PC for Photoshop

[blash]

Get stuff that actually matters - like a solid state drive, to help alleviate the #1 bottleneck and cause of worse performance in any and every computer today. Get a 24" monitor so you can actually have a working space bigger than only being able to look at 10% of your image at one time.

Memory and processor speed is probably least important. Fact is, people were running Photoshop on dual-core processors just fine, and Photoshop doesn't take up 8 GB of RAM by far - more like 2 GB at most. Get 4 GB if you want to feel safe. So you'll take 5 mins to crunch something that would otherwise take you 3.5 mins - seriously, decide where your money is best spent.

I'd agree with most of of the rest of your post but this?. For a photo editing machine? Photoshop easily fills up 2gb. Running lightroom along side another GB is gone, got Vista? There's another down, and you've just managed to fill up 4GB with 1 image open. Given that RAM costs next to nothing why not get 8gb. How can you penny pinch on this and then spend a boatload of money on an SSD.

What does that bring you anyway? Photoshop and windows loads a few seconds faster then it's stored in ram, an image opens half a second faster then it's stored in RAM. If you're paging to the SSD then after a few weeks it dramatically reduces speed. (Windows 7 I believe has/will have support for newer instructions to prevent this) The cost of SSDs is ludicrous, and completely unjustified for photoediting applications which will only ever page to the hdd when they run out of ram.

Running filters? Photoshop is fully threadded these days. Running high quality noise reduction is a painfully CPU intensive process on large images.

A budget is a budget is a budget. That said, if you look at the actual pseudo-setup I recommended, I priced in 4 GB. But looking at Newegg right now at DDR3 prices, 8 or 12 GB of RAM goes for $225 -$250 or so. That's a significant chunk out of a budget system. Of course, if I had two or three thousand dollars to work with here, putting in 12 GB would be the first thing I'd do, if only because Vista and Win7 eat up anything you throw at them because of stuff like precaching.

That said, for pure photo work, especially on a budget there's not much reason to run bloated Vista right now - maybe Win7 when it comes out. I also don't know how large you're scanning your film, but for the images that come out of my D80 2 GB is just fine.

The reason why an SSD is relevant is simple - no moving parts. For the processor to complete an instruction will take no more than, say, a microsecond - 10 to the -6, if not quicker. Hard drive access times are measured in milliseconds - 10 to the -3. That means that the processor has to wait for one thousand steps doing absolutely nothing while it waits for the head to move across the disc platter. This is the absolute biggest bottleneck in your computer for anything that you do because everything accesses the hard drive for something during it's operation. SSD's have no physical head though so they can respond much quicker and keep the system moving. It's more than a simple benchmark can show, yes your boot times will improve and yes pagefile performance will improve but the difference is in the improved feel you get in your day-to-day usage.

And on the CPU comment; again, budget. Again, I don't know what size images you're working with, but like I said, 3.5 minutes versus 5 minutes isn't that big of a difference. I'd like to spend $1,000 on the newest Intel unlocked processor but I just specced a whole computer for less than that.

So to sum up, yes I do realize that the machine I specced is very limited. But it's also very cheap for what it does and for the budget, I believe that it offers a superior experience to a factory box that would go for a similar price, especially a Mac of a similar price. (keep in mind, the cheapest iMac is $1200 and does not include 4 GB of RAM - the cheapest 24" is $1500, or 50% more than the price of my machine without the bamboo tablet, and both machines only have 2 processor cores - my specced machine has 3. The cheapest computer Apple sells now is a $1,000 MacBook that does not have the same 4 GB of RAM and also is limited to 2 processor cores. In the case of the iMac, the cheaper $1200 only has 1 320 GB drive, not a second linked in RAID 1, and even for the $1500 version I think I'd prefer the two 320 GB drives in RAID 1 over a single 640 GB drive. Oh yeah and the SSD is also included in my build.)

 

[itznfb]

I have a Core 2 Duo 8400 clocked at 3.8GHz with 8GB 1066MHz RAM running Win7 64 bit with Photoshop CS4 64 bit and it runs like a dream. The nice thing is it installs both 32 and 64 bit version so you can actually run them side by side and really see what a difference 64 bit makes. It's really unbelievable how much of an increase in performance the 64 bit version is.

 

[cfusionpm]

I have a Core 2 Duo 8400 clocked at 3.8GHz with 8GB 1066MHz RAM running Win7 64 bit with Photoshop CS4 64 bit and it runs like a dream. The nice thing is it installs both 32 and 64 bit version so you can actually run them side by side and really see what a difference 64 bit makes. It's really unbelievable how much of an increase in performance the 64 bit version is.

32 bit vista came on my computer with a quad core 9450 at the factory 2.66ghz with 4gb 800mhz ram and it gets decent performance out of CS4. I can't wait for the commercial release of Win7 so I can pick up the 64 bit version. It sounds like it would fly with that as well as the work I do in Premiere/After Effects. Are there software differences? Like you specifically need CS4 64-bit versions?

 

[itznfb]

I have a Core 2 Duo 8400 clocked at 3.8GHz with 8GB 1066MHz RAM running Win7 64 bit with Photoshop CS4 64 bit and it runs like a dream. The nice thing is it installs both 32 and 64 bit version so you can actually run them side by side and really see what a difference 64 bit makes. It's really unbelievable how much of an increase in performance the 64 bit version is.

32 bit vista came on my computer with a quad core 9450 at the factory 2.66ghz with 4gb 800mhz ram and it gets decent performance out of CS4. I can't wait for the commercial release of Win7 so I can pick up the 64 bit version. It sounds like it would fly with that as well as the work I do in Premiere/After Effects. Are there software differences? Like you specifically need CS4 64-bit versions?

There is no functional interface or compatibility difference between 32 and 64 bit versions.

 

[Garbz]

That said, for pure photo work, especially on a budget there's not much reason to run bloated Vista right now - maybe Win7 when it comes out. I also don't know how large you're scanning your film, but for the images that come out of my D80 2 GB is just fine.

Ahh you talk sense. I was speccing under the assumption that the OP wouldn't have Windows XP available. Certainly the RAM restrictions are a bit lower without vista or 7 on your computer. But still photoshop is a very RAM intensive program. There's various levels of using photoshop.

I by no means consider myself a power user, bit if I open 2 16bit 10mpx files at once, and start doing any work that involves adding more layers 2GB disappears very very quickly. I just did a quick check just now. I opened Lightroom 2.4, made some colour adjustments, edited in Photoshop CS4, added a layer, applied a gausian blur, added another layer changed mode to overlay and reduced opacity on both layers (a very standard and good looking soft focus), and then Lightroom was using 665MB and Photoshop was using 487MB. One image open, and only 6 undo tasks in photoshop, and 4 in Lightroom.

The reason why an SSD is relevant is simple - no moving parts. For the processor to complete an instruction will take no more than, say, a microsecond - 10 to the -6, if not quicker. Hard drive access times are measured in milliseconds - 10 to the -3. That means that the processor has to wait for one thousand steps doing absolutely nothing while it waits for the head to move across the disc platter. This is the absolute biggest bottleneck in your computer for anything that you do because everything accesses the hard drive for something during it's operation.

I agree, but what are you quoting now, a day to day computer or one for editing photos? Certainly not a budget computer. Given my Lightroom catalogue of just the last 3 months is taking up 60GB, I'd say something as ludicrously expensive as SSDs should be reserved for top end machines. Considering I can build a 2TB RAID0 array for the cost of a 64GB SSD, or an actually redundant (photographers like redundant) 1TB RAID1 array I just think recommending SSD is madness.

Better yet consider you could get 1x 64GB SSD, and enjoy faster paging while using Photoshop or get 1x 1TB HDD, AND 3GB of RAM and not need to page at all. Remember if you have enough RAM then you may only open your applications once, after which response times becomes a non issue. Outlook has been open for days here and is very responsive when I click on it Btw as a complete aside have you seen the youtube video of 12 SSDs in a RAID0 array, now that would be nice.


I agree what you're offering is still better than a bought computer (oh and comparing a custom built machine to a mac is completely unfair, compare a Dell to a Mac or a HP to a mac), but as you can see I completely disagree with some choice of parts on this "budget" machine.

Put it down to difference of opinion, or better yet different priorities.

There is no functional interface or compatibility difference between 32 and 64 bit versions.

There is slight. 64bit OSes lose 16bit compatibility. So forget all your old windows 98 programs should you still have any rolling about. This won't affect most people. Also 32bit native apps still won't be able to access all your RAM (assuming more than 3.2GB). Only 64bit native applications can do that.

 

[itznfb]

There is slight. 64bit OSes lose 16bit compatibility. So forget all your old windows 98 programs should you still have any rolling about. This won't affect most people. Also 32bit native apps still won't be able to access all your RAM (assuming more than 3.2GB). Only 64bit native applications can do that.

I thought he was asking about the differences between 32/64 Photoshop.

 

[blash]

That said, for pure photo work, especially on a budget there's not much reason to run bloated Vista right now - maybe Win7 when it comes out. I also don't know how large you're scanning your film, but for the images that come out of my D80 2 GB is just fine.

Ahh you talk sense. I was speccing under the assumption that the OP wouldn't have Windows XP available. Certainly the RAM restrictions are a bit lower without vista or 7 on your computer. But still photoshop is a very RAM intensive program. There's various levels of using photoshop.

I by no means consider myself a power user, bit if I open 2 16bit 10mpx files at once, and start doing any work that involves adding more layers 2GB disappears very very quickly. I just did a quick check just now. I opened Lightroom 2.4, made some colour adjustments, edited in Photoshop CS4, added a layer, applied a gausian blur, added another layer changed mode to overlay and reduced opacity on both layers (a very standard and good looking soft focus), and then Lightroom was using 665MB and Photoshop was using 487MB. One image open, and only 6 undo tasks in photoshop, and 4 in Lightroom.

The reason why an SSD is relevant is simple - no moving parts. For the processor to complete an instruction will take no more than, say, a microsecond - 10 to the -6, if not quicker. Hard drive access times are measured in milliseconds - 10 to the -3. That means that the processor has to wait for one thousand steps doing absolutely nothing while it waits for the head to move across the disc platter. This is the absolute biggest bottleneck in your computer for anything that you do because everything accesses the hard drive for something during it's operation.

I agree, but what are you quoting now, a day to day computer or one for editing photos? Certainly not a budget computer. Given my Lightroom catalogue of just the last 3 months is taking up 60GB, I'd say something as ludicrously expensive as SSDs should be reserved for top end machines. Considering I can build a 2TB RAID0 array for the cost of a 64GB SSD, or an actually redundant (photographers like redundant) 1TB RAID1 array I just think recommending SSD is madness.

Better yet consider you could get 1x 64GB SSD, and enjoy faster paging while using Photoshop or get 1x 1TB HDD, AND 3GB of RAM and not need to page at all. Remember if you have enough RAM then you may only open your applications once, after which response times becomes a non issue. Outlook has been open for days here and is very responsive when I click on it Btw as a complete aside have you seen the youtube video of 12 SSDs in a RAID0 array, now that would be nice.


I agree what you're offering is still better than a bought computer (oh and comparing a custom built machine to a mac is completely unfair, compare a Dell to a Mac or a HP to a mac), but as you can see I completely disagree with some choice of parts on this "budget" machine.

Put it down to difference of opinion, or better yet different priorities.

Yeah I use Photoshop a little less intensely - generally just some color correction stuff, maybe a few masks here or there and that's it. Only 1 image open in Photoshop at a time as well. Still, this isn't a professional machine we're talking about here where multiple photos of the same scene need to be open at once for comparison, this is just an end-user machine.

You're not suggesting that the OP have 2 computers while on a budget, are you (one for photo and one for day-to-day)? Even though you may spec a machine with Photoshop in mind, it inevitably becomes your main day-to-day machine and as such will be running your flavor of web browser, email, music, etc.

You do realize as well that you can mix and match drives, right? You seem to think that I am ONLY including the SSD in the package and thus would have to fit a whole photo library on the paltry SSD. No - there's a 320 GB RAID 1 set up in there just for the photos; the OS and Photoshop go on the SSD. 320 GB is 40 different shots of filling up an 8 GB card each, or about 40 times ~700 photos = approximately 28,000 photos. As a hobbyist you will. not. have. 28,000. keepers. Get rid of the crap that you shot and back the rest up onto dual-layer DVD. 7200 RPM is just fine for reading and writing photos and RAID 1 speeds up access time anyways.

And yes, I have seen that video (completely insane DO WANT ) and yes, there's different ways to create a budget spec according to priorities. The main priorities I really had there were for the 24" screen and the Wacom tablet, and if I could've priced in a 30" screen I would have.

 

[Hobbes]

I don't know much about Photoshop and it's system requirements but I don't think it's whole a lot different than those 3D shooting games which requires quite a lot of graphic memory and fast GPU other than the RAM memory. I have an old piece of crap with Intel P4 2.4mhz cpu, 1Gig RAM but a half decent video card which I think is the reason why I can run Photoshop CS3 rather smoothly. Correct me if I am wrong but when it comes to 3D shooting games like GTA4 and Fear 2 you don't really need a fast CPU and my guess is it's the same with Photoshop.

 

[Garbz]

I thought he was asking about the differences between 32/64 Photoshop.

Yeah I just added a general note. No harm no foul

You do realize as well that you can mix and match drives, right? You seem to think that I am ONLY including the SSD in the package and thus would have to fit a whole photo library on the paltry SSD.

Hahah no I'm not saying the SSD is the only drive. Not even saying that SSD is not a good idea, or that it won't actually improve system responsiveness. I'm just saying that it's not a budget piece of equipment by any definition (even the marketing guys don't seem pitch this for anything cheap other than a netbook)

All I am saying in total is that I think the money could be better spent elsewhere than halving the startup time for applications the first time you run them before they are stored in RAM (which windows 7 is good at may I add). SSD isn't magical. Sure the latency is gone, but the latency of the SATA controller or system overhead is still there, and when coupled with windows XP/Vista you get additional overhead due to the kernel scheduler.

It's the future. Probably even the future for budget systems, but I just don't think it's right right now. Recommend me this system again in 4 years

Correct me if I am wrong but when it comes to 3D shooting games like GTA4 and Fear 2 you don't really need a fast CPU and my guess is it's the same with Photoshop.

In more taxing games the CPU still makes a big difference. In the source engine for instance the difference between multithreading and forcing using a single core doubles my framerate for certain things such as shadow calculation at high resolution. The GPU matters a lot more, but the CPU is eventually a bottle neck.