 on Win 2000 pro, I am running into a few forks in the road where I have to make some basic hardware decisions. Processor, graphic card, memory, hard drive interface, motherboard… the choices are endless.
What would your ultimate PS Windows computer contain under the hood? You’ll be spending my money, so don’t worry about so much about costs. However, since everything listed here will be obsolete in less than 2 months, special attention will be paid to best VALUE for the dollar spent, which may mean selection of components just underneath the very top tier.
Apart from performance, component interoperability and reliability should carry equal weight. While I did imply that cost is no object, I am sort of budgeting about $3,000 for the box, EXCLUDING the keyboard, monitor(s), and software, but INCLUDING the internal hard drives and the internal DVD-R/RW+/- CD-R/RW drive(s).
Now for the decision forks in the road:
Decision A: The Processor
Either the AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 3400+, FX-51, or FX-53?
OR the Intel Pentium P4 3.0, 3.2, 3.4 GHz E (Prescott) or 3.4 EE (Extreme Edition)
Currently, I am leaning toward the Intel P4 3.0 E Prescott (a balance in the lower price + higher performance = better value equation), primarily because I was very effectively brainwashed with the "Intel Inside" campaign of the 1990’s, and secondarily because Intel also manufactures a companion motherboard (D875PRZ) for a single source solution, and AMD does not. But if I went AMD, I would likely choose the Asus K8VN motherboard, which is generally well received in the computing enthusiast community.
The question is, which processor is more likely to do a better job manipulating 200MB photoshop files (starting raw at 40MB from an 11.1 MP camera, adding several layers from there), given the same amount of RAM?
Decision B: The Memory
The age old addage is the more, the merrier, until I read a study that suggested that Photoshop does not benefit from greater than 2GB. If that is the case, buying four 512MB strips of dual channel DDR is a cinch, as many brands are available, priced competitively, and some are even certified by Intel and/or AMD to work effectively with their systems.
But if that study was wrong, and Photoshop could actually derive a benefit from having 4GB (the max the P4 can address, I believe the AMD can address significantly more), then the much harder to find 1GB stips must be shopped for. Are these 1GB strips just as reliable, and more importantly, will the Photoshop application benefit from their use?
Decision C: The Graphic Card
Since so many of the computer component reviews today focus on "gaming," it is hard to get a sense of whether or not the high-end graphic cards are also good for the more exacting tasks of color accurate and crystal clear photographic image rendition. Heck, even the boxes that the graphic cards come in look more like a grade schooler’s lunch box, plastered with menacing alien heads that do nothing more than alienate me from purchasing them. However, I continue to read about the "ATI Radeon 9800 XT Pro" as being a desireable card. I can understand virtues like having a greater amount of onboard DDR (256MB, in this case)… but I want to know if there are other features I should be looking for in a graphic card, for the sole purpose of running photoshop. Dual monitor support for instance?
Decision D: Hard Drive Interface
Fast access time. Fast read/write. High RPMs. High Capacity. All that is clear. But should I insist on the SCSI interface, or will Serial ATA do the job just as quickly? In a RAID "0" arrangement, will twin drive stripping cause photoshop to run worse? In otherwords, is the application best put on one drive, and the production files on the other? Should the operating system (boot drive) be seperate from the PS application drive?
As far as which processor and which graphics card will be the best, I think that is something that you are going to have to determine for yourself. If your goal is to have the absolute fastest, biggest, and best computer that ever was, you will have to make that determination for yourself. In reality, I don’t think you will find a significant difference in the performance of any of the computer systems you have discussed. The only advice I would give you would be to have at least two hard drives. I would use the primary drive for the operating system and for my applications such as Photoshop, my video editing software, etc. Then I would use the secondary hard drives for storing all of my work.
As far as all the other questions are concerned, I personally feel that it is very easy to wonder if there isn’t something out there somewhere that’s bigger and better and faster than what I have. And in reality, no matter how hard I try, whatever I purchase will be obsolete within six months and completely left in the dust within a couple of years. So in my opinion, it just ain’t worth all the worry.
Here’s a wish list I’m constantly tweaking and in the $3K price range you quote. This would have RAID on the system drive cluster and separate RAID on the secondary drive cluster.
Daryl, thank you for sharing your "wish list." That was some of the type of guidance I was looking for. Jess, thank you for your comments about the use of two hard drives. I’d like to ask more about harddrives and Photoshop use a little later.
BTW Jess, I realize that computers become obsolete. I went to college carrying punch cards, so I’ve lived to see a lot of changes in computers. But the one I am typing this message on is seven years old, still runs Office 97, and still does the jobs I bought it for. I paid $3,000 for it, too. It was near the top of the value scale in that day, and it has saved me seven years of incremental upgrades and software reinstalls.
Now that I need to run Photoshop, I am once again trying to buy the best performing system for running Photoshop in today’s time period. Once I buy it, I won’t worry about what comes out in six months. I’ll maybe start thinking about that after six years, which is about how long it will take me to really learn Photoshop anyway. Sure, more updates will be out, but unless they are critical, I remain satisfied with what I have. Just like my Office 97 is still very useful, despite the numerous generations of upgrades over the years.
Getting back to hard drives: Daryl, why are you purchasing the Adaptec SCSI adapter, when all four of your wish list hard drives are either Serial ATA or IDE? Since the Gigabyte mobo supports 4 or 6 drives in SATA RAID with Intel’s southbridge (ICHR5) as well as some other chip that Giga but on there (Promise?), and since there are also the four IDE connections built on the board, two for your CD/DVD rom drive pair, and two for your 7200 RPM drive pair, what do you have planned for your SCSI card?
Are you concerned that your throughput will not be fast enough without SCSI? Even with the WD Raptor 10K rpm SATA drives with 4.5ms seek times? Are SCSI drives planned for later?
For the two pairs of drives that you have now, which drive pair will carry your operating system and applications, and which drive pair are you designating for your data/work product?
Thanks in advance!
Charles S. Brown
PS… Chris, Pierre, Len, Ho, Dave, Mac, I don’t know what you all are chattering about, but it is difficult for me to understand how it is connected to the purpose of this thread. This was my first post on these forums, and I am just trying to learn something from photoshop users who are interested in helping a beginner pick a robust Windows system to run the PS software on. To this end, the inside jokes and off topic banter are a little distracting. Thanks for your understanding. 🙂
Sorry for the distraction, here’s the translation: The Mac folks think the G5 is God’s gift to personal computers and like to call it the "fastest computer on the planet" or some such market-speak. The Windows folks are used to smoke and mirrors being employed by the Mac camp to make their machines look a little better than they actually are, and they, of course, have their own slant on what computer should be crowned King of the Hill (it’s never a Mac). The truth usually lies somewhere in between.
The OPTERON is a 64-bit AMD processor that compares favorably with the G5, and it can be employed in a dual configuration for quite a bit less than any Intel offering. Thus, if I were to build a Photoshop machine today, the Opteron (times 2) would be my choice of processor(s).
Yes, sorry Charles… I was aking Chris if he thinks that the current versions of the 64 bits operating systems (it’s the future!!!) are good enough for him… Remember that he is one of the software engineers of Photoshop, so my question is not as innocent as it looks… ;D
My question was then related to yours, as I am also thinking to renew my computer, and it implied that I am interested in the Opterons/ Athlon 64 processors for my next upgrade. Ho explained what it is about.
About your question, your computer will still be good for Office for a few years… but don’t hope being able to use the latest functions of the future versions of Photoshop in 6 or 7 years: I bought my computer 4 years ago, and I didn’t upgrade to Photoshop CS because I know it would not let me use it at its full potential…
Photoshop and Office are at the two extremes of the requirements in computing power!!!
Charles, I would rather buy most parts that are at the "sweet spot"
A ) those processors cost almost the same at their sweet spot. BUT the prescott use too much power and emit too much heat, and don’t have a performance advantage for the moment. I’d stick with the Northwoods P4, but beware, the socket of the processors is about to change(to 775 pins), will you be able to upgrade the processor in 2 years?
The AMD parts are very good but the FX and Opteron are more expensive, and use more expensive (but error-correcting) memory. The sockets also will change soon to a 939 pin one. Beware for future upgradeablity. Their big advantage is that they are 64 bit ready… the Operating Systems and applications will migrate to 64bit in the near future…
B ) Memory: ususlly, one says the more the better.For prices reasons, I’d rather use 4X 512mb instead of 2X 1Gb
Note that you will be able to use more than 4 Gigs of memory with the 64 bits OS and Processors (and applications)
Some recommends one brand or the other, I’d recommand to search for the best warranty. The difference in performance is not that big once you use DDR 400Mhz. Note that DDR2, as in some upcoming Prescott mother boards is currently slower than DDR
C ) Graphics cards, For Photoshop, I’d get a cheap dual screen card that has a lot of image clarity. It is TOTALLY USELESS to buy a card that cost hundreds of dollars if you ONLY intend to run Photoshop. (I’m envisionning to use an integrated videocard that you can find in some motherboards. Even a PCI card might be enough for Photoshop, provided that you have enough memory to run the screen at a high reslution and color depth (16 or 32 MB are enough!!!)
D )For the hard drives, I’d rather get several smaller and faster hard drives than a huge one. As it has been said, separate Photoshop’s scratch disk from Windows Pagefile (swapfile)
Get also a separate disk for back-ups and store it in another end of the house, if you are paranoid…
I might do me a pleasure and get two of the 10K rpm raptors, one for the system, and one for Photoshop’s scratch.
Well the goodies are nice and all, but if you have a motherboard that sucks, it is all for naught! This choice is the most crucial, it is the ‘mother’ of all things swift and nifty!
I’m sorry I didn’t offer more discussion about my wish list when I posted it, as the questions you raised were pretty much expected. I was short on time at the moment, but here’s more to explain my current wish list:
1. Firstly, I’m not 100% hard set on going Intel vs. AMD. I’ve looked at both options and just thought I’d likely stick with Intel since that’s what I’ve been running for years with no problem.
2. Why the SCSI card when there’s nothing SCSI in the system? Primarily to support my current Nikon LS2000 film scanner and maybe even to carry over some of my Ultra 2 LVD drives, although I think there’s little need for that. In fact, rather than invest in the SCSI card, I’ve even given thought to spending extra for a newer, higher-resolution film scanner that uses either a 1394 or USB2 interface. Honestly, I really like the idea of getting totally away from SCSI devices as I do think they can be rather finicky. But, using them in 1998 kept some extra needed IRQs free…an issue no longer of much concern given USB and 1394 devices.
3. My current thinking is that I’d use the Raptor drives in a RAID for the system/apps drive and the 7200rpm drives would be RAIDed for a data drive. Frankly, I feel 250GB is far more space than I’d likely ever use, but if I ever do more with video editing, extra space could be useful.
All in all though, I’m not near the "power user" that this wish list might suggest. For example, my needs don’t demand the speed of a RAID setup but again I feel current drive prices still permit that to be an affordable way to boost system performance. When I built my current system in 1998, it was gross overkill for my needs but I always envisioned wanting a "Photoshop powerhouse" to accomodate those "someday I’ll…" sort of thoughts. Well, "someday" never really happened and I tend to doubt that it ever will. Although it was just prior to buying PSCS that I upped my CPUs from 450MHz P2s to 550MHz P3s, I’m still running an antique system by current standards. If you’re curious what I’m running, it is detailed at <http://jazzdiver.com/photoshop/pcbuild.htm>, a page on where my comments are long out of date as well.
ID,
Indeed, I’d agree that a good, solid motherboard is the most important part of a system. Gigabyte would be a new brand for me if I do ultimately go with my wish list, but I’ve read a lot of good reports on the particular motherboard I’ve listed (the 8KNXP). The board has been out for a while now, so by the time I ever decide I just have to have a new PC and can afford what I want, there may be a new mobo choice made. My SuperMicro has been super-reliable and stable but it came at a hefty price, so I’ve been looking at other brands and feel pretty good about Gigabyte, MSI, Intel, and ASUS. I’m sure Tyan still makes a good board also, but I consider them more in the SuperMicro class…more server or high-end workstation oriented and pricey.
Ho – more like the G5 is significantly faster, and many Windows fanatics refuse to believe that their machines could be slower. Kind of like Ford versus Chevy. But I have all the benchmarks, from all the CPUs, and have verified the results carefully. What I’m telling you are the facts.
Also, Apple doesn’t have to resort to smoke and mirrors. I make sure their Photoshop tests are honest (and I try to do so for other CPU makers).
If you’re going to start a "mine is bigger than yours" war — take it to the lounge.
If you’re going to start a "mine is bigger than yours" war — take it to the lounge.
I haven’t seen yours and I don’t care to.
I do find it interesting that only YOU seem to be in possession of benchmark results that show the G5 to be such a freaking blazing wonder. I can think of at least 3 recent comparisons that say you are employing some smoke yourself, although I have no idea if you inhaled or not.
Here are the ONLY results I’ve come across that show the G5 holding its own against the Opteron system: <http://www.barefeats.com/g5op.html> Interesting that the G5 lost the Photoshop test, eh?
Chris, why don’t you upload your benchmark in the Adobe Exchange, with insturctions on how to use it?
It would help the community if all the other benches are not valid.
Or could you give hints why yours are better than the others? Do you factorize the results? do you use real world actions like Mathias’s DDT, or step interpolations? Do you use tests on big images and some on multiple small ones? Does your test run several times? Does your test only check processor performance, or system wide performance? Do you have a test for multiprocessor and one for monoprocessors? is it needed to make that distinction?
I’m really curious, please Chris… a benchmark is not only useful for bragging rights, it could be an excellent tool for troubleshooting/ diagnose problems!
The reason I mentioned the motherboard was that I bought an ECS board that really sucked, I took it back and got an Abit VP6 and the difference was night an day.
As far as Mac speed, benchmarks are okay, but the reality is that they are only as good as the operator, if the operator is a hardware/software dimwit then the G5 can be amazingly slow. The majority of Mac operators think that the OS handles everything else but doing the actual work in a software program.
As an example, a press company had a dual 800 G5; in the time it took them to insert the CD, have it appear on the desktop and open the file in Acrobat, I could have inserted the CD in WIN2k, opened Explorer, opened the file in Acrobat and been well through the spool with the proofs beginning to appear.
This is not to flame a war, but just a reality check.
Pierre – because there’s more to it than running a script.
The thing that screws up most benchmarks is methodology and setup, not the script they run.
And because the old script takes 4 hours and produces a few thousand lines of output, and thew new script takes several days and produces even more volumnous output.
OK, smart guys (and I mean "smart" in a good way), after some diligent reading I finally "get" the comments made by Chris, Ho, Pierre, etc from 3 or 4 days ago. No sooner does that happen when I find that your swirling "currents" are sending my life-raft-question drifting off-topic once again! 😉
But this time, I can sort of understand what you are talking about. And most importantly, I understand WHY you are talking about it on this thread. Afterall, the subject line did indeed ask "What would your ULTIMATE Photoshop Windows computer have in it?"
So, benchmarks and the validity of their results in measuring performance is a fair subject for discussion.
However, is the G5 on topic here?
I simply accept the elegant superiority of the Mac. I accepted it in 1984 when I bought the first 128K Mac, the ImageWriter, and then really splurged by buying that second floppy disk drive. No sooner did I have my very own "hello" screen beaming on my kitchen table, that I find out at the next BMUG meeting that that I need the upcoming Fat Mac in order to run any decent software. Also, the output from the Mac and Imagewiter looked childish compared to the technically inferior IBM Selectric typewriter of the day. I still have those putty colored plastic Mac toys, btw, all in their original rainbow apple logo’d boxes, hoping that they will one day have more use as collector’s items than they ever did as a computer system.
I have other Macs that I have bought over the last twenty years, including the rare all black MacTV, circa 1993. Again, no sooner did I bring it home, that I find out from BMUG that System 7.5 will fix all the bugs, but I need at least Performa 660 level machine to run it. The MacTV was equivalent to the Performa 550. Another MacToy. Cool looking works of art and engineering, style and scintillating technology, all gathering dust.
While I was never smart enough for dark screens with blinking prompts, when the world moved to Windows 95, I tagged along. After a while, I could walk into almost any office in the world, face a computer screen, and be able to eventually figure out what to do. I get six good years of use out of a Wintel machine, whereas I got six months MAX out of my MACS. Now I’ll admit that after my $4K 128K Mac Attack, I never did buy the top of the line Mac machine again, but even the cheapest Wintel machine has a longer and less expensive upgrade path. Not to mention that learning the "language" of Wintel made my meager computer skill set more interchangable with the real business world of applications.
I can’t handle another collector’s item right now. I hear and see that the proffesional photo and video community makes great use of Macs. That, combined with Chris Cox’s comments regarding processor superiority, combined with that elegant airy aluminum fan cooled and partitioned case, once again makes the Mac Dual G5 tempting. But I am resisting, darnit… ok? Don’t make it harder for me by continuing to keep bringing up the G5!!! 🙂
Now, getting back to building the ultimate (or the most currently optimized for the time being) Intel or AMD based computer running Windows 2000 Pro, for the main purposes of running Photoshop 7, and possibly CS, I’d like to leave aside the "which processor" part for the moment and focus on hard drive throughput and Raid configurations.
No-one has mentioned the Asus board, great for geeks, but not much use if you ever need support as they refuse to talk to end-users. If you can swing the cost go for SCSI drives either RAID 5 or two sets Raid 0 (one for backup and page files etc). But two single drives with one for backup and page files etc will probably suffice. I just switched to SATA drives which were nominally faster than my previous SCSI-3 set but in day to day experience much slower than SCSI.
I took Intel processor/motherboard path and very smooth.
Why Win2000, much less friendly and driver sensitive than XP Pro.
The 64bit wars are not worth the effort, IBM have been using 128bit for years in their down-time free Series-I but you cannot run Photoshop with out an Intel board and that is not worthwile.
Forget upgrades over 2 years away, the cost of compatible components will go up while better faster ones go down. So get the full spec on day 1 for some trouble free years. 3 + Ghz will not give much advantage in Photoshop – it will come into its own when the Hollywood hawks let the rest of the World have HDTV.
Or forego the getting it all running hassle on Wintel and go the G5 route keeping your old Wintel box for those Windows only tasks. It took me a month of heartache to get most of CS Premium’s components running, with only a few crashes per week now.
Thanks for your follow-up. It almost sounds like we are in similar, if not the same, boats. (Well, mine is more like a life raft).
Slistress,
Blistering commentary! You cut to the chase quickly… and in so doing brought up relevant issues that I have often wondered about. Let’s see if the following summarizes some of your points: {paraphrases}
1. {Get it built up to par now, don’t bother crystal balling an upgrade path. In several years it’ll be cheaper to toss the old mobo and start again. This may mean no future swapping processors, no future adding or changing memory, etc. Fill the slots to capacity and outfit the machine to it’s current capability from day 1, and enjoy it for a few years while it lasts. In the future, don’t bother to upgrade. Simply start over.}
Does that fairly characterize what you are saying? Given that changes are always on the horizon, that sounds like a very reasonable way of looking at it.
2. {Asus boards are great for geeks. And that’s about it.}
You know, just about every "geek" I’ve ever asked has held Asus mobos in the highest regard. Even over Intel’s own mobos. I’ve often wondered why. Is it price/profit ratio in the value-added-reseller’s market? I would have thought that genuine Intel boards would be the safest bet… just like you said you experienced.
3. But there is just one question on the point made in 2 above. You said: "I took the Intel processor/motherboard path and very smooth." Yet later you said, "It took me a month of heartache to get most of CS Premium’s components running, with only a few crashes per week now."
Huh? A "few crashes per week" is "very smooth"? And I have a "month of heartache" to look forward to? This is scaring me. I was just about set on that Intel board when I started this thread.
4. "Why Win 2000? Much less friendly and driver sensitive than XP Pro."
Ooops, I didn’t know that. I have always heard that Win 2000 Pro was more stable than XP. I currently use Win 98. I just didn’t want to experience the scenario in point 3, immediately above, so I thought the older OS, that is still in corporate environments, would be less apt to crash. That is also why I thought about sticking with Photoshop 7.
5. "If you can swing the cost go for SCSI drives either RAID 5 or two sets Raid 0 (one for backup and page files etc). But two single drives with one for backup and page files etc will probably suffice. I just switched to SATA drives which were nominally faster than my previous SCSI-3 set but in day to day experience much slower than SCSI."
OK, now we are in the thick of it. I thought 10K rpm 4.5ms SATA drives were equal to or better than 10k rpm 4.8ms SCSI drives. And, since the G5 was brought up once again, I wondered why the G5 only has an ATA/100 drive.
To anyone, everyone…
HARD DRIVE CHOICES, rather than processor manufacturer, could end up dictating the platform we should build this thing on. Right?
I read on these forums of people with more than 2GB of ram having to hide some of that memory from Photoshop in order to run better. So 64 bit addressing 8GB of ram won’t help, right? Even people with 4GB of ram, setting Photoshop to use 1.5GB, allowing small background applications and the os to use .5GB, and setting up the remainder 2GB of ram as a first-tier ram scratch disk… find that a 2GB scratch is still not large enough for several edits of PS files, so a real hard disk must be accessed all the time anyway, right?
If I buy a mobo that does not support RAID, or SATA, and have to add in RAID cards through the PCI slots, then I am not starting on a good foundation, right? Stop me if I’m off track.
I learned of an Abit mobo, the IC7-MAX3, that supports 6, count ’em, 6 SATA hard drives in Raid configurations 0, 1, and 0+1. Two SATA’s are provided by the Intel Southbridge ICHR5 chip, and the other four SATA’s are provided by some other vendor’s chip that Abit soldered to the mobo. Abit doesn’t even bother putting on any serial or parrallel ports. It’s all about the USB 2.0, 1394a Firewire, and 1000 LAN all the way. (too bad it’s not 1394b and ICHR6, but here we go looking on that horizon again).
I wonder why so few people mention Abit on their preferred mobo mfr lists?
Just imagine 6 fire-breathing WD 74GB Raptor’s caged up in my new Wintel box. That’ll give actor Jeff Goldblum something to run from, won’t it?
How would six equal capacity SATA drives (6 x $250 = $1,500) best be raided and configured for a Photoshop powerhouse?
How would 444GB be divided, into stripes and mirrors, scratch disks, data disks, and application disks, such that I know how much work product capacity that such configuration can hold before I need to archive to off-machine disks? At the end of the day, am I still left with 148GB of data capacity?
Could a 1394b card hooked to a 1394b harddrive have, at 800mbs, an equal to or better than throughput rate as an internal drive controlled by a chip on board?
What about drives networked with 1000 LAN?
Could $1,500 buy better (faster) performance from a SCSI drive array, including the cost of the Adaptec card and the various daisy chain cables? Would there be a capacity and/or redundancy penalty for going SCSI at that same price point? Is UltraWideFast SCSI still limited to seven devices, and is anymore care required in configuring those devices than in configuring SATA devices, or networked devices?
And, since the shadow of the G5 will likely never leave us, can such a robust file system be configured for an Apple at even twice that price?
1. Does that fairly characterize what you are saying?
Yes it does, I have done a few upgrades in the past but during the last 5 years two attempts proved costly and not very effective as the increasing software demands needed a new processor/mb too. The memory for the old board costs 4x the price of more modern fast memory too.
2. Asus board are regarded very highly by the geeks because you can run your processors and on board busses at higher than rated speeds. Then you need to add special heat sinks and all sorts.
3. The shop did something odd installing XP on my new box, obvciously it is the last thing you consider when trying to fix a problem that seemed confined to Adobe Premium CS. I eventually reformatted the drive and did the entire process myself.
4. Win 2000 and XP Pro are virtually identical kernels but very different driver models. A lot less support for 2000 on the market. Best use for 2000 is in corporate servers if using software that benefits from it alone.
5. 10k drives are very noisy compared to 7k and the latest 7k’s are almost silent in operation. SCSI’s tend to be on the noisy side.
The old limit on 7 SCSI devices has gone and wide SCSI gives at least 2 channels = 14 devices. Set each drive on a different channel as the speed of the SCSI bus is a lot faster than any drive on the market. This means drive to drive transfers are no load on your processor and blindingly fast.
Apple switched from SCSI to keep retail down, still works best with SCSI.
If going external use fibre optics not cable to link SCSI drives and then you are really in the fast lane. Gigabit ethernet is relatively slow.
Off course if you really want to fly… try the workstation route.
Tom’s hardware is an independant test site that has been running ‘forever’ that gives good advice in plain language but it can get very technical too if you can handle it.
I can’t offer any experienced advice regarding RAID, and particularly not on the level you seem interested in. But, I did overlook mentioning Abit, and I would certainly consider one of their boards if I found one that had the features on it that I liked. In fact, just yesterday I too read of the IC7-MAX3 and it looked pretty darn nice. The absence of legacy ports was a concern due to some limited need for that still in support of downloading data from my dive watch and dive computer, but I could easily just relegate that task to my laptop. I’ve only owned one Abit board, the IT5H which was an old Pentium class board but was very well designed and reliable. The user’s manual was also well-written and informative. While I’ve read many good reviews of ASUS boards, I’ve almost become leery of them due to conflicts with Photoshop that I’ve seen mentioned in the past here. That’s not to suggest that one bad apple spoils the crop though.
Intel motherboards vs. others? I know Dave Milbut for one would speak in favor of Intel for their stability and reliability. To some extent I think that is because Intel’s boards don’t seem to push the limits so much in terms of being as richly featured as other boards. I can’t see anything wrong with that so long as the board you choose meets your needs.
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