You could do worse than get the best Dell workstation that your budget will run to. I got a Dell Workstation 670 with the best processors and max memory and drives I could afford.
Take a look at the basic spec of the 670 on their web site and go from there.
Marlene,
A budget amount would help us with suggestions.
Bob
Any computer is fine as long it has enough RAM. 2GB is a good enough for today and the future. You will also want a lot of storage so 500GB is a good choice as well. CPU speed helps, but for Photoshop.
If you have a big budget, make sure you get a nice LCD screen like an Eizo or an NEC SpectraView, and a Eye One Display 2 for a colorimeter. Pantone Huey or Colorvision’s Spider is a cheaper alternative.
There are a number of threads related to this, as well as a tech note or two. But the basics are as much RAM (I think 2G is minimal with XP Pro) and as fast a processor (multiple processors or multi-core) as possible. Two hard drives, so you can separate the Windows swap file from the PS scratch disk (I use them to segregate the OS and applications from the data, which I keep on the D: drive).
A video card that can drive two monitors would be important, even if you only have one at the moment. Also, a large LCD screen is great to have, but make sure the one you pick can be calibrated & tuned.
Art
John,
I’m looking at the Dell site right now. It looks like they only offer Nvidia or ATI graphics cards. I’ve always used Matrox. Is Matrox no longer the card of choice for graphics workstations?
Anyway, I’ll keep looking at the Dells to see if it looks like they might be possibilities.
Marlene
Bob,
I have no set budget. I want the best computer I can get, because I don’t think I’ll be buying another one for a very, very long time.
Last time, I paid about $4550 (including shipping), for a box with dual Athlons (2 Ghz I think, or maybe 1.8?), 1.5 GB of RAM, a Matrox Parhelia with 128 MB, Microstar K7D Master-L, 550w power supply. It came with one 36 GB SCSI Cheetah and a 250 GB IDE drive — I saved some money by transferring some of my existing SCSI drives into the newer box.
I want something faster and more powerful, with more RAM. I don’t want to upgrade the existing box, because I don’t like the case (it’s too small — I want a bigger tower — and I want USB and Firewire ports on the front AND back). I also don’t want to upgrade the existing box because I already have enough stress in my life.
It’s bad enough getting my husband to transfer the hard drives from one box to the other — it interferes with his golf schedule — I don’t want to have to handle anything more complicated than that.
I expect to pay more than I did for the last computer, because I want more power and RAM. I always try to buy top-of-the-line components, because I do NOT want to have to swap out components later if they fail or don’t behave properly. I have never had to replace a video card, mobo, processors, power supply, or RAM. Only things I’ve ever had to replace are hard drives (even my "top-of-the-line" SCSI drives have sometimes crashed) and CD/DVD burners. But those are easy to replace. I just don’t want to have to fiddle with the "guts" — if I buy the best to begin with, less chance I’ll have to replace anything.
So the short answer <g> is that I have no set budget, and will spend what I have to, to get a really good PC built with excellent components.
I don’t really need a monitor, BTW — I have a lovely 21" Mitsubishi SpectraView that still works great after several years.
Marlene
Just about any name brand card is fine. I’ve got the stock ATI card in my Dimension 9100 and it drives two widescreen monitors just fine.
Bob
Dude-X,
A new monitor is the one thing I’d have trouble justifying. I love to get a great big enormous new monitor, but my 21" one still looks great.
Marlene
Art,
I’ll have to look for the other threads. Are they in this (Photoshop for Windows) forum section?
I have five hard drives now (I separate OS, apps, data, scratch space, etc.) and would transfer the data drives to the new PC. Four drives are SCSI, one is IDE. Are SCSI drives still considered the best? (I don’t keep up with this stuff.)
My current video card (Parhelia), will, IIRC, drive three monitors. <g> But I don’t have space for any more monitors on my desk. My big SpectraView can be calibrated, but unfortunately I am not smart enough to figure out how to do it. And the SpectraView probably weighs 100 pounds, so — as much as I’m intrigued by the monitors like the big wide Sony LCD — I am not inclined to replace my monitor until it fails. Nobody wants to lift the thing.
Marlene
Bob,
Which ATI do you have, and how much RAM does it have?
Marlene
Regarding the graphics card, I was always a Matrox fan (there was a time when most PS users seemed to favour them) and was reluctant to switch to ATI but I did, and it’s fine. Supports two monitors too.
The X300 SE. 128megs of "hypermemory" which effectively means that it will share system memory if it needs it. But with 2D apps, I doubt that will happen.
Bob
Marlene,
The first PC I built was 100% SCSI all in the interest of the highest performance I could get. My largest Seagate drive failed and was replaced 3 times by Seagate…quite a susprise to me given their reported quality. That, not to mention the cost and limited capacities of SCSI drives tended to sour me on them. With the advances in IDE drives over the years, I cannot see a good reason for most PC owners to choose SCSI drives and I recommend they be avoided. For enterprise-level applications and servers, SCSI does offer advantages, not the least of which is support for many hard drives…but that isn’t what you’re needing.
Current SATA drives such as the Western Digital Raptor meet or even surpass Ultra320 SCSI performance while providing much greater value. For the half the price of the fastest Ultra320 SCSI drive, a RAIDed pair of 150GB Raptors would provide even higher performance and storage capacity. In lieu of the fast Raptors, you might save even more, find higher capacities (up to 750GB), and still get similar performance out of the new Seagate hard drives that use perpendicular recording, particularly if any of them were in a RAID configuration. Reviews of the Seagate drives are favorable but mention issues of heat and noise; my 750GB Seagate drive doesn’t bother me, and that is installed in a removable tray with fans in a mid-tower case sitting next to me on my desk. On the floor it would be even less noticeable. I’m currently running a defrag of that drive, which I think should exercise it quite a bit in terms of the noise it produces, and it is not at all objectionable.
On this system, which I recently built, I run a pair of 150GB 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptors and a 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drive, all being SATA drives and with no RAID used. I’m not claiming it to be the best setup, but do suggest something along these lines would be worth considering. Had I not stayed with the Raptors, I probably would have gone with 4 of the 400GB Seagate drives and saved some money too.
One thing to be aware of, or your system builder should be, is the drive support capabilities of the motherboard if you anticipate buying several drives. I think most new motherboards will support 4 SATA drives at least, and many have built-in RAID support also.
If you can specify the size of image files you commonly work with, others here may be able to offer more suggestions on what might offer you the best combination of performance and value in a new system.
Regards,
Daryl
wrote:
Bob,
I have no set budget. I want the best computer I can get, because I don’t think I’ll be buying another one for a very, very long time.
Last time, I paid about $4550 (including shipping), for a box with dual Athlons (2 Ghz I think, or maybe 1.8?), 1.5 GB of RAM, a Matrox Parhelia with 128 MB, Microstar K7D Master-L, 550w power supply. It came with one 36 GB SCSI Cheetah and a 250 GB IDE drive — I saved some money by transferring some of my existing SCSI drives into the newer box.
I want something faster and more powerful, with more RAM. I don’t want to upgrade the existing box, because I don’t like the case (it’s too small — I want a bigger tower — and I want USB and Firewire ports on the front AND back). I also don’t want to upgrade the existing box because I already have enough stress in my life.
It’s bad enough getting my husband to transfer the hard drives from one box to the other — it interferes with his golf schedule — I don’t want to have to handle anything more complicated than that.
I expect to pay more than I did for the last computer, because I want more power and RAM. I always try to buy top-of-the-line components, because I do NOT want to have to swap out components later if they fail or don’t behave properly. I have never had to replace a video card, mobo, processors, power supply, or RAM. Only things I’ve ever had to replace are hard drives (even my "top-of-the-line" SCSI drives have sometimes crashed) and CD/DVD burners. But those are easy to replace. I just don’t want to have to fiddle with the "guts" — if I buy the best to begin with, less chance I’ll have to replace anything.
So the short answer <g> is that I have no set budget, and will spend what I have to, to get a really good PC built with excellent components.
I don’t really need a monitor, BTW — I have a lovely 21" Mitsubishi SpectraView that still works great after several years.
Marlene
If you don’t want to play with the "guts", you might want to consider the top of the line Macintosh. Apple’s quad processor Intel box should run Photoshop about as fast as it can run. OS X is a great OS with an interface closer to Windows than either of them wants to admit.
Adobe will swap your CS2 for Windows for an OS X version without cost (once). It would depend on what other applications that you run. I went from OS X to Windows because of work required Windows only apps, but usually there is an exact match in OS X or something that will work close enough.
The whole approach of Apple’s Macintosh is that you get everything you need and you don’t have to play with the guts. Mac users usually prefer to work on their work than play with their computers. That seems like a fit for you.
Just a though,
Clyde
