Need advice.

[HenryWphoto]

I'm planning to buy a new PC, 90% use for photo editing (Photoshop CS3). I will max out the RAM to 4 GB. Is the integrate video card any good? or should I upgrade the video card? my budget is under $600.00, don't want to spend too much.
I spent almost $2000.00 for my older PC 2 years ago, and it worth nothing now :-(.


http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?cs=19&dgvcode=ss&c=US&l=EN&vw=list&oc=DDDADG4&dgc=CJ&cid=7420&lid=0

Thanks

[HenryWphoto]

I guess this desktop is not good enough :-(

[goforphoto]

4Gigs of ram is nice but what you really need is processor speed. Quad core is the way to go.

[Pete]

You don't need to go overboard on spending. 4Gb of RAM will help you a great deal more than a faster processor.

Upgrading the video card will probably be a good way to go also.

[PixelMagic]

For a computer that will be mostly used for Photoshop your configuration is more than enough.

You do not need an upgraded video card, Photoshop will run on a card with on 64MB memory. I would however add a smaller hard drive to be used as a Photoshop scratch disk and choose a 64-bit operating system to maximize the usage of the installed RAM...a 32-bit operating system like Windows XP only recognizes 2 GB RAM and even with the 3 GB switch, it will only recognize about 3.5 GB....a 64-bit OS will recognize all your RAM.

In fact if you install 8 GB RAM, Photoshop will load your image data in RAM instead of using the scratch disk and RAM is infinitely faster than a hard drive.

See these links:
Photoshop system requirements: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/systemreqs/
Optimizing Photoshop: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/PSWorldPerformancePreso_final.pdf
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=332271

[Bobster]

a 64-bit OS will recognize all your RAM.thats not strictly true, you'll have to find a good motherboard that allows the RAM to be used rather than setting 512 for the onboard and PCI devices..