Need the fastest computer!!

[Alex_B]

custom build one. at least in europe doing it yourself and odering components on the www is the cheapest and best option.

as for the performance, go for some state of the art processor, single core is probably sufficient. with most graphic programmes the bottleneck ist usually memory and not the processor, but the memory, go to the max you can afford here.

 

[jstuedle]

I agree, build it yourself. I have since the early 80's. And I am of the opinion Dell custom builds are overpriced. Good machines, but expensive for what you get.

 

[uberben]

I have built a couple machines myself. www.newegg.com is your friend. They are awsome and their RMA process is great if something isn't working right. I have returned motherboards up to a year after i bought them since they started to act up.

 

[DSLR noob]

cyberpowerpc.com you can build your pc with a quad core processor and 4gb's of ram for around 1500 dollars they build it for you and ship it so much better and cheaper then mac

well that 15 thousand dollar Mac pro fully speced out has 8 core processors each Xenon factory clocked at 3.0 Ghz as well as 16GB of RAM, 4 TB of storage with 10,000 RPM HDDs, 2 16X Dual layer DVD & DVD RW etc. etc. drives. RAID 0 management, an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D graphics card, Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card, and the ability to support 2 30 inch 2560 x 1600 resolution Apple cinmea displays. You can also run windows on it.

 

[dtlasky]

Hey get a Mac Pro with 32 Gig of ram.
And 8 cores of 3.0 Ghtz power, get CS3 for free. SWITCH TO MAC>

Ive seen it used with about 20 virtual desktops all maxed out with every memory/cpu intensive programs you can think and it only ran at half power. SIMPLY AMAZING!

 

[tvphotog]

My feeling after reading the above input...let Dell do the building and tell them what you want. For example, a quad CPU Precision Workstation, 4 Gigs of memory, a video card with a huge amount of memory on it, and even a Dell wide flat screen. They make some of the best flat monitors out there. Take the best of what was discussed above.

Then, if it breaks down or you have questions (and you will with a new machine,) YOU HAVE DELL SERVICE!!!

Here's a tip: Buy it through their Business Department. You pay tax, which you won't pay in the Home division. However, with the Business box, you can buy Gold Tech Support which is U.S. based, quick to answer and superb. The Home service, even though you pay a similar 3 year charge, is out-sourced and is cook-book style, with first tier techs who don't think out of the box, in my experience.

 

[soylentgreen]

Newegg for components, Xoxide for cooling and bling!!! You can build a killer rig for sub $1K nowadays that will blow the doors off any pre-built. What would have cost $2600 about 6 months ago is like 1/3 of the price now. Just go and spec some stuff out.

 

[RacePhoto]

Lets see, before you buy that new computer:

1 Remove everything from your start menu, you don't need all that junk loading.

2 See what is loading in background, ready to launch faster, because it's sucking up resources. Kill anything that you don't need.

3 Do you have a second drive (not a logical drive, a second physical drive) for your CS2 Temp files? It helps.

4 Memory. I missed how much you had. More is better.

5 And this one will make a significant difference!

Services.

Disable unnecessary services. 2000 and XP installs all sorts of things like Alerter. The less resources that these are taking up, the faster your system will operate.

Start>Programs>Administrative Tools>Services.

You'll need to tweak this yourself, and I'd suggest you write down what's there to start with.

If you don't see services, you need to go into start>settings>taskbar>startmenu (if classic) otherwise Control Panel, Start Menu and Taskbar applet. Either way, "Display Administrative Tools" needs to be checked.

6 If you want to speed up hard disk and slack space, get a raid-0 installed. (I wish I had it) Type 0 has no redundancy, it's not for backup or security, it's for speed. You'll basically have these drives for power and speed and then save anything onto your main system hard drive.

I only have a 2.2gHz Dell machine, 2gb memory, 140gb hard drive / 60 gb hard drive. (money is an issue! ) It loads CS2 a little slow, but once it's up and running, I don't have speed problems. I don't have all the services turned off on this one. So you should be able to go fast if you do all of the above.

One more small note. A 2.2 gHz laptop is not as fast as a 2.2 gHz desktop/tower. Your choice of a tower is the best for speed.

You don't need a $3000 computer to run CS2 or CS3, just one that is tweaked for speed. Oh by the way, mine was under $400 used, but I spent a few hundred on the hard drive, DVD writer and more memory. Still it was well under $700 total.

 

[RacePhoto]

How to speed up your computer, one way that helps. Turn Off All Unnecessary Services.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/downloads/home/windows_xp_services_that_can_be_disabled.pdf

The above PDF list has what all the XP services are and what they do.

This means that more of your resources are available for processing photos and not on something that's running in background, using memory and CPU resources.

 

[WDodd]

I would think that the best of the best available is a little overkill for just photoshop, plus it will cost you a mint.

If you aren't building it yourself you can easily go to Dell and price out a top of the line system.

Building it yourself would be the most cost effective option though.

 

[xfloggingkylex]

I agree, build it yourself. I have since the early 80's. And I am of the opinion Dell custom builds are overpriced. Good machines, but expensive for what you get.

you have to remember you are also buying programs when you buy a dell machine. If you have a copy of whatever the new windows may be, you save yourself up to 300 dollars. add in monitor and it comes close. I've noticed 5 or 6 years ago your statement was very true, but lately it seems Dell is a fine option as far as bang for buck. Personally I build my own so I have the exact parts I want in it, case included. Also it makes for easy upgrading.

To answer the OP question though, most high end consumer motherboards seem to support 4-8 GB of memory. Figure with 8GB of the fastest memory on the market, you are in good shape. For processors, you are gonna want to look at duel or even quad core. If you are truely going all out, get a duel socket motherboard and run two of them. The video card doesnt matter so much for photoediting, because the video card is used for generating 3d images. You'll notice that when watching DVDs on a computer with a budget video card vs a high end gaming card, there is virtually no - if any - difference.