Building a Photoshop machine - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS

08/31/2007 08:50:58 AM · #1

Well I think it is soon time to update my desktop and so I am looking for opinions on this machine. I am looking to build a fairly efficient machine, however still staying within reason. I am not interested in spending 3x the amount for the absolute newest.... but performance is still a priority.

The basic use of the machine will be running photoshop CS3 and other small tasks.

This is what I am considering

Operating system:
Windows Home Premium 64 bit (although i am a little confused as to which windows I Â´needÂ´

Processor:
Intel CPU Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz S-775 1066MHz 2x4MB Boxed Kentsfield
or
Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz S-775 1333MHz 4MB "Conroe" Boxed
both are about the same price. One is quad core, the dual core has more Ghz

Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA P35 DS3P

RAM
2048 MB DDR dual channel pc3200 CC2 (kept from the old computer) - havenÂ´t checked compatability yet.

Video card
Nvidia Geforce 6800 ultra (kept from the old computer)

Sound Card
Soundblaster Audigy (from old computer)

Power Supply
OCZ powerstream 520W (from old computer)

Hard Drives
WD Harddisk 150.0GB SATA 10000RPM 3.5" 16MB "Raptor"
2X 250 gb SATA 7200 rmp drives for working files (configured in RAID from old computer)
1X 500 GB storage drive (from old computer)

Disk Drives
DVD / CD burner from old computer

Other Cards
USB / Firewire / internet card taken from old computer

monitor
Lacie photon20vision monitor (from old computer)

Case:
Chieftec Silver Dragon' tower (from old computer - power supply built in)

And just because i know it is coming - no i am not interested in a mac :) I have a mac powerbook and a pc desktop so i have tried both - and would rather build my own desktop.

Message edited by author 2007-08-31 11:56:59.

Canon EOS-5D Mark IV

08/31/2007 08:57:42 AM · #2

Besides that "Mac" thing... the monitor would be way too small for me as was the amount of RAM and HD - and what do you need a sound card for?

08/31/2007 09:03:10 AM · #3

On my computer now I have less than 100GB worth of programs so I donÂ´t think i should go over than on the new computer. I have 250 GB of storage for files i use all the time, like pictures i am working on. Then the rest of the pictures go into the Ã¡rchiveÂ´hard drive which gets switched out when it gets filled up.

The monitor I guess will get switched out when i have more $$, but for now 20" will have to do. Sound card... it was there when i bought the computer.

Telehubbie

Canon EOS-40D

08/31/2007 09:09:13 AM · #4

If you're going through all that trouble, why not put it all in a shiny new case? Something with a lot of fans to keep everything cool. I have a Thermaltake case and it's built very solid, runs quiet for having 7 fans, and looks good too. They also make very cool (pun intended) liquid cooling systems for your processor.

08/31/2007 09:14:33 AM · #5

The case i have is a Chieftec Silver Dragon' tower which i thought i would keep.

08/31/2007 09:35:31 AM · #6

Looks like a good setup. My 5 yr old P4 system has finally shown its age with the installation of Lightroom. A gig of ram just doesn't cut it, and the processor is taking a beating.

08/31/2007 09:48:49 AM · #7

any opinions on which processor to go with? and which version of windows?

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

08/31/2007 09:52:04 AM · #8

A common gotcha is going to be making sure your new MB has appropriate graphics bus interfaces for your old graphics card. Worth being careful there, particularly if it is an AGP card. If it is PCIe life is probably easier just now.

Potentially similar problems with reusing the RAM - again, worth being careful with the specs.

In general, the quad core isn't going to gain you much over a dual core for photoshop, from the benchmarks I've seen.

08/31/2007 10:11:58 AM · #9

will the extra processing power be worth it for the duo core processor then? the two are basically the same price.

dwterry

Canon EOS-1D Mark III

08/31/2007 10:13:14 AM · #10

I'd stick with the Core 2 Duo. Unless you're heavily multitasking, the Quad Core probably will be a waste of Ghz.

I'd also recommend doubling your MEMORY. 4G is usable on 64-bit Vista. On 32-bit Vista only 3G is usuable, but it's still better than 2G. I regularly fill up my 2G memory on the laptop when I'm editing bit files and wish the laptop had 3G or 4G of memory!

-------------

Edit to change the word "member" to MEMORY. I don't think you need to double your MEMBER. But the gals might think it's cool!!! lol

Message edited by author 2007-08-31 11:00:59.

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

08/31/2007 10:17:45 AM · #11

Yeah i guess i actually have 3 gb memory in the computer now. When i bought it, it had 2 gb. I will have to check that the memory matches the motherboard when i finally decide on that.

Message edited by author 2007-08-31 10:36:37.

mjwood0

Nikon D200

08/31/2007 11:01:47 AM · #12

Sounds like a good setup. I'm not sure the quad core would really do much for you and I would probably lean toward the faster dual.

With regards to RAM. I would really tend more toward 4GB if the OS will support it. I'm kinda out of the loop here with Microsoft's newest stuff as I switched to Mac and Linux. It seems that memory is always in short supply -- especially with Photoshop.

Hard disk space you seem to have a good handle on. I would make sure you can put a nice large Photoshop scratch disk (or whatever it's called) on the fast hard drive.

Other than that, if you're happy with that video card (and it will work with the new MB) then it sounds like a nice solid system. Motherboards are always the hard part as there are so many different opinions. I usually tend to find a few that sound good and look for bundles that include the MB and the CPU. Usually a bit cheaper that way.

08/31/2007 11:24:34 AM · #13

Hmm well you have a point that the scratch disk would do well on the fast drive, but I wanted the programs to run on the fast drive so the scratch disk would have to be on one of the others... I have read a couple opinions that thought a faster drive wouldnlÂ´t affect the scratch performace very much at all

08/31/2007 11:31:39 AM · #14

Programs don't run on the drive. They load off the drive and then run (hopefully entirely) in RAM (which you are hopefully buying heaps of).

08/31/2007 11:41:05 AM · #15

hmmm.... then why do they often recommend using a fast drive as your install drive and have the photoshop cache on a different drive than it runs off of?

Message edited by author 2007-08-31 11:41:34.

08/31/2007 11:44:57 AM · #16

I'm not sure who 'they' are, but the world has moved on and people are building systems capable of running a program, even a massive bloated hog of a program, entirely in RAM. So the bit about having your executables on a fast drive is no longer the sage advice it once was.

You want your scratch disk on a different drive than the program so that the system isn't slowing down while trying to access both simultaneously. Again though, somewhat out of date thinking, as the program files aren't going to be constantly accessed on the disk per the above.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

08/31/2007 11:45:21 AM · #17

Originally posted by leaf:

hmmm.... then why do they often recommend using a fast drive as your install drive and have the photoshop cache on a different drive than it runs off of?

Because the programs load from the drive to memory as they execute. Also, they don't typically load the entire program in to memory at the start, so the drive speed impacts start up time and runtime.

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G IF-ED

08/31/2007 11:48:03 AM · #18

Anyway, there are far better forums to ask these questions on. Suffice it to say you are talking fractions of a second difference whichever way you go so don't lose sleep over any of this. Buy a ton of fast ram and 90% of your performance dreams will have been met.

johst582

Nikon D80

08/31/2007 11:55:30 AM · #19

If you don't have it already, consider a pressure sensitive wacom tablet. Very nice for photo-retouching (dodge/burn, clone, heal etc) and a true must if you want to do some illustration by hand (ok, that's outside the photoshop scope, but close enough...).

I'd get the Quad core by the way. I think photoshop is probably one of the programs that can make use of it, and many cores is indeed the way of the future. I'd also not be surprised if a lot of the photoshop engine will get off-loaded to DX10 capable graphics cards in the near future. GPU's now have specs like 80 Gbyte/s memory bandwidth, 128 cores with 32 bit FPU power to back up the memory bandwidth - thats orders of magnitude better than the CPU. So whatever you do, don't get a motherboard that doesn't support the latest generation of graphics cards.

08/31/2007 11:55:51 AM · #20

well i agree there are more computer related forums, but i didnÂ´t feel like signing up for one question. Additionally since this is a photography forum i thought there might be some photography computer nuts here who might have a clue as to what would work well :)

hopefully someone comes out of the woodwork.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

08/31/2007 12:05:48 PM · #21

You don't need a good graphics card for photoshop. It isn't going to use a 3D pipeline any time soon so don't waste your money. I've written these plugins for photoshop in the past so I have some concept of what's involved. If you are interested in PC gaming, get a great graphics card, otherwise a mid-range card will be perfect for photoshop. The bigger concern is getting one that can be calibrated well and has the right outputs for whatever your needs are (e.g., dual DVI if you want to run multiple LCDs, etc)

The gain for a quad core over a dual core for photoshop is about 25% for equivalent clock speeds. It just doesn't partition the algorithms that well. That may change in CS4 or 5, but certainly isn't just now. They may even release a patch - depends if it is worth the money to you in the hope it might happen some day. But Photoshop is inherently memory bound, not CPU bound. You'd be better with faster RAM than more CPU. Even on a dual core system it hardly ever maxes out both cores due to the memory latency for these huge camera files.

Other applications will get a large speed-up from a quad core processor (e.g., video editing often gets a decent boost because those apps are further down the performance curve and tend to be written better for multi-processor systems. They are also much more CPU intensive)

This is a good link for info on the things you want to optimise to get good performance from photoshop. Bottom line - fastest CPU you can find, most memory you can get and work on the fastest disks. GPU doesn't matter. Quad isn't going to help much.

Hardware

Photoshop performance is limited by the hardware you use: faster the processors or hard disks allow for faster image information processing. Other hardware options, such as installing additional RAM, using a multiprocessor system, or using optimized and defragmented disks, can also improve performance.

Processor speed

Image information processing speed is limited by the speed of the computer's processor, or CPU (Central Processing Unit). Photoshop requires a Pentium 4 or faster processor.

All Photoshop features are faster on a multiprocessor system, although some can take greater advantage of the multiprocessor system's capabilities than others.

Hard disks

Since Photoshop reads and writes image information while working on an image, the faster the access speed of the disk containing your image or the scratch disk, the faster Photoshop can process image information. To improve Photoshop performance, work on files saved on disks with fast access speeds, such as an internal hard disk, rather than those with slow access speeds, such as a network server (hard disk accessed over a network) or removable media, for example, Zip disks. Removable media often have slower access times and are more easily damaged than nonremovable disks.

Message edited by author 2007-08-31 12:30:58.

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

08/31/2007 06:14:29 PM · #22

thanks for that link.

looks like a lot of good tips there.

soup

Canon EOS-30D

08/31/2007 06:21:08 PM · #23

the dual channel memory needs to be installed in pairs. so 3g is not an option if you go with a 32bit win OS.

Originally posted by dwterry:

i'd also recommend doubling your MEMORY. 4G is usable on 64-bit Vista. On 32-bit Vista only 3G is usuable, but it's still better than 2G. I regularly fill up my 2G memory on the laptop when I'm editing bit files and wish the laptop had 3G or 4G of memory!

Message edited by author 2007-08-31 18:21:50.