What Computer do you use for Photoshop?

[Stef_T]

I'd apreciate if you could tell me what computer you use for photoshop, and what is your experience with it. Please also tell me your specs.

I would like to refrain from turing this into a flame war, but I would apreciate if you told me how do you find your computer now (good/bad/planning on getting a new one) and why you picked that one as opposed to something else.

Thank you all for your time.

Stefan

 

[Digital Matt]

I built my own pc for photoshop. My experience with it, is that it's phenomonal. It's a P4 2.8 HT with 2 gigs of ram, a 160 gig SATA hd, and a 250 gig SATA hd. I have two Dell Trinitron FD monitors, one 21", and one 19". I won't be needed another computer for a while. I will probably add another 2 gigs of ram eventually, which will max it out.

I built my own because it's cheaper, and I got exactly what I wanted. In the past, before building my own, I had good experience with Dell.

 

[Force of Nature]

AMD Why pay more. I personally have never had any problems what so ever with my custom built AMD. I have used AMD ever since I built my own PC way back in 2000. My current system is aging abit now, Its an XP 1800+ with not alot of ram. But it runs nice enough.

 

[darich]

I run an AMD 2600XP with 1gb of RAM. Upgraded a few months ago and I think the RAM makes a massive difference.
No plans to change in the near future

 

[Patrick]

2.4 ghz Sony Viao with 1 gig of ram. No problems. Although the home built one does perk my interest.

My Laptop has 512 of ram and I can tell a BIG difference when I work between the two.

 

[Chase]

Another AMD user here, always have had great luck with them and still enjoying it. Mine is a Athlon 64 3000+ with 512 megs (keep saying I'm going to upgrade to a gig, but haven't dont it yet).

 

[Kodan_Txips]

AMD 3200, 1 gig of ram, FX5600 graphics card, For photoshop I think it's better to save money on the cpu, and spend it on memory, or on extra HD space, if you are a real photoshop tweaker.

 

[Rob]

FYI

I've got a Dell with 3.4GHz Intel, 1Gb of RAM, 512Mb separate graphics (can't remember the OEM), 80Gb Western Digital SATA HDD (which replaced the Maxtor one which blew up on week 2 of ownership!!) 21" Dell Ultrasharp Flat Panel Monitor (which is brilliant). I run a personally hardened and service reduced copy of XP with SP1, no AV, no unneccessary memory resident programs (like messenger). My other machine is a 7yo Dell XPS P350 with woefully low specs which still does the job and takes over in emergencies.

 

[SWFLA1]

AMD on the laptop
Intel on the desktop

I use both with ps... haven't noticed a bit of difference between them..

 

[Scurra]

I built my own as well, I'm another AMD user and I have a shuttle which limits what I can get in it but i run a 1.8 Ghz XP, 1 gig of RAM and a 40GB hard drive, I also have a ATI Radeon 9800pro cos I do a lot of 3d work....

 

[Digital Matt]

AMD 3200, 1 gig of ram, FX5600 graphics card, For photoshop I think it's better to save money on the cpu, and spend it on memory, or on extra HD space, if you are a real photoshop tweaker.

While Photoshop loves ram, it uses processor time quite a bit, for most of it's calculations. Ram is taken up by multilayer images, and some filters, but mostly image size. Photoshop is a mulit-threaded program also, to take advantage of mulitple processors. The proc definitely matters.

 

[doxx]

Apple Mac - Dual G4 1.25 GHz with 2GB RAM
80 GB work hard drive, 160 GB archive hard drive
OS/X plenty fast, rock solid

 

[chroix]

If money's not an issue get a G5 dual processor. If you want to save a little, check out the mac Mini. I've used macs for years and they are always a step or two ahead in my book (and checkbook). OS X+ is awesome and stable. I've been in publishing for years now and I've never seen anybody use anything but Macs if that's an indicator for you.

I've done a little PC research for my Mom and everybody said don't get the Centrino (sp.?) processor and to get the newest Pentium if you go that way.

Good luck.

 

[Kodan_Txips]

Digital Matt, I entirely agree, but was thinking more along the lines of: Buy AMD rather than Intel, if there is a saving at a similar processing speed.

I would never recommend sacrificing 1000 on the cpu speed in order to go from 512 ram to 1 gig.

 

[jadin]

I've been AMD for years. I always boycott the biggest corporations (yes AMD is a big corp, but they are the underdog in comparison).

While digital editing definately is a big drag on the cpu, for _most_ users getting at least 1 gig of ram will give them the largest performance boost. Even more so if they have less than 512.

If you're building a computer that you want to last a long time, getting the 64bit AMD is a great way to go. With 64 bit software that thing will really shine.