Building the ultimate PS machine (recommendations?)

[vfilby]

Hi All,

A pro photographer friend is finally biting the digital bullet, so I am helping him assemble a machine for digital photography work. His current system is scrap so this will be all new and shiny.

Here are my thoughts so far: P4 3.2GHZ CPU, ASUS P4P800E Deluxe MB.

For RAM I recommended 2GBs. I am alittle out of touch with the hardware world so I think I would want DDR ram. I saw DDR2 but I don't know what the difference is, can any one enlighten me?

For harddrive space I know 200GB would be nice but I thought it might be a good idea to have a second drive as a scratch drive for photoshop. I am not sure how much this would help but I think it is worth considering.

Decent optical mouse and the other small peripherals.

The montior is another point of contention. He would like a flat screen (and I love them too) but I have heard they are not wonderful for digital photo editing. Can anyone testify for their experiences with flatscreens and photoshop use? He currently has an IBM 15" screen that will probably be used as a secondary monitor.

Lastly the video card will only be used for 2D work. I have heard that ATI cards are good these days and the drivers are well supported. I have also heard that their 2D performance is superb (better than nvidia and comparable to matrox). I am an nvidia junky but I am willing to give ATI a shot here. Any recommendations for the vid card?

Thanks in advance,

Vince

[Canuck]

I'd go Mac all the way...they are designed for photo/movie editing. Look at the dual G5 lineup! Here's a link: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71907/wo/v13MBUNVaWoE2is0Yq01KyPIi8q/0.0.11.1.0.6.21.1.2.1.2.0.0.1.0 and I am going 100% Mac for my photo stuff.

[Scottes]

Ultimate? That's a darn good machine but far from ultimate. What's the real budget? Dual-CPUs and disk RAID come to mind, just to start. For monitors the Sony Artisan is one of the ultimate, the LaCie monitors are most definitely worth looking at. Any Sony aperture grill will do, but those are closer to "ultimate." And color profiling hardware should be considered, too.

But if I had the budget and I was trying to build a system solely for Photoshop, well, I'd get a Mac. Yep, I've been a PC guys for almost 18 years, but if I had the cash I'd get a Dual-CPU G5 in a heartbeat. Be aware of the "hidden" costs like buying [some] new software for the Mac, and buying new cables to fit the Mac, and so on.

[vfilby]

My bad no ultimate allowed, I'll remove it from the subject.

Budget is around 2K CDN, Mac is out of the question however nice it would be.

[iwatkins]

Recommend one large disk for storage and one smaller but as fast as is affordable for scratch disk is a very good idea. I did this to my machine and processing speeds went up by a lot.

2Gb of RAM is also a good idea. I ran with 1Gb for a while but Photoshop would start to swap to disk once dealing with large images having mutiple changes made.

As for a monitor, I cannot stress how important it is to get a good one for Photoshop work. Any odl TFT won't do. Look at the Lacie TFTs if you go that way as they are also available with colour profile hardware.

Dual CPUs are a god idea but they are not used as much as you would think with Photoshop CS on the PC. But when they are used it doesn't half make a difference.

Also consider something like a Wacom tablet for photoshop work. I couldn't go back to using a mouse, especially for things like freehand selections etc.

Ian

[PeterTaylor]

This is the basic spec of a computer, that I am going for early next year.


Mother Board
Tyan Thunder S2885, Tyan K8W Extended ATX

Dual AMD Opteron CPU’s

2048 MB ECC Registered DDR RAM

DVD Drives:-
Multi-format, Dual Layer DVD Writer (NEC 3500A) of an LG Dual Layer DVD drive with RAM Disk compatibility. The LG should write CDR, CDRW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R/+R

Graphics Card.
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB dual head performance card.

Monitor
Iiyama 19” Visionmaster Pro 454 Flat Screen CRT Monitor

Hard Drives:-
1 x 74 GB Raptor (System and software) Plus
2 x 300 GB (600GB) SATA 7200 rpm hard disks with 16 MB of CACHE (Data storage)