Thinking about building a computer

[Village Idiot]

Aren't apple displays TN?

No.

 

[ChefCanon]

Airs / Older models use TN. Their new stuff is IPS. Apple's monitors have AMAZING color accuracy when calibrated. I will challenge this against almost any monitor. They have a very rich display

 

[Ballistics]

Wait until 2nd quarter of 2012, the prices of components have skyrocketed. I held out for a little while on a hard drive that was $120, 3 weeks later it is $199. And no it was not on sale. Apparently this due to some crazy floods in Asia.

 

[Ballistics]

Airs / Older models use TN. Their new stuff is IPS. Apple's monitors have AMAZING color accuracy when calibrated. I will challenge this against almost any monitor. They have a very rich display

My school has Macbook pro and iMacs, and Epson 4880 printers. I enjoy editing on the Macs, but the prints do not match the screen at all. They are all apparently calibrated with a tool and software. My 4 year old sceptre monitor is the closest representation I am yet to see. Every print I had from Mpix was spot on to my monitor.

 

[ChefCanon]

Are they new imacs and pros ? It just sounds like the calibration is off or the color profile is not correct. Depends on the way they are printing them. etc etc.

 

[Ballistics]

Are they new imacs and pros ? It just sounds like the calibration is off or the color profile is not correct. Depends on the way they are printing them. etc etc.

I can only speculate, but they seem pretty new. According to the professors, each unit is calibrated down to the paper profile and each printer is designated for either glossy or matte.

 

[TheFantasticG]

From my limited experience there isn't much difference building an awesome gaming machine and a photo/video editing machine.

Well, the way I think of it...the needs really aren't that similar (but the end product is probably similar for either use).
For gaming, you need something that can quickly process and display a constant stream of information. You need the display be able to keep up with the constantly changing game (or whatever) that is on the screen. I believe this is where you want a high end video card.

Photo editing, on the other hand, isn't about a rapidly changing display. Sure, you don't want a display lag when making changes to your image, but it's not a constant, ongoing stream of changes. And before a few years ago, photo editing didn't really tax the video card at all. The latest versions of Photoshop have started to use the RAM available in the video card, but that may only be for things like smooth transitions when zooming in or out.
For photo editing, the CPU and the RAM are much more important than the video card....but with gaming, the video card is a big piece of the puzzle.

As I understood the way that AMD processors interacts with the graphics cards is that if it needs extra processing power, it'll go to the GPU for that. Can't exactly say where I read that but, then again I could be way off. I know I didn't go wrong with 16GB of DDR3 1800 RAM. The card I got does great for games. I know my rig now vs. my old rig is night and day. When using LR3 on my old rig, when initially loading a RAW 16MP 14 bit image it took from 5 to 10 seconds for "Loading..." to complete. On my new rig, it takes less than two seconds, period. Then again, I'm not a software engineer nor do I get balls deep into computers. I know enough to build a machine, but not enough to pretend to be an expert. I also use Spyder2express to color calibrate my screen.

 

[Rockadile]

Right now I'm using a 21.5' HP 2210m monitor that I bought like 2yrs ago. I'm not too worried about color accuracy at the moment...started photographing in October this year. My pictures would most likely be seen on your average mobile/labtop/desktop screens and not printed.

The hard drive prices are ridiculous because of the flood as others stated. What bad timing.

I'm lost on how good the video card would have to be for editing pictures. I was thinking on skimping on this part since it didn't seem as important now compared to gaming.

Edit: Raising my budget to $1000~

 

[Village Idiot]

Airs / Older models use TN. Their new stuff is IPS. Apple's monitors have AMAZING color accuracy when calibrated. I will challenge this against almost any monitor. They have a very rich display

Shows in the spec that Apple's 27" ACD supports 16.7 million colors and Dell's 27" U2711 supports 1.07 billion colors. Apple's response time is 12ms vs. 6ms on the Dell. Most of Apple's displays use panels that you can find in displays from other manufacturers.


Apple LED Cinema Display (27" flat panel) - Apple Store (U.S.)
Dell UltraSharp U2711 69cm (27

 

[McNugget801]

Most of Apple's displays use panels that you can find in displays from other manufacturers.

Wait... Apple
O... Ou... Out.... Outsources its hardware!
But they make the best displays EEEEVVEERRRRRR!