What would you do with 2k budget?

[vipergts831]

I'm in the process of upgrading my 3 year old dell xps laptop. Currently I'm looking at going with the new i7 2700k sandy bridge from Intel and building a computer from the ground up. Motherboards are limited in options at the moment due to the release of the chip not yet here. However, i have looked at the mac book pro 15 in at 1999 just because Ive always been curious about going mac. Question is which route would you go and if you went the PC route what would you do. This computer is to be used only for editing images and browsing. If power permits some gaming but that is not the focus to build around. Thanks for those that help out with responses :)

[r31ncarnat3d]

Along the lines of what you said:

i7 2600k with a good OCing motherboard, aftermarket heatsink for OCing, 8GBs of RAM, SSD, storage HDD, and IPS monitors.

[BeritOlam]

Haven't read much of anything on the 2700k i7's yet...but the 2600k i7's are pretty slick. In the tests I've seen, the 2600k's are pretty much the fastest of the quad-core processors to date.

Of course, the benchmarks are typically geared more for the gaming community, not photographers. I've been using an i7-860 (slightly OC'd and 12GB RAM) for a year now. And I'd be curious if these new i7's can run LR3/CS5 in noticeably faster ways than i7-8xx and i7-9xx chips. It's hard to judge specs on paper -- but from the data I've seen, the biggest gains over last year's i7 chips would seem to be of greater interest to gamers.

Once you've hit the 4-core/8-thread threshold, I personally would be looking at a 6-core solution as the next choice up in terms of performance. Of course, at a $2000 budget, you should have no problem getting the latest chip in a self-built box. So it's really up to you whether you want to spend the extra premium on what's new.

As for the 'switch to mac' option, that's really more of a user's choice. There are tons of Mac vs. PC threads in here that you can peruse, if you want the pros and cons. I use both on a daily basis....a 2-year old MacBook for work and a 1-year old i7 box for 'everything else.' I would stay away from a $2k MBP....unless you absolutely need a *mobile* editing solution. Laptops are certainly getting better by leaps and bounds, but they still don't come near the power of what you can get in a desktop. If you are willing to spend $2k on a Mac, an iMac would be a much better choice.

[r31ncarnat3d]

Youch, I'm rethinking Sandy Bridge now. I just came across an article here (http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/71568.html?wlc=1294177744) about hardware-level DRM protection.

I'd rather wait a while to see how well it's implimented before upgrading.

[Sp1207]

Once you've hit the 4-core/8-thread threshold, I personally would be looking at a 6-core solution as the next choice up in terms of performance. Of course, at a $2000 budget, you should have no problem getting the latest chip in a self-built box. So it's really up to you whether you want to spend the extra premium on what's new.


1. The quad-core 2600K outclasses the old i7 hexacore in photoshop anyway (while overclocking higher/having IGP/Sata6/EFI/hardware transcoder/etc).

2. I think you should spend most of your budget on IPS monitors if you haven't already.

2600K (320$)
8GB DDR3 (~80$)
H67 mobo (~110$
PSU/Case/DVD drive/Hard drive ~250$
SSDs (~100-300$)
Monitors (300-1000$)

[BeritOlam]

The quad-core 2600K outclasses the old i7 hexacore in photoshop anyway (while overclocking higher/having IGP/Sata6/EFI/hardware transcoder/etc).

Who says I was talking about the old i7 hexacore? ;) ;) I agree though that as of today (Jan 2011), one shouldn't be thinking hexacore just yet. The next wave of hexacores from Intel are going to rock.

Going back to the OP's original question....At $320, the i7-2600 is a very nice chip, certainly within a $2k budget. But when talking about LR3/CS5, the benchmarks I've seen don't blow me away vs. 1 year old i7's. And FWIW, the biggest gains I've seen came in the i5 Sandy Bridge upgrade vs. the older i5-6xx series -- that's where you see the significant jump in performance, understandable given it's jump from 2 to 4 cores! :D

You are right about the added motherboard expense involved in anything that's the 'latest and greatest'! That's why I think if you wait here soon for a price drop in the i7-8xx or i7-9xx line once the Sandy Bridge's come out, you'll get a really nice chip w/o the motherboard expense and w/o sacrificing much by way of CS5 performance.

But, again, if your budget really is $2k and you don't mind spending that kind of money, you should still have no problem building yourself a new Sandy Bridge-based machine.

Seeing that you have a 3-year old XPS computer....is this going to be your first build-from-scratch computer? If so, the biggest thing you can do is get yourself a nice power supply unit from a top brand like Corsair or Antec. In many cases, you're only talking $30-40 more than a 'cheap psu'....but it's a small price to pay, especially if you're building a system north of $1k!!

[r31ncarnat3d]

Corsair no longer makes the best power supplies. If anything, they've really been dropping the ball lately. Their newer models have QC issues and are rated at room temperature, and they've recently been swapping out their older TX/VX models with different OEM PSUs with lower build quality.

[vipergts831]

Thanks guys keep the ideas coming as you have given me a lot to think about. Once I get to my computer I can digest it all.

[Sp1207]

Going back to the OP's original question....At $320, the i7-2600 is a very nice chip, certainly within a $2k budget. But when talking about LR3/CS5, the benchmarks I've seen don't blow me away vs. 1 year old i7's. And FWIW, the biggest gains I've seen came in the i5 Sandy Bridge upgrade vs. the older i5-6xx series -- that's where you see the significant jump in performance, understandable given it's jump from 2 to 4 cores! :D

The old i7s are actually a 2 year old architecture (regardless of when they were released). I think the performance upgrade for CS5 is very nice (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/15), somewhere between 30-66% faster than an old i7 at the same price. PLUS they overclock/have integrated/all the new features at the same price as well.

You are right about the added motherboard expense involved in anything that's the 'latest and greatest'! That's why I think if you wait here soon for a price drop in the i7-8xx or i7-9xx line once the Sandy Bridge's come out, you'll get a really nice chip w/o the motherboard expense and w/o sacrificing much by way of CS5 performance.

Old Intel chips don't drop in price, and the SB motherboards are priced at the same level as the P55 boards that the i7-8XX ran on.

If so, the biggest thing you can do is get yourself a nice power supply unit from a top brand like Corsair or Antec. In many cases, you're only talking $30-40 more than a 'cheap psu'....but it's a small price to pay, especially if you're building a system north of $1k!!

I wouldn't call Corsair a top brand (excluding the units they relabel from Seasonic). They're decent but for the price I'd much rather have a Seasonic, XFX, or Antec.

[toxic]

This computer is to be used only for editing images and browsing. If power permits some gaming but that is not the focus to build around.

I dunno about all this talk about overclocking and what not, but that's not exactly stuff that requires cutting-edge performance.

[SillyGuy]

how much ram is best for windows 7 64bit? what brand and model?

do you guys recommend a video card for a sandybridge system too?

[BeritOlam]

how much ram is best for windows 7 64bit? what brand and model?

I think most of us agree that there's not much point (if not altogether worse!) in running a 64bit system....unless you are going to go greater than 4GB! And given that RAM has come down in $$$ about 50% just in the last 5 or months, there's frankly little reason why you shouldn't be running at least 8GB on a 64bit system.

As for brands....I think most of us have brand preferences, but the bottom line is that just about all of the 'lifetime warranty' brands sold at places like Newegg are going to be fine.

Usually the only 'issues' (if there are ones) are (a) a 'random' bad memory chip from the factory or (b) compatibility issues between a particular memory and a motherboard/computer. If you know your exact motherboard OR you have a computer that is fairly popular, then you can check the reviews at a place like Newegg to get a pretty good idea. For example, I've done dozens and dozens of memory upgrades on Apple computers (Macbooks, Macbook Pros, Mac Pros, etc.), and I've always been able to find reviews that generally tell me whether there are going to be problems. I've only had (a) happen to me once, (b) maybe half a dozen or so times.

I've got 4gb of Mushkin DDR2 in Macbook for work....2 1/2 years and never a glitch; 4gb of Kingston DDR2 in my wife's Macbook....1 1/2 years and no problems; 12gb of Crucial DDR3 in my i7 desktop....1 year and no problems. In the last month, I've also used Patriot and G.Skill in upgrades. If you read the reviews, it's of course possible to get a random bad stick in even the leading brands.

If you heavy into overclocking, then other factors are involved....which is why a certain brand might have certain sets of memory selling for 50-100% more. In these cases, the devil is in the details....but it's really only a concern for gamers (not photographers).

do you guys recommend a video card for a sandybridge system too?

From the looks of it, Intel's new 3000 graphics (on-die) look like they might be comparable to your typical $40-50 dedicated graphic card. For most photographers, that would probably be sufficient. It's only if you dealing in video/3D editing that a better graphics card is going to make a significant difference for you.

[r31ncarnat3d]

I think most of us agree that there's not much point (if not altogether worse!) in running a 64bit system....unless you are going to go greater than 4GB!

There's much more to 64-bit OS than simply the RAM. It's the one aspect that most people notice, but there's plenty of other pros to running 64-bit as well.

AT had a great article on this. I'll post it if I can manage to find it.

[-=reign=-]

1k on comp, 1k for the dell 30inch ips

[Sp1207]

1k on comp, 1k for the dell 30inch ips

This.

[vipergts831]

Thanks for all the responses. So i think im going with the sandybridge i7 2600k. Looking to spend like some said around 1k-1.25K on the computer and place the rest into a monitor.

[vipergts831]

Haven't read much of anything on the 2700k i7's yet...but the 2600k i7's are pretty slick. In the tests I've seen, the 2600k's are pretty much the fastest of the quad-core processors to date.

Of course, the benchmarks are typically geared more for the gaming community, not photographers. I've been using an i7-860 (slightly OC'd and 12GB RAM) for a year now. And I'd be curious if these new i7's can run LR3/CS5 in noticeably faster ways than i7-8xx and i7-9xx chips. It's hard to judge specs on paper -- but from the data I've seen, the biggest gains over last year's i7 chips would seem to be of greater interest to gamers.

Once you've hit the 4-core/8-thread threshold, I personally would be looking at a 6-core solution as the next choice up in terms of performance. Of course, at a $2000 budget, you should have no problem getting the latest chip in a self-built box. So it's really up to you whether you want to spend the extra premium on what's new.

As for the 'switch to mac' option, that's really more of a user's choice. There are tons of Mac vs. PC threads in here that you can peruse, if you want the pros and cons. I use both on a daily basis....a 2-year old MacBook for work and a 1-year old i7 box for 'everything else.' I would stay away from a $2k MBP....unless you absolutely need a *mobile* editing solution. Laptops are certainly getting better by leaps and bounds, but they still don't come near the power of what you can get in a desktop. If you are willing to spend $2k on a Mac, an iMac would be a much better choice.

From what ive read the new chips do give a performance boost when using CS5. I know its not what one would expect but it does :)

This is just one example:

http://www.techspot.com/review/353-intel-sandy-bridge-corei5-2500k-corei7-2600k/page11.html

I also went back and forth on mac or PC. Value wise PC has it. If i went Mac the imac is a hard package not to consider.

[Sp1207]

1K on a computer? That seems reasonable. Are you overclocking?

[BeritOlam]

From what ive read the new chips do give a performance boost when using CS5. I know its not what one would expect but it does :)

Actually, one typically expects the new chips to give a performance boost....and, sure enough, they do. Otherwise, Intel wouldn't be able to sell any! ;) But like all of these benchmarks, the results often can vary....and only a few of the benches relate directly to interests of photographers.

For example, in the Radial Blur test you linked w/ CS5.....22.5 sec. (in last year's i7-920) vs. 19.8 sec. (in the new i7-2600k) doesn't exactly jump off the page in terms of a huge step up. Certainly a gain, yes....but not nearly the jump that the first i7's were over the previous Core 2 Quads.

So all things being equal, certainly the new Sandy Bridges are the way to go, especially if you are building your own. Costs differences there will be pretty minimal. But, in terms of pre-bought systems, Dell recently slashed some of their previous XPS 8100's (w/ the i7-930's) in price, sometimes as much as 30-35% less than the new Sandy Bridges. And at that kind of price point, I still think someone could opt for the 'cheaper' i7 route. You wouldn't be sacrificing that much, and then maybe you have an extra $250 to spend it on an IPS monitor! ;)

I also went back and forth on mac or PC. Value wise PC has it. If I went Mac the imac is a hard package not to consider.

iMacs are premium machines. As Maxxum has noted many times in here, it's not really fair to compare 'cheap' Dells & HP's that similar specs as an iMac. I learned the same thing with my now-3-year-old Mac Pro.

Enjoy your new Sandy Bridge! :D :D :D

[JelleVerherstraeten]

Yesterday, I made 600 euro hackintosh with a i5sandy bridge, 4tb HDD, 8gb of RAM and a gigabyte motherboard.

I only use it as a download/Plex-server so I don't need a graphics card.

[uOpt]

Spending $2000 I would get an i7 single-socket Xeon, a Supermicro single-socket/unregistered board, 12 or more GB of ECC unreg and as many Seagate ES.2 as I have money left.

[tim]

Xeon and ECC are a total waste of money for a workstation. They're server grade parts that help reliability, not performance. Standard i7 and RAM are plenty reliable enough for 99.9% of people.

[uOpt]

Xeon and ECC are a total waste of money for a workstation. They're server grade parts that help reliability, not performance. Standard i7 and RAM are plenty reliable enough for 99.9% of people.

99.99% of people are idiots :)

I wouldn't say never but I'm trying very hard (and spend) to always have ECC on main computer that is doing my important stuff. And I think I understand some of the implications. That doesn't mean I'll force buying expensive ECC solutions on casual users. But if you want to sped $2000 on a non-gaming computer then yes.

A $2000 budget is also high enough that you want to aim at more RAM, and hence the i7 board with 6 slots makes sense.

[tim]

Yes six slots is definitely something you want. ECC is essential for servers processing high volume financial transactions, but for photos I really don't think it's useful.

ECC = Error Checking and Correction (for people who don't know the term)

[uOpt]

Yes six slots is definitely something you want. ECC is essential for servers processing high volume financial transactions, but for photos I really don't think it's useful.


Until a faulty memory module corrupts all your harddrive contents, including photos you didn't even look at for years (remember, filesystem metadata can also have it's bits flipped and hence can wipe out files unrelated to current activity).

Then you do the classic thing that Windows people do today, which is have a single USB disk with no snapshots as backup. You will overwrite that single backup with the now bad original photos before you discover the corruption.

Then you push it out to the cloud and now you have a copy that is safe even against a nuclear attack on your hometown, except it contains junk.

No thanks.

If you have 8 GB of RAM and half a terabyte of photo data you are way north of what a "transaction server" was a couple years ago.

[tim]

That's true, however I rate the chances of that happening is practically zero. You'd notice very quickly if your ram was faulty, and run memtest or similar.

ECC is fine if you want to spend the money on that and the other server grade components to support them, but I just don't think it's worth it for most people. I guess it depends on your paranoia level.

[uOpt]

That's true, however I rate the chances of that happening is practically zero.

Well, that's what people assume who don't have error detecting RAM and hence their system never tells them :)

Every time I look up one of the ECC (corrected) error logs there are a couple. And that's with hardware that's generally higher quality than desktop junk.

You'd notice very quickly if your ram was faulty, and run memtest or similar.


First of all, that's way too late. If the thing already starts crashing on you you have been living with bad memory cells for a while.

Then, memtest86+ is a no-load test and doesn't really detect everything. That is why the overclockers test with SuperPi, too. But then you have downtime. What you gonna do? Take the box down for 48 hours every time Firefox crashes?


ECC is fine if you want to spend the money on that and the other server grade components to support them, but I just don't think it's worth it for most people. I guess it depends on your paranoia level.

You don't have to. If you stay with unregistered RAM and single-socket platforms it can be quite cheap. In the Intel world Intel has now decided to screw you and with i5/i7 you must buy a Xeon CPU and a more expensive board to get ECC.

But any $80 AMD chipset made by Asus supports 4 slots of unreg ECC just fine, both AM2 and AM3 sockets, both DDR2 and DDR3.

The ECC unreg memory costs 50% more ($60/4GB instead of $40) but even for a 16 GB machine that doesn't kill you. The total machine price only goes up moderately, less than $100. As I said only in the AMD world as of now.

But at a $2000 budget you can pay what Intel wants for the Xeon CPU and what Asus has to charge for the ECC capable board, or a Supermicro board if you prefer Intel. Hence my post.

BTW, that argument "memory errors are way too rare in this generation of hardware released right this year" has been thrown at me every single year since 1992 when I started using ECC. It's getting old. And we have many more memory bits in a computer to flip now. And we push data onto harddrives much faster. And filesystems are more complicated and are easier to damage with randomly flipped metadata bits.

[tim]

You make a compelling argument for ECC, at least for professionals jf not everyone. If it were $100 it'd be a no-brainer. On the inter side if you have to upgrade to a Xeon CPU and server grade motherboard then the extra money could start to be quite significant.

Another area of concern is hard drives, with ever increasing data density. I wonder if they have ECC or similar, like an encoding with error correction?

[uOpt]

You make a compelling argument for ECC, at least for professionals jf not everyone. If it were $100 it'd be a no-brainer. On the inter side if you have to upgrade to a Xeon CPU and server grade motherboard then the extra money could start to be quite significant.


Right. That is a major reason why I used Intel with Core2 but then switched to AMD instead of i7. Full ECC capable CPU+board for $180 and even lower if you want to.


Another area of concern is hard drives, with ever increasing data density. I wonder if they have ECC or similar, like an encoding with error correction?

Yes, all harddrives always have checksumming on all the time, you can't turn it off.

Drives like Seagate's ES.2 series promise a 10 times lower read error rate than regular drives but I'm a little sceptical about that. It's the same drives after all, just tested differently and maybe a couple firmware hacks. I still run on ES.2s but I wouldn't hesitate much to pick regular drives for money reasons. A bad block on a drive will ruin only the file it's in and can't easily corrupt totally random blocks. Plus you will get the error message the first time the block tanks, so you can't wipe out your good backups with the bad version of the file without noticing. I use RAID on top, that offers a bit extra protection.

[tim]

I guess the ES.2 series could overprovision, and keep copies of the data on different parts of the disk, kindof like in disk raid. But that's probably overkill, and too expensive, when you can raid between disks easily enough. Which I don't bother with btw.

[uOpt]

BTW, sorry for getting all humped up about the ECC issue. I'm really not in the business of telling people what to build and I'm normally very friendly.

It's just a sensitive topic since Intel has decided to screw people who want leightweight ECC systems and I had to go AMD (see above). I like choice, too :)

[BeritOlam]

How'd we get onto the subject of ECC vs. non-ECC memory anyhow? LOL....

[tim]

How'd we get onto the subject of ECC vs. non-ECC memory anyhow? LOL....

What's your favourite type of mustard?

[uOpt]

How'd we get onto the subject of ECC vs. non-ECC memory anyhow? LOL....

A budget of $2000 for a non-gaming machine allows you to put in ECC and IMHO you should. It's not enough money to go SMP (and stay high clocked) and $2000 allow you to buy the fastest or almost-fastest single socket CPU easily.

So you'd add lots of RAM. Lots of bits to flip.

i clearly marked it as my opinion. The original question is "what would you do with 2k?". That's what I would do.

[bohdank]

There is a case for ECC memory but having used computers daily since the mid 80's and currently working for a very large financial services company with thousands of PC's world wide.... I've never had a system on my desk that uses ECC and, quite frankly, find it unnecessary but I do respect differing opinions.

[Sp1207]

A budget of $2000 for a non-gaming machine allows you to put in ECC and IMHO you should. It's not enough money to go SMP (and stay high clocked) and $2000 allow you to buy the fastest or almost-fastest single socket CPU easily.

So you'd add lots of RAM. Lots of bits to flip.

i clearly marked it as my opinion. The original question is "what would you do with 2k?". That's what I would do.

You sound a LOT like a server guy. There's good reasons not even medical businesses use ECC on their desktop machines.

[uOpt]

There is a case for ECC memory but having used computers daily since the mid 80's and currently working for a very large financial services company with thousands of PC's world wide.... I've never had a system on my desk that uses ECC and, quite frankly, find it unnecessary but I do respect differing opinions.

But not having ECC in the first place also means you never get an error count, since it fails both to correct and to report errors.

My logs from ECC equipped machines are pretty much never entirely empty after the box ran a couple years 24/7. And then sticks that actually break hard but gradually so over -say- a week are an entirely different problem.

[uOpt]

You sound a LOT like a server guy. There's good reasons not even medical businesses use ECC on their desktop machines.

Why would they have reliable PCs to make MS Word attachments saying "meeting at 3, bring donuts or you are the next test subject"?

The situation isn't comparable to somebody who writes masses of uncompressed high-res pictures to his disk. Not to mention might make an income out of them without having the luxury of an employer that has to pay even if incompetence prevented any useful output from the hours spent.

And remember, all of you run plenty ECC on the disk and on the caches within the CPU. Even your movie DVDs have CRC checksums. Everything does, *except* most people's RAM.

[Rmitchell248]

What would you do with 2k budget?

spend 4500 LOL (sometimes Im not the best with restrictions)