Dual Monitor Win 7

M
Posted By
mike
Sep 4, 2009
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659
Replies
3
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Closed
I skipped Vista and want to spend my money on a new ‘dream system’ with Win 7, dual monitors and whatever else may be good for the latest PS. (Any word on CS5 yet?)
Money is not a real problem except I of course want to spend wisely. What is suggested? Did some Googling with no real results.

32bit or 64bit OS – so far I’m using CS3?

twin 24" LCDs or one 24" and a smaller for the menus? Is 24" the size to get?

Which dual monitor graphics card is best with PS ? Is there a limit to max memory that PS can use. I have had bad ATI experiences – is there a better brand?

Have found no info by Adobe. Anything to look out for?

Regards,
mike

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MC
Martin C
Sep 4, 2009
I can answer some of the questions. Hopefully others will be able to give you more.

If you plan on using more than 3GB of RAM, then go for a 64 bit OS as this will be able to use as much RAM as you can throw at it. Obviously PS is heavy on RAM usage and will use whatever you can give it. If you are working on large files, then RAM is obviously important. I am not sure if there is a limit to the memory PS can use.

Esthetically, twin 24" LCDs will look better – if you have the room to use both. It really depends on whether you use multiple applications a lot. If so, then twin 24s will be better than (one 24 and one smaller for menus). A 24" will give you a good resolution of 1920 x 1080 – and obviously lots of space. If you want a slightly smaller LCD, there is an LG W2353V-PF Widescreen 23 inch LCD Monitor which also has the same 1920 resolution.

It all really depends on how and why you want to use them. If I had the space, I would go for twin 23" LG monitors as it is not quite so much in your face and allows multiple applications to be viewed together on a big screen. Ideal for me.

You have to make the choice.

I currently use an ATI Radeon 4870 and have no problems with it, so cannot comment on your ATI problems. As I use the card for gaming, this may not be relevant to you. Certainly it is overpowered for just graphics work. Others here will be able to give you a suitable option.

Hope some of this helps.

Martin

wrote in message
I skipped Vista and want to spend my money on a new ‘dream system’ with Win 7, dual monitors and whatever else may be good for the latest PS. (Any word on CS5 yet?)
Money is not a real problem except I of course want to spend wisely. What is suggested? Did some Googling with no real results.
32bit or 64bit OS – so far I’m using CS3?

twin 24" LCDs or one 24" and a smaller for the menus? Is 24" the size to get?

Which dual monitor graphics card is best with PS ? Is there a limit to max memory that PS can use. I have had bad ATI experiences – is there a better brand?

Have found no info by Adobe. Anything to look out for?

Regards,
mike
AM
Andrew Morton
Sep 4, 2009
wrote:
I skipped Vista and want to spend my money on a new ‘dream system’ with Win 7, dual monitors and whatever else may be good for the latest PS. (Any word on CS5 yet?)
Money is not a real problem except I of course want to spend wisely. What is suggested? Did some Googling with no real results.
32bit or 64bit OS – so far I’m using CS3?

If you get 64bit Windows 7, you will be able to use more RAM. Presumably you’re going for an i7 920. You can get 6GB (3x2GB) of DDR3 RAM for less than $100.

Don’t forget about the speed of the disk drives; strangely I haven’t seen anyone writing about using Photoshop with SSDs and going "OMG it’s like lightning", but then I haven’t looked very hard. If you’re waiting for the Oct 22nd Windows 7 retail release, SSDs may have come down in price by then.

twin 24" LCDs or one 24" and a smaller for the menus? Is 24" the size to get?

It’s tidier to have two monitors of the same size and, particularly, resolution.

Does your price range extend to HP DreamColor monitors?

Which dual monitor graphics card is best with PS ? Is there a limit to max memory that PS can use. I have had bad ATI experiences – is there a better brand?

The choice is pretty much between ATI and nVidia. You may want to get one which is designed to be quieter. If you are going for a DreamColor monitor, you’ll be wanting to make sure the card outputs a Deep Color signal, either through HDMI 1.3a or Display Port.

Have found no info by Adobe. Anything to look out for?

Well, the minimum specs are at
http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop/photoshop/systemr eqs/

….but I think you’re going to exceed those by a long way.

Are you going to be assembing the computer yourself or getting someone else to do it? You might want to ask for advice somewhere like the forums at www.tomshardware.com – just remember to mention it’s for PS rather than an overclocked gaming machine.

Andrew
AB
Alan Browne
Sep 5, 2009
wrote:
I skipped Vista and want to spend my money on a new ‘dream system’ with Win 7, dual monitors and whatever else may be good for the latest PS. (Any word on CS5 yet?)
Money is not a real problem except I of course want to spend wisely. What is suggested? Did some Googling with no real results.
32bit or 64bit OS – so far I’m using CS3?

When you use the word "wisely" then the thing to do is get a Mac. (Since you skipped Vista, you are already wise).

The iMac’s make very good dual monitor systems and part of the price is the very high quality monitor built in. For photography/photoshop use, monitor quality is most essential. iMac’s from 8.1 up are 64 bit OS compatible (Snow Leopard). I would get assurance that the graphics (GPU) is also OpenCL (for the future where we hope Adobe use OpenCL to get max processing performance, say in CS5). My camera shoots 24.6 Mpix raws, so doing panos or rotates can be long. Scanned medium format can be painful, even just to load, never mind rotating a bit.

Adobe will happily transfer your CS3 license from Windohs to Mac OS X.

For heavy lifting (if you do a lot of heavy editing of a lot of images), then a higher end desktop machine with at least one Apple monitor (or similar high end monitor) and one "ordinary" monitor for the 2nd display (unless it is essential to you that both be identical).

Finally, on your new Mac, download VMWare Fusion and under it, install your WinXP license, and you will have recourse to your legacy software. You can run both Mac OS X and WinXP in parallel on the one machine and this includes transferring files from each to the other (drag and drop). Avoid Bootcamp. (A competing product is Parallels but it is considered to be not as good as VMWare Fusion).

Don’t worry about adapting to the Mac OS X environment. You will be up and running in minutes from opening the box. A few things are different, and it is useful to learn the keyboard shortcuts (over time).

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