Suggestions for new computer!

[Rodeoshooter]

Hey,

I am looking to upgrade my P3 4ghz machine and wanted to get some suggestions. I am currently running a Matrox 550 video card to support my two moniters.

I don't do any gaming but I do use PS all the time. I process about 3500 RAW images a week using Canon DPP and PS. I run several actions on my system to process the RAWs to Tiffs and then to JPGs. I then crop the images and process the JPGs with another action.

In addition to these I process hundreds of images for the lab every week.

I want to upgrade the machine and I am not familiar with the new chips and video cards. I will put XP pro not Vista on the computer at this time. I will put at least 3 250 gig hard drives along with a DVD drive.

I will buy the parts and put the machine together rather than by a canned machine.

Thanks for any suggestions!

[brian.austin]

The best bang for your buck will come from a "canned machine". The days of Chinese knockoff parts in these machines is pretty much over. Dells, HPs, Alienware, and more all use similar parts that you'll find at Newegg.com and other places. The exception is motherboards but honestly, I really haven't seen much difference in performance among top names any longer.

If you're intent on building one, scope Tom's Hardware for the latest reviews of individual components. The best performance is going to come from a gaming design approach. Those are the apps that tend to tax a system the most. If it works well for gaming, it usually flies doing just about anything else. The exception is video cards. Most video cards are pretty close on 2D performance, which is what you need for PS work. There is no 3D engine requirements for photography.

Best bang for your buck on processors tends to be the 2nd through 4th from the top end. The latest/greatest is always going to be the most expensive. The next one down, through about the 4th latest, tends to decrease in cost fairly quickly. Then the curve flattens a bit and the difference between 5-whatever tends to be closer. I usually aim for #2 or #3, depending on cost/performance concerns.

Look for "dual head" video cards if you can afford it. The G550 that you're using is already a dualhead and drives two monitors with one chipset. If you can find independent chipsets, like the G450x2 (although that wouldn't be my first choice), you can calibrate each monitor individually. I don't see much of a benefit unless I'm using two considerably different types of monitors.

If you already have the OS, don't worry about packages. If you do not have a license for XP Pro (and I'll let you decide if you're really legally licensed since OEMs aren't allowed to be transferred, unbeknownst to many owners), consider getting a "barebones" package of motherboard, processor, and memory from Newegg or Tiger Direct. They'll usually include an option for the OS to go along with it.

Personally, I quit building a few years ago and have been happy with Dell's Precision line of workstations. My own Precision 390 has been handling photo work for 2 years with no issues. Adding another hard drive was as easy as popping the cover, plugging the HDD into the already installed no-tool carrier, putting the cover back on and booting up. I think it took my longer to open the packaging!

All of the features I discussed above are available in the Precisions. And they were very prompt with a replacement monitor when the backlight died on my 2407. I had it the next day.

Have fun.

[Jacco]

OR you could get a Mac Pro octocore with 8GB of RAM and live happily ever after...

[Kosherpaparazzi]

Max out the RAM. Make sure the fans and circuit boards are clean (of dust) and there is proper ventilation around the computer.

What kind of upgrade do you plan on doing?

Originally Posted by Jacco

OR you could get a Mac Pro octocore with 8GB of RAM and live happily ever after...

and then what?? All he needs is a good digital photo-lab not a heavy-duty-multitask-workstation. I'm a big time Mac user/fan and i don't think telling someone they should get a new computer they have no purpose for is nice.

[Rodeoshooter]

Originally Posted by brian.austin

The best bang for your buck will come from a "canned machine". The days of Chinese knockoff parts in these machines is pretty much over. Dells, HPs, Alienware, and more all use similar parts that you'll find at Newegg.com and other places. The exception is motherboards but honestly, I really haven't seen much difference in performance among top names any longer.

If you're intent on building one, scope Tom's Hardware for the latest reviews of individual components. The best performance is going to come from a gaming design approach. Those are the apps that tend to tax a system the most. If it works well for gaming, it usually flies doing just about anything else. The exception is video cards. Most video cards are pretty close on 2D performance, which is what you need for PS work. There is no 3D engine requirements for photography.

Best bang for your buck on processors tends to be the 2nd through 4th from the top end. The latest/greatest is always going to be the most expensive. The next one down, through about the 4th latest, tends to decrease in cost fairly quickly. Then the curve flattens a bit and the difference between 5-whatever tends to be closer. I usually aim for #2 or #3, depending on cost/performance concerns.

Look for "dual head" video cards if you can afford it. The G550 that you're using is already a dualhead and drives two monitors with one chipset. If you can find independent chipsets, like the G450x2 (although that wouldn't be my first choice), you can calibrate each monitor individually. I don't see much of a benefit unless I'm using two considerably different types of monitors.

If you already have the OS, don't worry about packages. If you do not have a license for XP Pro (and I'll let you decide if you're really legally licensed since OEMs aren't allowed to be transferred, unbeknownst to many owners), consider getting a "barebones" package of motherboard, processor, and memory from Newegg or Tiger Direct. They'll usually include an option for the OS to go along with it.

Personally, I quit building a few years ago and have been happy with Dell's Precision line of workstations. My own Precision 390 has been handling photo work for 2 years with no issues. Adding another hard drive was as easy as popping the cover, plugging the HDD into the already installed no-tool carrier, putting the cover back on and booting up. I think it took my longer to open the packaging!

All of the features I discussed above are available in the Precisions. And they were very prompt with a replacement monitor when the backlight died on my 2407. I had it the next day.

Have fun.

Brian,

Thanks for the info. I have a Dell and have had other canned machines in the past. They tended to be more expensive and less flexible in my experience. The P4 I am using now is one that I built and it flew when it was first put to work. It was about $1100 and I used an 865prl intel mother board and chipset. The biggest problem I have is since I built it I have not paid much attention to the chips out there. What there is and what is the best. I perfer intel mother board and chipsets since they are mated well with each other.

I have been using two monitors for the past 10-12 years. Hate going to single monitors. Feel too trapped. The word I am hearing from my local store is the video apg slots are gone like the 386's.

I have a corporate license for XP Pro. Not a problem there. Totally legal. Don't need the headaches.

What does "workstation" mean? Is that a stand alone? I have a local Lan consisting of 5 computers as peers.

[Rodeoshooter]

Originally Posted by Jacco

OR you could get a Mac Pro octocore with 8GB of RAM and live happily ever after...

Hell, I could go get a colon checkup too. I have a Mac and it still works great as a paper weight. I am not a fan of the stationary clock on the screen when you are trying to work. With my PC's I can keep on kicking while it is working on something else.

Thanks for the idea though.

[pommie]

As brian said, just about any of the current video cards will suffice provided they go up to the res you want.
Make sure the cpu has cache, not a celeron/opteron etc <----- very important for the math intensive work of image manipulation.
Go for the fastest data throughput mother board as you can, it used to be just FSB but its all of it nowadays.
3 gigs (XP 32bit limit) of the fastest ram available.
SATA2 for the hdd's.
And last but not least the dreaded raid, raid0 for speed and raid1 for security and I think its raid4 using four (or 6, 8 etc) hdd's in a raid0 + raid1 (or 1+0) configuration.
I am not recommending raid just because it sounds good, I run with raid0 only and XP is a completely different animal, but please if you do use raid make sure you use raid1 for data security.

Cheers David

[Rodeoshooter]

Originally Posted by Kosherpaparazzi

Max out the RAM. Make sure the fans and circuit boards are clean (of dust) and there is proper ventilation around the computer.

What kind of upgrade do you plan on doing?




and then what?? All he needs is a good digital photo-lab not a heavy-duty-multitask-workstation. I'm a big time Mac user/fan and i don't think telling someone they should get a new computer they have no purpose for is nice.

I am getting different feedback on the ram. Some people are telling me that XP Pro will not utilize 4 gigs of ram. Others are saying to stay away from Vista and with the new chips the ram is utilized with XP. I have always pushed the ram to the max. The system I have now, P4 3ghz with 2 gigs of ram has been a great system. Problem is it is now 5 years old. I haven't kept track on what is going on with the new chips and boards so I thought I would ask the Camel.

I use this machine for everything but the amount of images I process is dragging it down. I want to use the old machine as a storage and backup for the new machine. I
want something that will cut the processing time down and allow me to do other work while I am processing images.

Thanks,

[nyschulte]

All following is based on my personal experience, so your milage may vary

Unless you go with an 64 bit Win OS, you will be limited to something between 3 and 3.5 GB seen by the OS. More limiting is the 2 GB address space per program, limit wihich you do not have with MacOSX, a.f.a.i.k.

But if that means changing licences, it becomes a different story.

@ work i have been very pleased with HP (xw series) , very unhappy with Dell (optiplex). ok, ok, comparing apples and oranges...

i do prefer ati graphic cards as their drivers are more stable

if i am not mistaken, i read that future development of adobe CS4 would use the rendering capabilites of the GPU for speeding up things...

Nicolas

[Rodeoshooter]

Originally Posted by nyschulte

All following is based on my personal experience, so your milage may vary

Unless you go with an 64 bit Win OS, you will be limited to something between 3 and 3.5 GB seen by the OS. More limiting is the 2 GB address space per program, limit wihich you do not have with MacOSX, a.f.a.i.k.

But if that means changing licences, it becomes a different story.

@ work i have been very pleased with HP (xw series) , very unhappy with Dell (optiplex). ok, ok, comparing apples and oranges...

i do prefer ati graphic cards as their drivers are more stable

if i am not mistaken, i read that future development of adobe CS4 would use the rendering capabilites of the GPU for speeding up things...

Nicolas

Nicolas,

Thank you. It would be great to have the 64 bit OS but I don't so I will have to live with the 3-3.5 GB.

I would not be able to afford the change over to a MAC. I have so many programs that don't run on a MAC and would not like to leave them behind.

The drivers may be more stable but in my experience with ATI cards I have found trying to find the drivers sometimes causes one to shoot the card.

The GPU evolution is interesting. I was reading a little about it last night.

Thanks,

[ohenry]

I would suggest looking at the ASUS P5 motherboards, I forget which model number, but look for the newer lines. I'd also consider a core-duo, although if you want to go with a quad core, you'd be ready for any future changes that Photoshop may deliver. No need to go with the fastest, but one or two steps down. Look at the price differences -- generally the latest is a large jump and the performance doesn't equate to the buck. Go with 4Gig of the fastest memory available for the motherboard and buy a better grade of memory rather than the cheapest you can find. Harddrives -- look to SATA drives. I prefer WD, but also like Seagate. Video cards...without gaming, you don't need the latest and greatest and the Nvidia 8500 series will perform quite nicely. Again, you'll want dual DVI support. Even an older series 6000 or 7000 will do the job. But opt for 512M or more of memory on the card to be ready for future enhancements of PS. And don't skimp on your power supply!!!

[lviperz]

I would suggest you get an intel based MB that is SLI ready. Then get 2 sli video cards, one for each monitor. This way you don't slow down on the video render. Then get a quad-core. And as mentioned, not the newest. Get the 2nd or 3rd newest. And put in 3 gig of the fastest ram.

The MB should also be the fastest you can afford. You don't want any bottlenecks on the bus. Just remember, your computer is only it's fastest as the slowest part. So don't limit yourself by getting a slow MB.

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by Rodeoshooter

What does "workstation" mean? Is that a stand alone? I have a local Lan consisting of 5 computers as peers.

Carryover from business. "Workstation" just means PC, designated as a client rather than a server. That's all. It would fit in that environment.

As for the rest, I tend to look at it like this: I'd rather take pictures, work in the shop, or do whatever than play around with pieces/parts trying to build a new computer. That's why I went with the Dell Precision 390. I had received it, set it up, and installed everything I needed in an evening.

Have fun!

[Jacco]

Originally Posted by Kosherpaparazzi

All he needs is a good digital photo-lab not a heavy-duty-multitask-workstation. I'm a big time Mac user/fan and i don't think telling someone they should get a new computer they have no purpose for is nice.

FYI, Kosher, he has a purpose: 3,500 RAW files a week...!