A survey about your PC...

[Joytek]

I am looking to upgrade my Computer since it is quite slow with respect to raw conversions and 16bit tiff handling in PS cs.

I currently have a p4 2.1ghz with ddr266 ram (that is the main bottleneck)

I am wondering what you guys and gals are using to do your image manipulations?

Thank you kindly for your input!

w.

[dtrayers]

I'm editing with CS in 16-bit mode on a 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz P-4, but they both have 1 Gig of RAM. I think your best solution is to up the RAM to at least one gig and if you can afford it add a second hard disk to use as a scratch disk and to store the image files.

[danphoto1]

I agree more ram is the answer because it will just speed up the process. I am currently using a 2 ghz processor with only 512 of ram but I have four hard drives a 200 & 3 80's I am satified for the most part but I know that more ram will speed up everything because your machine doesn't have to write temp files to the hard drive

[gsmx2]

I am using a 2.6 P4 with 1 gig of RAM and a 128 MG video card.

I think you have plenty of processor speed, so don't need to upgrade your computer. Increasing your memory and perhaps your video card should get you the speed you want.

How many RAW and TIFF files are you working with at a time? Opening too many of them could bottleneck the best of machines.

gsm x2

[Scottes]

I would defnitely not upgrade your computer - you're not going to get much faster. You'd be a lot better off upgrading your disk - the number 1 bottleneck in PCs today. Take a look at something like a mirrored IDE array using a Promise FastTrak RAID card, or even better got to a 3 disk SCSI RAID 5 array. The IDE route is probably around $500, the SCSI solution would be $2000.

What are you going to get out of a faster PC? Another 15-20% processing power that won't get used because the CPU is waiting for the disk.

[dtsrules]

The processors fine, all you need to do is add more memory. For space a new 200 gig ide hd wouldn't cost a fortune.

[PaulB]

The processor speed is fine.
Up the memory to at least 512Mb - preferably 1Gb if your M/B will take it and add that second HD for storage and scratch disk.
The amount of memory on the graphics (video) card will have little or no effect on the speed at which 2D images are drawn on the screen, modern large memory graphics cards are meant for 3D rendering to run games (we photographers don't stoop so low as to play GAMES on out computers; do we?).

[PacAce]

joytek wrote:
I am looking to upgrade my Computer since it is quite slow with respect to raw conversions and 16bit tiff handling in PS cs.

I currently have a p4 2.1ghz with ddr266 ram (that is the main bottleneck)

I am wondering what you guys and gals are using to do your image manipulations?

Thank you kindly for your input!

w.

Looks like you've got more than enough horsepower in your CPU so upgrading the computer wouldn't really buy you anything in terms of increasing your performance.

And, although, lots of disk storage is important for storing all your still images, adding a lot more storage or getting some sophisticated disk controller is also not the answer to increasing your performance unless, of course, your all out of it already. If that's the case, then definitely go ahead and get some extra storage but no need to change your controller. Although for video work, disk controller performance is essential, that's not the case with stills.

Video cards performance is also not an issue with stills so getting a higher performance video card with tons of memory is not going to help you here with your problem. Again, any performance improvement here is more meaningful when doing video work.

So that leave one area where you can really get the most bang for your buck and that's to increase your RAM memory. 256 MB of RAM is way too little memory for even everyday work. You should have at least 512 MB and the more the better. And, while you're at it, you should check to see how much disk space you are allocating for swap files. The rule of thumb is usually to allocate a minimum of 1.5 times the amound of memory you have. If you have Windows XP, I think you have to set this yourself because I didn't see any option where you can let the system take care of it for you unlike with the other Windows systems.

[Sketcher]

As mentioned in above posts, you're not going to get much from an increase in CPU speed. The likely bottleneck is your Software/OS configuration, then RAM, then HD Access. Address your issues in that order and you'll only spend money where it's needed.

7200rpm HD w/8Mbps Buffer should be standard EIDE fare. If you're wanting to spend a little more on a HD you can get 10,000rpm/8Mbps with Western Digital Raptors but they run about $4.00 per GB. W/out going SCSI, Raptors are the High-Performance IDE leaders in HD technology (at the moment of typing this).

[GearNut Zone] I run a 1.2Ghz AMD w/1GB RAM, Three 9.1GB 10,000rpm SCSI in RAID-0 for workflow processing and a 120GB Western Digital 7,200rpm/8mb for Data holding. Archive data is uploaded to an old Dual 400 Server w/120GB of RAID-5 with weekly offloads to DAT24. I'm fortunate to be able to take home SCSI gear which is no longer needed in our shop. But if I didn't have that option or if I were just beefing up a good rig I'd run a 10,000rpm 74GB/8MB Raptor for workflow and a 7,200rpm/8MB for storage.

It's important to have efficient workflow and program allocation as well. Even a 3.0Ghz 1+GB RAM workstation can be crippled by inefficent configuration. Unnecessary background programs running (not everything shows in system tray = you need to view running processes via Task Manager if in XP). If using Photoshop, you have an option of designating a separate partition for data offload (I don't recall the official term - someone who knows can name it). You can also configure processor performance to prioritize applications vs background services via the Performance option in your OS System Properties. As long as you have a lot of RAM (1+GB) XP does a pretty good job of managing Virtual Drives and Swap files but if you want to learn how to tweak for better performance you can tinker w/that as well *Read and understand what you're doing before doing it*. PacAce is right about the default of 1.5x System RAM being used for Virtual Swap File. ----->The setting is found: Control Panel\System\Properties\Advanced\Performance\Advan ced. I also have a workstation running multiple IDE drives and Mirrored using XP Pro's Builtin Software config. I don't see much of a performance boost - but it's a nice proof of software technology, it does work. Remember, read up before you tweak up.

Strip down the performance features in XP via Control Panel\System Properties\Advanced\Performance settings. If you're still running default GUI and OS enhancements you'll notice an immediate performance boost if you opt for maximum performance via this route. You might already know these simple tweaks but it's surprising how many people don't.


My Recommendation in this order:

1. Optimize Software/OS (you might find you don't need to spend money on better hardware).
2. Maximize RAM
3. Add higher RPM/Buffer HD for workflow.
4. Spend any leftover money on Camera gear.


*FYI: Most this talk of RAID and SCSI around here is coming from tek nutz whom make up a very small percentage of RAW workflow photographers (not an insulting reference). It's definitely the higher end of the way to do things but it should be realized that just because there's alot of talk about it doesn't mean that that's where you should be. There's a cost and learning curve to running that kind of gear which one might rather leverage toward other aspects of photography. And, with your current Rig you really just need to do some basic efficiency confguration and minimal hardware upgrading to see better performance.

That's my $.02 anyway (free after online rebate).

~Merry Christmas~

[Scottes]

*FYI: Most this talk of RAID and SCSI around here is coming from tek nutz whom make up a very small percentage of RAW workflow photographers (not an insulting reference).

I'm one of those tek nutz (no insult taken) but one who does a fair amount of RAW processing and A LOT of system testing (which I do for a living). I've been using PS since it came out on the Mac (though I'm still no guru). After re-reading the posts I'll make amendments to my post.... Agreeing with many along the way.

First, for some reason I thought the poster had mentioned the amount of RAM he had. So, first priority would be 1 G of RAM (at least 512). PS is a pig for RAM if you let it be one, and for processing 16-bit images you will want it to be a pig. A 10D image process to 16-bit TIFF takes 38 Megs of disk or RAM. Working on this is a whole 'nother deal, given undo levels and workspace. PS is very efficient about both, but it still takes RAM. PS will take several tweaks into account if you know what you're tweaking.

RAM allowance is a basic one - boot your system, start up your programs that you would use (including PS but don't load an image), and check how much RAM you have available. I'd set PS to allocate about 80% of this free space, maybe 90% if I *knew* I wasn't going to start any other programs. When I do PS, I *only* do PS - everything else gets shut off. (Including all those hidden system tweaks and progs that eat RAM and CPU).

Scratch disk - never ever set your primary to your C: drive. Always load PS onto your C: drive. Set 2 scratch disks on different disks, not just drives. With IDE 2 scratches on the same physical disk is almost useless.

Undo levels - I set 5 when I'm doing regular stufflike levels/curves, sometimes 3 if I need RAM and I know what I'm doing. If I'm cleaning up an image with clone/heal or something I might set 40 or 50 as PS is extremely efficient about this.

System progs and tweaks - get rid of them. My system tray has a clock in it and nothing else. I check running tasks and permanently kill anything unnecessary. I also run Ad-Aware to get rid of crap I might have picked up on the net. Delete everything in the Startup folder.

Optimize OS - are you using DMA mode on your disk? Too much to go into here, but check into it. It's quite possible that you are not using DMA mode - this means that you're requiring CPU to read or write files. DMA mode means about a seven-fold increase for disk IO on IDE.

Disk - I'll harp on disk. After RAM it is the number one hardware optimizer for something like this. Once you have a gig of RAM then it's time to look at Disk. Sketcher's point about the fast IDE Raptor disks is great - it's a lot less expensive that SCSI RAID. Next up is IDE RAID with 2 Raptor disks - but not if you mirror, because writes to mirror RAID take as long as a write to a single disk - mirror doubles reads, has no effect on writes. Then comes 3+ disk fast SCSI RAID, the ultimate performer. This ain't cheap, but it's another huge improvement. As I mentioned I do system tests for a living. IO based tests running email and web servers and databases and such. Much heavier IO than PS, so not so relevant, but if you read and write large files then it can be huge. Yes, it's more pertinent for video, but it makes a difference.

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/cpu.gif

Above shows my CPU chart from a single RAW conversion using CaptureOne. The red is system CPU usage, mostly disk IO. Note the end where the red goes very high for 7-8 seconds - that the file write of a 19 meg TIFF, so make that about 15 seconds for a 16-bit TIFF. So about 12-13 seconds for processing the file, and 14-15 seconds for writing a 38 meg 16-bit TIFF. Hmmm, makes sense to me that a faster drive would speed this process.

Be to summarize:
1) More RAM
2) Optimize PS (more bang for the buck than optimizing OS)
3) Optimize OS
4) Faster disk
5) RAID 5 on SCSI

[DonCoon]

joytek wrote:
I am looking to upgrade my Computer since it is quite slow with respect to raw conversions and 16bit tiff handling in PS cs.

I currently have a p4 2.1ghz with ddr266 ram (that is the main bottleneck)

I am wondering what you guys and gals are using to do your image manipulations?

Thank you kindly for your input!

w.

Why does everyone think he has too little memory? DDR266 is not an amount; it's the type and speed.

He could have 64MB, 512MB or 4GB of 266Mhz DDR memory based on the information he supplied.

[karusel]

I've got AMD 1800+ and 512 MB RAM and it's enuff for me. If you want to upgrade, get more RAM and a fast disk, like 36,7 GB 10K rpm WD Raptor to use it as a system disk.

[Belmondo]

For those of you who are not sure what you have, here's a great free utility you can download.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Tom

[DonCoon]

belmondo wrote:
For those of you who are not sure what you have, here's a great free utility you can download.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Tom

I'll second that!

[CyberDyneSystems]

Joytek,.

the three things I would look to upgrade are as follows

1. As others have said.. more RAM,. get a Gig if you run XP

2. A better graphics card may help your editing speeds mor ethan an incremental boost in CPU power.
(I would say DON'T upgrade that P4 untill you are ready to go 64Bit.)

Dump whatever card you own and get a good Matrox card if image editing is the priority. The only thing you stand to loose is gaming horsepower,. but the Matrox will outperfrm any Nvidia or ATI when it vcomes to working in 2D in Photoshop.

3. I don't know what you have for a monitor,. but I bet you need a better one. Get nothing less than a Sony 19" flat aperture grill (not an LCD) to go with your nerw Matrox graphics card.

[hawg]

joytek wrote:
I am looking to upgrade my Computer since it is quite slow with respect to raw conversions and 16bit tiff handling in PS cs.

I currently have a p4 2.1ghz with ddr266 ram (that is the main bottleneck)

I am wondering what you guys and gals are using to do your image manipulations?

Thank you kindly for your input!

w.
I agree with everyone else. Get more RAM as much as your motherboard will support. Find out how many more slots you have for RAM expansion and what is the max each slot will take. I use both the Mac and PC platform and getting more RAM seems to be the easiest upgrade.
Another thing I did, which might be more work, is reinstalled XP on the PC. I find that most store bought PC's are bundled with so many apps that you don't need. So I reinstalled the OS and turned off the bells and whistles. Then I installed PS and an antivirus software. In essence , I have a PC dedicated to Photoshop.

Cheers,

[Belmondo]

hawg wrote:In essence , I have a PC dedicated to Photoshop.

Cheers,

I've actually thought about doing something similar. A stand-alone PC without all the garbage installed, plus a high-end 2D graphics card and a separated HD for the scratch disk would be a dream. I've been looking at the Matrox card that supports two monitors. It's pricey, but looks really good from everything I can tell.

[Scottes]

I've been looking at the Matrox card that supports two monitors.

That's really sweet since you can have all your panels on the other monitor. Even expand the panels so your Layers and Channels are both open at the same time. While the Tab key to hide all panels is nice, it can't compare to having a seperate monitor. I wish I had the room for another monitor.

I've heard that Windows will mess up (or be bothersome) if the 2 monitors are at different resolutions though.

[Belmondo]

I don't know about a problem with different resolutions on separate monitors---I haven't tried it. I'm running two monitors right now (alhtough not on a Matrox card), but I'm using the same resolution on both. I think it would be distracting to have the motiors setup differently, especially becuase I'm always dragging things back and forth between them.

[hawg]

scottes wrote:
I've been looking at the Matrox card that supports two monitors.

That's really sweet since you can have all your panels on the other monitor. Even expand the panels so your Layers and Channels are both open at the same time. While the Tab key to hide all panels is nice, it can't compare to having a seperate monitor. I wish I had the room for another monitor.

I've heard that Windows will mess up (or be bothersome) if the 2 monitors are at different resolutions though.

I wonder how much more complex monitor calibration will be. You will have to but 2 similar monitors and still it won't guarantee it will be the same.

[Belmondo]

Hawg:
I really only worry about the color on one monitor. I have a flat panel and a CRT. I do all my image editing and color adujustments on the CRT, and just about everything else on the flat panel. They're pretty close, but even if they weren't, I wouldn't mind. I only worry about calibrating the CRT.

[hawg]

belmondo wrote:
Hawg:
I really only worry about the color on one monitor. I have a flat panel and a CRT. I do all my image editing and color adujustments on the CRT, and just about everything else on the flat panel. They're pretty close, but even if they weren't, I wouldn't mind. I only worry about calibrating the CRT.

Tom:
If you ever go the 2 monitor route,please post your results. I am interested in doing the same thing on my mac but I ran out of real estate in my computer table.

Thanks,
hawg

PS
this rain is starting to suck.

[mebow]

For RAW 16 BIT Processing I am running XP on a 2.6 GHZ P4 platform with 1 GB of RAM, 100GB of inboard hard drive, 200GB of external Iomega archive and backup storage/w firewire, a Microtech card reader w/Firewire and an NEC 21 inch Multisync FP 1350 CRT monitor.

Sounds like you need for memory for processing. My 2 cents worth.

[Derek Smith]

I work on a PC running Win2000.
Hardware is:- P4 2.8ghz, 2gig of RAM, 30gig High speed serial system hard drive, two 120 gig IDE data drives and a 1ghz network connection. Output is into a 22" EIZO Flexscan

The 2 gig of RAM means that the scratch disk is rarely used. Like the others commented though, the machine ONLY runs Adobe graphics products. My desk runs a bank of four PC's through a switch, the other PC's carry the other tasks - email, web, Nero, etc. etc. The graphics machine ONLY does graphics.

The only gripe I have with this setup is that I seem totally incapable of remembering that I cannot COPY on one machine and PASTE onto another. One day 'Group Windows' will be invented and hopefully become as smart as Photoshops ability to share selections amongst open files.

Derek

[Sketcher]

Derek,

Not quite "Copy/Paste" between the machines but if you want unattended file sync between the two you can schedule a batch file to run regularly (or manually)and have the contents of one folder automatically copied to a folder on the other computer. Or just dropping a shortcut on your desktop to a shared folder on another machine and just copy/pasting to that link. Still not copy/paste in the open program sense but a step in the sync direction anyway.

Just a thought.

[chris.bailey]

I have a 2.6 P4 with 1GB of DDR300 Ram. I have two 120 GB SATA drives as Raid 0 and if you have SATA ability on your motherboard this is a good way of getting speed for the system drive without going SCSI. I then have a 120 GB drive which I use as a scratch disk and as a primary backup drive and then CD's and DVD's as long term archives plus as my pics are backed up to a portable Flip2Disk. Yes I do have 3 backups of everything.

CS seems very RAM hungry and as others have said, up the RAM made available to it to 80% and have nothing else running at the same time. I have tried various graphics cards and to be honest they seem to make very little diffference to CS so I have one that is stable and give me the screen res I need. Extra RAM (I just went from 512 to 1GB) made the bigest difference to CS.

[Motorsports Photo]

Processor speed doesn't really seem to have a LOT to do with opening and printing pics. I do all my remote stuff using a PIII 450 with 348 meg of ram. I've only crashed it when I ran out of space for the scratch disk. I've had 35 images open, sized to 4x6, and in a printer queue with no problem.

I guess if you are processing multiple raw files to tiff, that would be a lot different.

-Pete

[GenEOS]

I enjoy waiting on the images to develope in my processor. For that reason I am staying with my P3, 500Mhz with 512Megs of RAM. I will take all the donations from you guys with the junk P4 2+ gigahertz machines though!!!

[karusel]

Derek Smith: I fail to understand the necessity for 5 computers to save time. One thing is for damn sure: you don't save any money. I would understand your arsenal if you were working in a 3D program such as 3D studio so you'd have a renderfarm, but 2-D graphics?

Also, what's a 1ghz network connection?

Just wondering. :roll:

[BCdives]

Abit AT7 MoBo/3ghz AMD/Gforce4 vid card/2 gig of DDR Ram/Viewsonic 19 Flatscreen/580Gig worth of hardrives/4.3mg per second internet connection.

[Derek Smith]

Hi karusel,

No, not five machines, only four, and I never said they were to save time (although they do). One of them handles all the printing and the RIP for the large format printer. It means that jobs can be being printed without any load being placed on the graphics PC processor. One machine, an old PII runs the email, ISDN and FTP. Again, when large files are being sent or rcvd. it happens without any load on the graphics PC. One of the machines (a PIII) is used ot run batch raw conversions and batch noise reductions, both relatively slow and processor intensive operations, so the PIII is just left to crunch through them.

The big value for doing this though is STABILITY. I found that Windows will behave itself very well if it only has a handful of programms to worry itself about. If I loaded all the programms I used onto one machine, it rapidly became flaky and soom became unusable. No one programme was at fault, just too much for poor little Windows to comprehend in one machine.

So, whenever I upgrade, I dont tip out the old PC, I just relegate it to runnig a few progs and 'hey presto' they keep running forever.

As to the 1ghz network, sorry, its a 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) network. PC's and printers in my office used to be linked through 10/100 Mbps switches, but the latest P4's have 1 Gbps network connections and these are linked through a 100 Mbps/1Gbps switch which in turn is downlinked to the other 10/100 switches.

And finally, yes I am poor, very very poor. I also work 12 hour days, 6/7 days per week and have not had a vacation for years. Such is the fate of the self employed. Still, thats my choice, and one I am very happy to stay with, particularly as it means that I do not have to wait to see my pictures develop. It also means that when I finish the paying work, I have some great gear to 'play' with.

Derek

[IanD]

P4 2.8 (light OC) 1 gig TwinX DDR 3200C 400mhz - Nvidia based FX5800 Pro - 2 80g Segate SATA + 2 Segate 200g outboard HD's - Pana DVD burner - Pana CD burner - Custom Thermaltake case and cooling system - Audigy 2 soundcard and Cambridge Soundworks THX speaker system to listen to tunes on. Most important.....Asus P4C Deluxe mobo.
Ian

[fwhitesides]

I have an Athlong 1.4Ghz with half a gig of PC2700 DDRAM and also a 700Mhz G3 iBook. On the PC I usually have 3 to 5 RAW files open at once in Photoshop with no serious lag or slowness. On my Mac, just one at a time.

[TeraGram93013]

I fail to understand the necessity for 5 computers to save time.

That's 'cuz you're not a geek. :lol:

- T, geek.

[Phil Hall]

I think the two most important things are RAM and a good 126 mb graphics card. We just bought a 3.o mhz P4 with a 64 mb graphics card that is not much faster than a 1.8 computer with a 128 mb card.