What components should I insist on in a new system so Photoshop CS2 and future versions of Photoshop will run fast and smoothly? Feel free to specify brands, such as Seagate, ATA Radeon 700X etc. And feel free to direct me to a source. This will be a desktop system. I do not currently work with video, animation, 3D or high power gaming.
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Chris: Are you really serious? Or is this just a Mac user throwing another barb (grin). 8 gigs sounds a bit high, etc. I’d like to hear if you mean it, and what others think.
Of course, with 8G of RAM, a little more than half of it is going to do nothing but collect dust until you upgrade to a 64bit OS and 64bit PS. OK, it might help keep your toes warmer… π
Seriously, I agonized over the Opteron/Athlon thing for precisely this reason. While the Athlon X2 is a capable processor, it is going to be seen as a little anemic on 64bit rollout day because of its RAM limitations. I ended up going with the Athlon because of budget constraints. Here is the Opteron system I *almost* bought (sans drives and video card):
Subtotal for 80233 with your selected options: $1,597.90
Note that this config uses only one processor (dual core) and 2G of RAM. More of each can be added later. The mobo has only 6 DIMM slots, but according to Asus, each slot will accommodate a 4G stick for a theoretical maximum of 24G of RAM. A 4G DIMM runs about $1000, give or take, so if you want to fill this baby up you’ll pay through the nose to do it. A better approach might be a more conventional board with 8 DIMM slots, allowing you to reach 8 or 16G of RAM more economically.
Thanks very much folks: we’re beginning to get somewhere. Let me say that I’m a doctor and photographer, and not a computer specialist, so we’re talking about things of which I know the words, but not what they exactly mean. And I’m not exactly a power user: I can see myself with Word, Outlook, Excel, CS2,3,or 4, and Bridge open–not doing animation, 3D or video. So…I may well not need the "sky" here, but certainly do need/want a very! good system. Having said that, I wonder if you’d mind answering the following: 1. Am I better off with XP pro than home? 2. what about dual core and/or dual processors: what would be the most reasonable under the circumstances? 3. Can someone say something about the proposed 64 bit future. 4. Will I currently feel the differences between 2 and 4 Gig Ram, or is it more reasonable to just provide the capability? 5. Maybe I should just spend a couple of semesters at computer school?
Pro has a "3GB Switch" which will allow the apps to address more than the 2GB limit.
3. Can someone say something about the proposed 64 bit future.
I opted for the Athlon 64 processor (3200+) and will upgrade my OS to XP64 as soon as all the drivers are available. Even though PS is a 32 bit app, it apparently will run faster on a 64 bit system, and will be able to access up to 4GB of RAM.
4. Will I currently feel the differences between 2 and 4 Gig Ram,
See 1.& 3.
5. Maybe I should just spend a couple of semesters at computer school?
I’m running a system with an Athlon 3000 CPU, 1GB PC2700 DDRAM, GeForce FX 5700 video card (dual head, 256MB RAM), an Audigy LS sound card, and a pair of 160GB Western Digital hard drives. I also have an external Western Digital 120GB 1394/USB2 hard drive. This system was initially around $600, a Compaq Presario SR1130NX. I never thought I’d buy a Compaq PC, much less an off-the-shelf system, but my desires at the time were simply to use this as a media center for music storage. When an older PC used for Photoshop died on me, I made a few upgrades to the Compaq, moving from integrated audio/video to dedicated cards, adding the 2nd hard drive, and upping the RAM from 512MB to 1GB.
This is obviously not a high-end system, yet I’ve found it serves me pretty well for editing of images in the 30-70MB file size range. Doing a large number of such images, I’d truly appreciate something faster, but this is pretty good for occasional work.
Why all this? The main thing you should consider before spending a lot of money on a new PC is what you really anticipate to be the type of tasks you’d be doing, the size of files, etc. If you have any grasp on that, then others here may be able to offer more reasonable suggestions more suited to your needs. The suggestions offered already are good ones, but I’m sure you’d have far less need for example, for 4GB of RAM than for dual monitors, or perhaps even an extra hard drive.
Thank you Daryl: I think I said (above) what I’d be doing, so I’ll just add that the files can get considerably larger than you mention. Now that Canon has come out with a full size sensor on a not-too-large 5D camera (no, I’m not planning on jumping there at this time), I think we will see larger and larger files, when layered, and if kept in 16 bits (which I don’t do at the moment for obvious reasons). So the heavy tasks will be CS2,3,4,5, with a few other apps like Word, Excel, Outlook open.
Dual monitors would indeed be great, but I don’t have the space: perhaps one which can be "segmented." And re an extra hard drive, I don’t know whether you mean more than two internal drives: what with the scratch disk situation, two drives at least seems to be a given.
I use a Dell Precision Workstation 370 3.8 GHx Intell processor 2 GB RAM 2 250 GB fast Hard Drives 64 MB dual VGA graphics card 1 DVD and 1 DVD RW and 200 GB external HD for backup and archiving
I find this system very satisfactory for an advanced amateur photographer.
what is a "dual" graphics card? (For example, is the Radeon 700 X "dual" .
Are "SATA" drives particularly to be sought. And if you have two drives, is there any point in partitioning one, or does one simply use one for the scratch disk, and the other for Photoshop and the other computer functions? Is it OK to put images, including those being worked on, on the HD with the scratch disk, as long as the Photoshop/Bridge apps are running on the other drive?
Dual graphics cards are nice if you anticipate ever wanting to run two monitors.
SATA drives are about the fastest moderately priced drives and run at a higher transfer rate than the regular IDE drive.
I am sure the experts here will disagree, but it does seem to speed things up having the scratch disk on another drive. Other than that, I use the drives as I see fit and have seen no degradation of performance.
I am really more a photographer than a computer expert, so, as long as my system accomplishes what I ask of it without a boring wait, I am content.
Beware of running two monitors. Once you do so you will NEVER be able to go back to just a single monitor. My preference is two 19Β versions but one 19Β and a second 17Β also works very well for me. If I didnΒt have room for the second one something would have to go to make room for it. Even if it was a wall!
Seagates have some of the best ratings there are. Often, too, you’ll see other names on hard drives, but with a little digging you discover that they’re made by one of the major manufacturers. A good example of this would be Audio- and Video-specific HD’s marketed under the Glyph name. They’re just good Seagates, with extra sound insulation.
Dual graphics card(s) = confusion. Many newer cards are dual head cards, which means they can support two monitors. Some configurations utilize TWO graphics cards working in tandem. Lately, this has become a popular way to achieve maximum performance in gaming rigs.
* Most* SATA drives are not appreciably faster than their PATA counterparts (there are exceptions), but that will eventually change in a big way. Since it’s the where things are headed, if you’re buying a new drive (and your mobo supports it) you may as well go SATA.
My particular HD setup will be as follows (if Monarch ever ships my d@#! computer):
Atlas IV 36G SCSI: system disk (OS and apps). One partition. Western Digital 400G SATA WD4000KD: Storage. One partition. Seagate 160G SATA 7000.9: PS Scratch, backup. Two partitions.
Thanks guys: all of this is very helpful. I would say, though, that with all this attention to the mongo computer system, I’d be very ashamed to use Adobe Gamma (see above), rather than real colorimetric monitor profiling. :).
SATA drives are about the fastest moderately priced drives and run at a higher transfer rate than the regular IDE drive.
And a pair of SATA drives in a striped RAID array is almost exactly twice as fast as a single drive. I use this setup for all graphic and music files, scratch disk, paging file, and the internet cache, and nothing else.
Operating system (Windows XP) is on a small drive by itself, except for those programs that insist on installing themselves on the boot drive. Adobe Bridge seems to be one of these.
All other programs are installed on still another drive.
This works well for me, and is based on the idea that hard drives are the slowest element of computer systems these days, so the less work each has to do, and the fewer access conflicts, the better.
Now,.. why am I not surprised that a major Adobe representative on this Forum is revealed to be a ‘Mac Zealot’ – " ie: Macs are soooo great despite all the evidence to the contrary. Pleeeeeze do not challenge my God – ‘Steve Jobs’." Folks, gag me with a spoon!! Get a grip – get a life – ‘see the writing on the wall’ and pleeeze move on…
How can Windows users (ahem – 93.5% of computer users at last count) ever hope to seriously get Adobe to pay attention to our needs (and associated profits for Adobe) is they allow this kind rubbish go by without an appropriate ‘smack down’.
Chris, you appear to be in the wrong forum and obviously on the wrong page. Go back to the Mac forum and ask Adobe to please send us an ‘Adobe WINDOWS forum’ rep who respects **our** choice. You obviously do not like Windows based computers so why are you here? Why bother?
Adobe share holders: please tell Adobe that they should respect ‘the hand that feed them’.
Russell
PS: I’m beginning to hope a more sensible company comes along soon to kick Adobe’s butt if this is their attitude that reins behind the scenes!! (quickly losing respect for Adobe…)
Chris’ post was something that one would expect from a Troll on a newsgroup. It was crafted to be inflammatory and it succeeded.
I assume many Adobe Photoshop Windows visitors are justifiably disappointed that an Adobe forum participant (rep?) would respond to "Best computer for Photoshop?" with "Buy a Mac".. I suspect Chris forgot ‘his meds’.
Imagine if Chris posted "buy a PC" on the Mac forum. Would the reaction be any different?
<Dan Aykroyd>Russell, you ignorant slut<Dan Aykroyd> (;) I hope you’ve seen old Saturday Night Live "Point:Counterpoint" sketches ;))
If you’d paid any attention beyond Chris’s first reply, you’d see that he also answered with a Windows system that he’d considerΒIf he HAD to make that choice, I’d suppose.
I would think that if ANYONE might have a platform opinion that carried some weight, it’d be Chris.
Besides, he’s not a robot, he’s human just like the rest of us, and he’s entitled to his opinion. Doesn’t mean you have to agree with him. Looks to me like you saw one thing that got under your skin, conveniently igrnored every other post in the thread and went straight into your rant.
Besides, while Windows users may own the numbers, somehow I think Maccers carry far more gravitas.
Kdoc asked: "What components should I insist on in a new system so Photoshop CS2 and future versions of Photoshop will run fast and smoothly?"
My 2 cents:
You do not need a top of the line computer (or a Mac) to be able to run Adobe Photoshop well. That includes version CS2. Now if you’re going to edit some HD video or render some big 3D scenes then you might need to pony up some serious cash.
A system with at least 1GB of RAM and a decent, dedicated graphics card (not a chip integrated into a motherboard) should do an adequately good job. 2GB of RAM would be even better. I’m running PSD CS2 on a Dell notebook with 1GB of RAM and a 128MB ATI X300 graphics card. It’s nowhere near the most powerful configuration you buy, but CS2 runs fine on it.
It’s not necessary to buy a top of the line CPU. It’s better to drop a couple of steps on CPU speed and spend the difference on RAM.
Photoshop will take advantage of dual processors, but you don’t need to spend the extra money unless you’re going to be editing some really large files.
You can also get by with one physical hard drive. But Photoshop will run faster if you can run its scratch volume on a separate physical hard disc.
I’m running CS2 on a dinosaur — 733MHz PIII system with 768MB RAM. It works well. Given the host system, there are understandable delays at specific times — opening the program, opening big files, saving big (especially multi-layered) files, caching files in Bridge, and completing some filter renders. But aside from those issues, which I accept, CS2 is dynamite fast.
If someone asks you what your ideal Photoshop machine would be there is no obligation to say anything other than what you personally fancy (or have if you are lucky!).
However it’s a good thing that some people have pointed out that you don’t have to have that kind of exhorbitantly expensive equipment to get perfectly satisfactory performance from Photoshop.
ask Adobe to please send us an ‘Adobe WINDOWS forum’ rep<<
Adobe do not ‘send’ anyone here. Chris visits because he wants to, not because it is any part of his job spec. to do so, and it is largely in his own time.
"However it’s a good thing that some people have pointed out that you don’t have to have that kind of exhorbitantly expensive equipment to get perfectly satisfactory performance from Photoshop."
John, Very well said! I’ve been following this PC "arms race" with amusement. Just what would all this hardware do to the final image quality? Granted, your speed of throughput would increase but if you tended to turn out crap anyway you would just turn crap out faster. I hear similar arguments all the time from "photographers" who say that "I could take pictures like that if I had a more expensive camera" , spheroids, they don’t like to be told, or understand, that it is the eye that takes the picture, not the latest piece of compensation equipment hanging around their neck.
I also think that the danger of building multi thousand dollar machines to run an application is that one day, that will be the only type of machine the application will run on.
Now,.. why am I not surprised that a major Adobe representative on this Forum is revealed to be a ‘Mac Zealot’ – " ie: Macs are soooo great despite all the evidence to the contrary. Pleeeeeze do not challenge my God – ‘Steve Jobs’." Folks, gag me with a spoon!! Get a grip – get a life – ‘see the writing on the wall’ and pleeeze move on…
Macs are great, but what will Chris think when Aperture takes over half of his business? The value of his stock options may decrease.
Russell, Chris is worth his considerable weight in gold to this forum and, even though I poke, prod and argue with him, I’d hate to see him abandon us for the Mac side.
"Macs are great, but what will Chris think when Aperture takes over half of his business? The value of his stock options may decrease."
Anyone who ditches Photoshop in favor of Apple’s Aperture is a complete idiot. Cheerleading Apple’s Aperture as some kind of Photoshop killer is also pretty silly.
Aperture IS NOT a replacement for Photoshop. It lacks many of the core features found within Photoshop.
Aperture doesn’t even appear to have as many features as Fireworks or ImageReady. Even the support Aperture has for the Photoshop file format is extremely lacking. It will only open Photoshop files that have been flattened and have no alpha channels. I haven’t been able to find out, but Aperture probably won’t support any embedded vector paths, clipping paths or shape layers either.
Aperture will be a handy tool (yet high priced at $499) for photographers who need to batch process RAW files and catalog photos. Adobe already has a good number of Aperture features built into Bridge and probably could equal any of the differences with a .1 or .5 version update.
Apple also should be careful just how far it wants to wade into Adobe’s market territory.
Most people didn’t really care all that much when Adobe stopped developing Premiere for the Mac platform. Apple’s Motion is taking a bigger chance. More Mac users would be seriously hurt if Adobe decided to make After Effects a Windows only thing. If Adobe ever decided to stop developing Photoshop for the Mac platform it would be a brutal hit against the Mac platform. Most of Adobe’s sales on Photoshop have been coming from the Windows platform for years. If updates to Aperture make that balance even worse Photoshop will indeed become a PC only thing -and probably drag a good number of Mac users over to the evil Windows side as a result.
I know a good number of people who have switched back and forth between PC and Mac platforms. I don’t anyone who has completely stopped using Photoshop in favor of another image editor. I would argue many users are likely more faithful to the Photoshop software line than they are to any computing platform.
From time to time, Apple needs to be reminded that its own company and "religion" is not what made the Mac great. The software unique to that platform is what made it great. The first versions of Aldus Pagemaker, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Quark Xpress were Mac only things. If you wanted to do professional graphics work you had to buy a Mac to get access to those killer apps. A lot of people (typically the younger ones) are often surprised to find out the first version of Microsoft Office was a Mac only thing. MS Office actually gave the Mac its lease on life during its first couple years of existence.
The value of OS religion is laughably overstated. I really care nothing about operating systems, only that they not get in my way. The actual software applications, like Adobe Photoshop, is what defines the greatness or lack of greatness for any computing platform.
I’m a loyal Photoshop user. Not a loyal Mac or PC user.
Platform wars aside (I find Photoshop works the same on PC or MAC) you’ll need a reasonably fast processor, and as much RAM as you can afford.
I currently use an Athlon 64 3800+ with 2 GB of memory. The most important thing is that the system drive is seperate from where the photos are stored. System drive is an ATA 80 GB drive, but photos are kept on two Maxtor SATA 120 GB drives set up as a "mirrored" drive. That means the system sees the two disks, which have identical data, as one drive.
Should one drive fail, the array can be rebuilt from the remaining drive. I think redundancy and backup are a lot more important than pure horespower. My system drive is backed up to an external drive every night at 1:00 AM augomatically. And putting the scratch disk on a drive that Photoshop does not live on will speed things up a bit.
So get the best system you can afford, but pay attention to the drives, if you can get something with RAID you’re way ahead of the game!!
I for one am happy Chris showed up with his recommendations. I assume what he recommends for PC is close to what he runs as his test box, something I have wanted to see for quite some time.
One of the things I noticed about Aperture is it comes with two computer specs: One minimum, and one optimum. I would encourage Adobe to do the same.
Of course, Apple has a serious advantage here. All it’s recommendations are from one manufacturer: Apple. PC’s come in a huge range of options, suppliers, quality levels etc, which is a mine field for the uninitiated.
So, thanks Chris! π
So far as practical systems, if you are running large files, fast MOBOs and RAM is of marginal value. A system is only as fast as it’s slowest component, which is still the HD in todays average box. The 8G Ram capability is wonderful IF it can actually be used by the software, which is still limited to 4G max. 2G for the OS, 2G for the program. Then, with PS, you have the reassignment of memory space if you set PS at 1G or greater, robbing you of the advantage assumed available with the larger memory installation.
Right? Correct me if I’m wrong (for the PC only!).
And BTW – the system I described is pretty much the Windows system I am buying for myself. But I tend to push the hardware a bit hard, and can use those extra CPUs and RAM. (my test boxes span the gamut of "old and slow" to "latest and greatest")
Without knowing exactly what the user works with all the time, it’s difficult to recommend anything other than the highest end system available (OK, leaving out the 8 way opteron rack mount monsters). If I know that someone is just editing 2 MP JPEG images for their web pages – then I’d recommend one thing (probably an off-the-shelf system with 2 Gig of RAM). And if they’re doing movie special effects in AE and Photoshop for 4k frames – I’d recommend something completely different (which would include one huge RAID array and the latest workstation graphics card).
Even if Photoshop can’t address more than 4 Gig, CS2 does let the OS use the remaining RAM for disk caching – which provides a very measureable speedup. And other applications can use that RAM rather than displacing Photoshop and forcing paging to the OS swapfile.
I’m going to be very interested in seeing how PS CS2 and Premiere run on a Dell 9300 laptop I ordered today. I went with as strong a system as I could configure in spite of knowing that editing photos on a laptop won’t be the most effective way of doing that task. Still, I like the idea of knowing that when I go mobile, I’ve got the power to run PS well, and hopefully do some video capture without dropping frames. For the latter, 2 hard drives would be nice but weren’t an option unless I went with another vendor and a power-hungry, hot, expensive beast. Perhaps a USB2 external hard drive will help, as I’ve got one, but I’m hopeful that a fast CPU and single 7200rpm drive will also be up to the task. The overall value on this Dell was just unbeatable by other systems I looked at, although HP came close, with the ZD8000, whose design and appearance I favored. With a 2.13GHz Pentium M, 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm hard drive, WUXGA panel, and 4-yr. warranty w/accidental damage coverage, and the docking cradle, the system came in at $3150 roughly. I’ll be interested to see how it compares in performance to my desktop Athlon 3000 system with multiple drives. Another week or two, I should have an answer to that.
It sounds like you ordered a pretty darned good notebook setup. I tricked out my Inspiron 6000 with a lot of options, but your setup makes me envious.
The 7200rpm hard drive is a critical component. That one item alone is what made the decision for me to buy a Dell. None of the other vendors out there were offering notebooks with 7200rpm hard discs.
You should be able to capture standard MiniDV video streams just fine with that notebook configuration. Just make sure you don’t have a bunch of other things running in the background when you’re doing a movie capture. However, I would recommend a fast external hard disc to use for movie capture. I’m not sure what difference XP Home versus XP Pro would make in the capture department, but I still vastly prefer XP Pro over Home for a variety of other reasons.
The high resolution display will also be nice. I’m running 1680 X 1050 (WUXGA is a little much for a 15.4" display so I dropped down a notch). That’s another factor that sold me on Dell’s notebooks. Everyone else was selling this stupid 1280 X 768 nonsense.
About the only thing Dell’s notebooks are lacking is an external PCI Express connection. That would have been a forward looking feature for faster external disc and device chains. We’ll just have to live with our USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and Card Bus slots.
Are you aware of www.gotapex.com and www.dealcatcher.com? There’s usually some Dell coupons there that can save you some pretty nice dollars especially on high end systems.
Check it out…you can always cancel the order and put it through again.
Yes, thanks for the tips but I think I did about as well as I could at this point in time. What got me started was an Employee Purchase Plan bonus discount of 15%, but it expired before I convinced myself that I was comfortable with the build quality. HP might not be any better and might be worse, but "looked" better. That white plastic on the Dell didn’t look good, but in the end I’m not sure any laptops are build quite as solidly these days, in the interest of saving weight. In any case, after nearly deciding to just hold off, I found a reference through notebookreview.com to a 20% Dell discount…topping what even our EPP offered. Going to a mall kiosk and talking the guys there, they threw in a discount on memory and maybe some other smallish ones and an extra 2% Dell credit plan signing bonus, the plan being 6 months/no interest. Even reluctant to spend so much for the warranty/accident coverage, I decided it was worth it given how a locally purchased system with less performance and warranty was still going to cost more. Overall, this was around a $1000 saving over full price. With 4 years of accident coverage…very cool! I think I’d favor a 1600×1050 screen to the higher-res 1920×1200, but it looks like going with Extra Large appearance settings will provide icon and text sizes I’m comfortable with, yet more room to play.
One thing I’m puzzled by and didn’t research, was my going with Windows XP MCE. Severall sales reps told me it was built upon XP Pro, while I thought XP Home. I see the price of XP Pro is another $120 on this system, leading me to think I was right in the first place. But, I think the MCE features might be nice to have for entertainment while travelling. If I ever decide to go Pro, I’ve got a full license I can use from the laptop this will replace, and it can be reverted to Win2K.
WinXP MCE comparison to Pro shows better security features, power management control, and networking features…I think I may change my order to go with Pro, although it is tempting still to keep MCE if only for the entertainment perks. Anyone here give WinXP MCE a thumbs up?
Can you say what features of MCE you would need for "entertainment while travelling" that aren’t available with Pro? I wouldn’t like to forfeit the networking and security features.
I’m not even all that sure myself, since I’m not entirely familiar with MCE. But, if watching a DVD or playing music, the remote control feature might have been nice. Basically, thinking this was XP Pro "Plus" and finding it is more "Minus", I favor the real deal and can easily forego such features given the added security, networking support, and power management of XP Pro.
XP Pro features better support of multiple processors (not really an issue for most notebooks).
A critical aspect of XP Pro is a number of professional level software titles require it. For example, Alias|Wavefront Maya requires WinXP Pro or Win2000 Pro. It will not run on XP Home. The same applies on the free personal learning edition.
Deebs, I agree that I favor a retail license to an OEM, the latter often lacking certain files for a "from scratch" setup, although I don’t know how true that is for WinXP. I know that happened a lot with Win98. But, I’ve got that full version if ever needed. Heck, they could’ve nearly sent me a bare laptop, no software at all, but it’s good to know all is well and working when it is shipped out.
Bobby, thanks…I somewhat wondered if XP Pro might be required by some software. Not likely to be true for my needs, but never say never.
Have either of you tried to calibrate your Dell laptop LCD? I know it would likely require a colorimeter but I’m wondering if there are even adequate adjustments to faciliate using a colorimeter. I’m not familiar with how such profiling packages work…whether reading a screen "as is" and creating a profile based upon sensor measurements or if they still require the user to set brightness/contrast to certain levels first. Going via the graphics chipset driver, more adjustments can be made, but I’ve rarely seen them provide pleasing results and I think I may even recall Chris Cox saying that the adjustments made by the driver software should be left alone. I can’t afford a profiler just yet, but would like to use one to set up my laptop, desktop LCD, and CRT if possible. My main interest would be in the laptop however, knowing that when I’m using it on the road, I can expect my color edits to be in line with what my CRT would offer.
I may be mistaken but I think, in general, it is unwise to expect a laptop to perform to the same standard as a dedicated image processing workstation with hardware/software calibration.
Some of the limitations (most of them?) are hardware related.
Maybe it’s a bit like "drafting" an image?
Perhaps drafting on a laptop really means final proofs on a pro-spec piece of kit?
As many will tell you, correctly set up laptops can produce perfectly acceptable final output; not proofs. (Within the constraints on file size and speed set by the hardware specification.)
Well, anytime I’ve done edits on a laptop, I largely just kept them to compositional and corrective edits that weren’t likely to affect the color accuracy, then saved the rest for later. I don’t expect a laptop to offer much flexibility in providing good color control, but it would be nice to know that if I wanted to make a print while visiting friends, I could do so and expect reasonably good results. I think that falls in line with John’s comment…I can probably get acceptable output but maybe not what I’d consider ideal.
I don’t use the laptop for production work, so no…I haven’t tried. But just 5 minutes ago I calibrated the new 24" widescreen LCD with the Eye-One Display.
You can calibrate a LCD-based display only so well. The big limitations I find are even display of light grayscale and earthtone values.
If I’m working on something critical I’ll attach a CRT monitor to my laptop’s external monitor output. I also check graphics for NTSC video display by using the Firewire output preview (via an attached MiniDV camera that’s hooked up to a large 32" TV monitor).
The proof (pardon the pun) of the pudding is in the eating.
In the interim period, before I bought my current machine, I was using a laptop with Photoshop CS and FreeHand MX. Admittedly not for work for National Geographic and Vogue, but for output for professionally printed brochures, posters and ads in national magazines.
Greatr Forum response guys: thanks very much. This has been a terrific thread for me. Let me ask a couple of follow-ups:
1. I’m still not clear on whether I should take up Dell’s generic offering of Windows MCE or go with Pro for the additioal $120. My thought is to go with the MCE and consider Vista 6 months or so after it comes out.
2. Re Video Cards: It gets tricky knowing how to choose one of the options. If you’ve got 256 MB memory in it, what other criteria are important, if any, if the main use is CS2 and not gaming?
3. I remain confused about 2 vs. 3 or 4 Gig RAM: This was one of the posts: "Even if Photoshop can’t address more than 4 Gig, CS2 does let the OS use the remaining RAM for disk caching – which provides a very measureable speedup. And other applications can use that RAM rather than displacing Photoshop and forcing paging to the OS swapfile. " Would someone decode this for this dweeb physician. How does it translate into choosing the Gig size. Is 2 now and possibly 2 more later enough?
RE/ point 3: Since Chris wrote it, I think *he* should decode it. Having said that…
my understanding is that CS2 under XP Pro can use 2-3G of RAM; 2 (well, almost 2) under normal circumstances, and 3 (again almost) if you have 4G installed AND you utilize the 3G switch AND it works. That leaves the remainder for the OS and other apps, which in my mind doesn’t leave a lot of room for caching. The rules change under a 64bit OS, but I have no experience with that. Microsoft’s 64bit XP is just *way* too new and still falls into the Voodoo category as far as I’m concerned. Since I’m no longer around Macs, I can’t add anything on that score.
If I were you, I’d get a dual Opteron board, plug one dual core Opteron into it, load in 2-4G of RAM and be satisfied in knowing that I had an elite machine by today’s standards that could easily be upgraded to handle most anything tomorrow brings.
Oh, about video cards. I’ve yet to be disappointed in Matrox for imaging work.
RE/ point 3: Since Chris wrote it, I think *he* should decode it. Having said that…
my understanding is that CS2 under XP Pro can use 2-3G of RAM; 2 (well, almost 2) under normal circumstances, and 3 (again almost) if you have 4G installed AND you utilize the 3G switch AND it works. That leaves the remainder for the OS and other apps, which in my mind doesn’t leave a lot of room for caching. The rules change under a 64bit OS, but I have no experience with that. Microsoft’s 64bit XP is just *way* too new and still falls into the Voodoo category as far as I’m concerned. Since I’m no longer around Macs, I can’t add anything on that score.
If I were you, I’d get a dual Opteron board, plug one dual core Opteron into it, load in 2-4G of RAM and be satisfied in knowing that I had an elite machine by today’s standards that could easily be upgraded to handle most anything tomorrow brings.
Oh, about video cards. I’ve yet to be disappointed in Matrox for imaging work.
That sounds very fishy. I can understand that CS2 would be able to use 3 GB of memory if you got XP Pro to properly handle 3 GB of memory. After all CS2 is an application that runs on top of the OS. Of course, you probably don’t want to set CS2 to use 100% of memory. So, there should be room for the OS and other apps.
You, and others, seem to be implying that CS2 will use memory outside of that 3 GB that is controlled by the OS. Is CS2 bypassing XP Pro’s memory management completely and using memory outside of the range controlled by the OS? If so, that sounds very risky. That sounds like it is asking for all kinds of trouble.
That brings up way too many memories of adjusting expanded and extended memory in DOS. That was a pain and caused lots of trouble.
I have 2 GB of memory in my computer and have very rarely been able to fill it up with CS2. I marvel at people who think they have to have 3, 4, or more GB of memory. I also wonder what they are doing to gobble up so much RAM. I guess with a few layers in a large stitched panoramic I can start filling things up. My workflow is such that I don’t usually keep a ton of layers though. When I get it like I want it, I flatten.
Not necessarily. Some OEMs will slipstream some drivers and tie the install to the BIOS. Dell XP CDs don’t have to be activated as long as they’re used ot install on a Dell PC.
MS sells its own OEM that is not tied to a specific manufacturer. You can legitimately purchase them from a retailer if buy specific hardware (eg: motherboard/hard drive, not mouse/keyboard).
– I’m buying a Dell (because we have a substantial corporate discount) – The workstation will be connected to a Win2k domain and will run MS Office and a web-based CRM application. Client/server security and surveilance software need to run in the background. – It will primarily be used for Photoshop, Acrobat, and InDesign, as well as GoLive eventually. – The average Photoshop file is 100-150MB, but some files are as large as 300MB+.
A. Do I need two Xeon CPUs installed or one? What is the determining factor for choosing two instead of one? If I install two Xeons, do they need to be Dual-core? Do I need Xeon at all?
B. What exactly will 4GB RAM do for me that 2GB won’t–if Photoshop and Outlook are the only programs running? How much RAM is used by Photoshop during a given session? I understand it depends on file size, filters, plug-ins, etc., but what is the formula to use for figuring this?
C. We have a Dell Powervault DAS unit attached to one of the servers. Current utlization is (2)SCSI RAID-5 arrays of 3 disks each. One is 3-73GB 15k RPM disks, the other is 3-146GB 10k RPM disks. All images are stored on the network DAS unit. How much will this affect performance? The workstation will have (2)250GB 7200RPM SATA drives. If I put another array in the network unit dedicated to photoshop files, will this help? Or should the files be moved to the local drives, then moved back to the network when finished.
Bottom line: Our purchase is all about performance. This system will be used to preliminarily develop marketing material for the company. All work will then be sent to a marketing firm who will deal with quality issues. Speed is all that matters.
Straight answers appreciated. Generic Adobe answers ("our system requirements are on the website") frowned upon. π
I’d go for an AMD 939 spec based system probably with a dual core as has been proposed in earlier posting.
I’d also keep an ear/eye/radar out on MS Windows Vista and for that a reasonable gfx/video card seems to be ATI X800
Set up PS preferrably for a stabdalone machine with optional syncing between local folders and network folders in a way that does not create indigestion with PS.
Any linking between BIOS and OS by OEM should IMHO be ditched with preference to a full retail product
What components should I insist on in a new system so Photoshop CS2 and future versions of Photoshop will run fast and smoothly? Feel free to specify brands, such as Seagate, ATA Radeon 700X etc. And feel free to direct me to a source. This will be a desktop system. I do not currently work with video, animation, 3D or high power gaming.
deebs, I assumed you were responding to this post:
jdh9996 – 7:50am Nov 2, 05 PST (#74 of 81)
So let’s assume the following:
– I’m buying a Dell (because we have a substantial corporate discount)…
While your opinion is as valid as the next person’s (and I also prefer AMD), a guy who has to buy a Dell isn’t served by our preference for that "other" brand. π
Kdoc wrote: "I’m still not clear on whether I should take up Dell’s generic offering of Windows MCE or go with Pro for the additioal $120. My thought is to go with the MCE and consider Vista 6 months or so after it comes out."
I would strongly advise spending the extra money up front for XP Pro.
The Media Center Edition version is only going to be good for a desktop PC specificially set up with all the hardware and other stuff needed to kind of work like a home theater system in the living room.
Going XP Pro may future proof your computer to a better degree. Note how PhotoshopCS2 can run on Win2000 Professional -but not WinME (or Win98) which was also common at that time.
As far as upgrading to Vista goes, I wouldn’t do it unless it was absolutely necessary. I’m a firm believer in keeping only a certain level of operating system on a certain vintage of computer.
For example, if you had an old circa 1992 Intel 486 DX2 66MHz PC you would be best off keeping Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on it rather than trying to run something more recent like Win98 on the thing. It would run like a snail. A somewhat new machine that runs good with WinXP Pro 32-bit might run terribly slow when upgraded to Vista.
That’s an interesting point. Which brings me full circle to how I started this debate within myself, the question being…shall I limp along for a year (my system works fine, EXCEPT when running CS2 for about an hour…then slower, and sloooowwwer…then need to reboot (which is also Sloooww in shutting down)…….or buy one now. I had always thought that I’d rather buy Vista installed…then thought of this plan of getting XP now and upgrading. You’re making another suggestion….that I forget Vista altogether with this iteration of computer. Assuming Vista is a worthwhile addition (an assumption at this point), this puts me about 4 to 5 years from getting it…not too desireable in itself. Hmmmmmmm.???
Well that brings up the other approach to this problem: is it possible to "fix" to a significant degree this problem: We’re starting with a P4 1.8 GHz, one 40 Gig Slow HD, an NVidia Geoforce 3 Ti200 card. My diagnosis (remember I’m a doctor, and don’t know what I’m talking about much) is that the scratch disk fills up). And my proposed therapy is an additional (or replacement) bigger, faster drive (with or without a better video card). So my question is: what would work, and is any of this "patching up" worth the money, vs. a new system?
My suggestion? Buy a big, fast hard drive and add it to your present system. Use it either for your system drive or as an add-on for scratch disk space. If it doesn’t improve performance much, you’re only out a hundred or so bucks, and you can always use that drive in a newer system anyway.
With kdoc’s current computer, I doubt serial ATA is an option without also adding a SATA adapter; same with SCSI. IDE has been superseded by parallel ATA. Internal parallel ATA 7500RPM drives are cheap (newegg.com has a 250GB on sale for $93.26). External is also an option, especially if the doc’s computer doesn’t have any space available or he doesn’t want to crack the case open. The 250GB LaCie USB2 drive is on sale (ending today) for $119.99 after rebate.
I don’t mind opening the case. I thought external drives where frowned upon for the workings of Photoshop (ie, I’m not talking about storage.) I thought they don’t help much for a scratch drive or a working Photoshop drive. Isn’t this the case, and if so, it seems the Internal parallel or a SATA with SATA adapter sound cool as a test.
I’m running an older Emachines Celeron (2.5 MHz) with 1.5 GB ram, 40 GB and 200 GB internal drives and an external 200 GB for back up. The 200 GB internal is my scratch. The only real update was a video card to replace the onboard shared video. My OS is XP Home.
I’ve used CS for a 1.5 years on this box and just upgraded to CS2. I normally work with 1+ GB files and am intentionally impatient but am -very- satisfied with my set up. It takes a little tuning, but it’s not difficult.
If money *is* an issue – live for today:
The most important factor is the amount of MEMORY you can load.
Most of today’s "out of the box" machines are limited to 2 GB, but makers are now are coming out with boxes that support up to 4 GB. Look for that. Most of today’s processors (new ones come out hourly) are sufficient for most people using Photoshop.
If money *isn’t* an issue – plan for the future:
Spend as much as your wife will let you on the latest and greatest Intel or go for a full blown Mac (unless you already paid for Windows CS2).
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