Photo editing software Questions....

[Big Mike]

I've been told that the video card isn't much of a factor for photo editing. Fast Video cards are for gamers...lots of RAM is better for running Photoshop.

 

[lids369]

for media editing should get a quad core with 4 gb of ram. and if you get the 64 bit, youll want to have 8 gb of ram. also windows 7 is coming out soon.... i recomend the q6600 for your processor. its 2.4 ghz, easily overclockable, and very very good bang for buck

 

[Joves]

I've been told that the video card isn't much of a factor for photo editing. Fast Video cards are for gamers...lots of RAM is better for running Photoshop.

Actually I heard the CS4 is supposed to run off video RAM. So now you can have a great gaming machine and, photo editor in one.

 

[Mike_E]

I've been told that the video card isn't much of a factor for photo editing. Fast Video cards are for gamers...lots of RAM is better for running Photoshop.

From what I've been able to tell unless you are editing video you don't need a separate video card for CS4. Upgrading the RAM would be the way to go if you are going to start with an econo-box. (actually a good idea)

TigerDirect is about as reasonable a place as I've found

 

[THORHAMMER]

You can get a screaming system nowadays pretty cheap, dont buy the extra ram from the disti, buy it yourself from frys and install it yourself and save 100$ right there. Make sure its got the videocard you want included, besides that dont even splurge for the bigger hard drive or blueray, youll want to buy a external anyways when your HD fills up and there cheap nowadays too.
(also PS and LR run like 30% faster when your main HD is 50% empty. Weird but true.

Instead of CS4 which is like 700 bucks, buy the CS - CS2 upgrade for 250 and buy lightroom 2.1 for 299 , you might even be able to get by without CS2 at all if you have 5.0 its not missing much that lightroom can do unless your doing commercial work for advertising agencies.

 

[monkeykoder]

I'll have to say buying a cheapo computer from frys or something and putting the parts in it that you want is the way to go. Going for a straight build it yourself tends to be a tad more expensive and most cheapo computers have all the little things that end up making the computer cost more.

 

[TwoRails]

Another thing to keep in mind is just because you get a 64 bit OS does Not mean your existing software will use all that RAM that the OS can. That is to say that 32 bit programs are still limited to "2gb per process." So, having 8 GB in a 64 bit OS will not give any more RAM to use for a 32 bit program. To take advantage of using more RAM, then the program itself also has to be 64 bit.

 

[MikeBcos]

I'm a firm believer in econoboxes, pretty much any computer has a useful life of four years so I always go for the best bang for the buck.

I just bought an e-Machine, dual core 2.4, 320GB hard drive, 3GB Ram, Windows Vista Home Premium. Without monitor it cost me $360.

I build panoramas to upload to Gigapan.org, I regularly edit 500MB tif images in Photoshop with no issues. Photoshop CS4 opens in 4 seconds. This computer will do what I want for the next few years.

And, to go against the Vista grain, all it takes is a little tweaking and Vista is a nice, stable OS.