Personally, I’d opt for the desktop for two reasons: 1) While you can use an external monitor with the laptop, I’m not sure that you’re thinking of doing so and that might be a major oversight since most laptop LCDs aren’t easily color-calibrated. 2) Hard drive expandability – although some laptops will support 2 hard drives, many will not and yet a PC with multiple hard drives will greatly benefit PS performance by virtue of having your scratch disk on a separate drive from your busy system drive. 2GB of RAM is certainly sufficient but a video card with 256MB RAM is overkill for PS. 128MB of video RAM is more than enough and you might be better off spending that $40 toward a 2nd hard drive. If in buying a desktop system you also needed to buy a monitor, then your cost will go up probably beyond the $700 you’ve budgeted. If you’re willing to invest into a D2X, then I really think you should target your PC toward something more suitable than what a laptop can offer, but that’s just my 2 cents worth.
Regards,
Daryl
2. How important is at 256 meg separate video card? ($40…salesman said
it would play a big difference with PS).
Haven’t you learned that anything said by a salesman is usually inverse to the truth?
In fact, an odd video card is another possible source for problems with PS. It will not help the program. These cards are designed for animation of images, like in video games, or true video. PS, while a major application, does not do all that much fancy stuff in screen display.
Don
Go with a Maxtrox G450/or G550 video card…Stable as a table, good driver support and dead on graphics!
To get a good laptop you are probably going to have to spend about $1,000.00 minimum.
I don’t know about how you feel about DIY upgrading but you could replace your motherboard, processor and RAM in the desktop fairly inexpensively if you have a large enough power supply and good cooling in your case…A great place to start is Maximum PC’s site as they will walk you through the plumbing and www.newegg.com for the gear (stay away from OEM stuff if you are a newbie…go for full retail, all of the instructions and drivers, etc are usually bundled with the hardware, not so with the OEM stuff.)
We upgraded my desktop to a new motherboard, P4 chip, 2 gigs of RAM, added a Plextor DVD burner, additional fans and a new case for under
$800.00…we kept some of the old equipment (sound card, video card, cd burner,) and we removed the floppy drive and replaced it with a 6 card reader and front usb ports and a firewire port.
My husband made me install all of the gear myself while he stood over me…(divorce papers were contemplated) but I did do it and I am not the most technically inclined person in the world…
All 3?
Life is sweet but far, far too short?
How much does it cost to prevaricate?
Thank you all for your answers 🙂
Darryl, good to hear from you! I forgot to mention I am indeed using a new 22 inch LaCie that I got partly for Christmas. Love it! It’s easy enough to use the extra cable to hook it up to the laptop and that’s what I’m doing. But, it’s a pain to hook up the Wacom, the keyboard and mouse and finally the printer too. Oh well, it’s worked so far.
Still, it seems that a new desktop might indeed be the way to go. No monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers are needed. I think I’m too "chicken" to try replacing the motherboard, etc. I can put in Ram and an extra hard drive, but the whole thing. Hmmm… It was good to hear the extra hard drive is somewhat important too. I hadn’t read much about that anymore. I have it in my old desktop, but was beginning to think most people don’t do that.
I kind of thought that, too, on the video card. Still, he’s upgrading from a 64 meg, non-separate video to 256 NVideo separate card for $40. So, I’m still not sure what’s the better way to go. Darryl, you seem to think it’s important to get at least 128 and have it separate… ?
Thanks again for all your help. I really think I’m gonna order that D2X tomorrow. Geez!!! 🙂 I’m still on the trial CS2, so I’ll have to upgrade that too. Guess it never ends. But then…it’s soooo much fun!
BTW, I had to look up prevaricate. Me thinks it costs lots to prevaricate 🙂
MF
MF,
Sorry, but I didn’t mean to imply a 128MB video card is needed, but they are pretty common these days in rather inexpensive models. For Photoshop and 2D use only, even 64MB should be more than enough to drive a 1600×1200 screen at 24- or 32-bit depth, if I remember correctly. If you ever choose to run dual monitors, 64MB of video memory would be probably be useful there. Also keep in mind that if you buy a new desktop PC, the graphics bus may be the new PCIe interface and that could also govern your choice of cards. The new Matrox P650 card is a 64MB dual-head card but is pricey at $250 or so. However, the older 450 and 550 models for the AGP interface are probably around $150 or less. The drawback to integrated video, as far as I know, is that it usually uses part of your system RAM and may also add some processing load to the CPU, thus meaning overall lower system performance. When I bought a Compaq (never thought I would) PC for a media center, but which is now my primary system, I didn’t think twice about it having integrated video and immediately upgraded it with an nVidia GeForce FX5700 card with 256MB RAM…more than I need, but the card was under $100 as I recall and easily meets my needs. Should I decide to play a game or two, that’s covered as well.
Just FYI, a year ago, the Compaq PC I bought was $650 with an Athlon 3000, 512MB PC3200 DDRAM, 150GB SATA hard drive, integrated video and sound, and 8-in-1 media reader. Using my old Iiyama monitor with it, the upgrades for it included another 512MB DDRAM, Creative Audigy LS sound card, FX5700 video card, 2nd 150GB hard drive, bluetooth mouse/keyboard combo, and 120GB external USB/1394 hard drive, bringing the system total up to about $1400. I didn’t buy the system originally with the intent to upgrade it as I did (we never do, right?), but it serves me pretty well and cannot be stuffed with anything more inside due to a limited number of slots and drive bays. For the price, I could’ve built a better, faster system myself but I’m still pretty pleased with it. Only the case says Compaq…inside, unlike the old days of "Compaq OEM", it is all name brand stuff, which I found reassuring to learn. For the same price today, you could buy an off-the-shelf system that is considerably better than this one but I do think finding a "Photoshop-ready" PC for $700 is a tall order. At least two fast, large hard drives, 1GB RAM, a 3+ GHz CPU, and a 64MB video card would be my personal minimum requirements. Barebones you might find that for under $700, but other trimmings will bring the price up closer to $1000 and probably more by the time you’ve configured a "nice little system" worthy of Photoshop use. My own dream system still tends to push the $3000 mark, and that’s why I’m still using this Compaq. 🙂 Meanwhile, the Nikkor VR70-200 lens and 1.7X teleconverter kinda’ took over where the PC left off. Ha! Love the lens though, even if it humbles my "mere" D70.
Ditto…I didn’t know what "prevaricate" meant either. I learned at least 1 thing today.
Daryl
I saved a fortune by prevaricating 🙂
The system I bought recently would have cost twice as much if I bought it when I wanted to buy it (originally) I mean.
I don’t know if this will influence your decision but
<rumor territory>
mobo’s supporting 939 pin AMD chips are rumored to support dual/multi core chips when they becom available
Apparently an alternative source of dual/multi core processors will need a new mobo too (cost! unless the mobo is free with the chip 😕
</rumor territory>
The AMD website confirms that all of the AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs use Socket 939, and the configuration page lists the motherboards recommended for these CPUs, all or most of which are MBs that were already available for Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPUs.
MF: I use a Matrox G550 video card with 32Mbs of RAM onboard, that is more than enough to run Photoshop.
ID – it must be grand having a single purpose ‘puter.
My laptop has PSCS (well, whole CS bundle on it) and it has done a stirling job.
But it also has to play DVDs when keeping the family happy out in the hills wher high quality DVD playback does not usually exist, then it needs to bluetooth to pocket PC for GPS mapping and trek planning and maybe allows for the odd bit of word processing plus internet with graphics.
It has been a wonderful investment and worth every cent of its depreciation 🙁
