Best computer?

[Philipthechef]

I am thinking of upgrading my old PC (which I've had for four years now). I am not so computer literate, and would like your opinions on what would the best 'bang for buck' system that I could buy (not interested in building one myself).

I would use it primaraly for photography and browsing. I do not play games or edit video. My biggest frustration at the moment is the time it takes to move between images in lightroom or do anything in photoshop - it would also be nice to switch quickly between photo editing and browsing. Your help is appreciated!

[Moppie]

Look for something with a Q8200 quad core and 4GB of ram if your on a budget.

Unless your in a really, really small town, or can't get into Perth, you should have no trouble finding a local store you can build a system for you.

Then you can easily add some extra hard drives to keep your photos seperate, and backed up.

[Faolan]

Processor doesn't really matter to Photoshop, it's more RAM intensive than anything else. You could consider the AMD Phenom II lines as opposed to the Intel Core 2 lines if that's your budget zone. However have a read here:

ArsTechnica

[Moppie]

Originally Posted by Faolan

Processor doesn't really matter to Photoshop, it's more RAM intensive than anything else.

This has been discussed and disproven so many time's now it isn't funny.

Photoshop needs lots of both, and the more of both you throw at it, the better it preforms.


Nothing wrong with the 3 or 4 core AMD Phenoms though.

[Faolan]

Ok, I should rephrase that post Processor *speed* isn't so much important as what it does with the speed it has and the cores available. An example my dual processor Xeon runs at 2.4Ghz, the Opteron Processor I've got on another server is also 2.4Ghz, yet it's almost 2-3 times faster (or more) in a lot of tasks.

However the point about Photoshop being RAM intensive is relevant, as I saw a marked increase of speed when I upgraded the Opteron system from 4Gb to 16Gb. Especially when working on Medium Format RAWs. Far more so than when I dropped in a second processor.

[Moppie]

Originally Posted by Faolan

Ok, I should rephrase that post Processor *speed* isn't so much important as what it does with the speed it has and the cores available. An example my dual processor Xeon runs at 2.4Ghz, the Opteron Processor I've got on another server is also 2.4Ghz, yet it's almost 2-3 times faster (or more) in a lot of tasks.

However the point about Photoshop being RAM intensive is relevant, as I saw a marked increase of speed when I upgraded the Opteron system from 4Gb to 16Gb. Especially when working on Medium Format RAWs. Far more so than when I dropped in a second processor.

Your missing the point.
Running on a good OS, any version of Photoshop from CS1 on will use as many core as it has available and it needs, as much RAM as it has available and needs (remember the 32bit limit).

How much it needs of either depends on what it is doing, and much it can use depends on the systems hardware.
Bus speeds, number of hard drives, disk speeds, and ram configerations can all impact how effectivly it can utilise the hardware.

Note that some process are almost entirly RAM intensive, while others are almost entirly CPU intensive, and many more make heavy use of both. All of them make use of the hard disk.

[Bobster]

Originally Posted by Faolan

However the point about Photoshop being RAM intensive is relevant, as I saw a marked increase of speed when I upgraded the Opteron system from 4Gb to 16Gb. Especially when working on Medium Format RAWs. Far more so than when I dropped in a second processor.

thats because after a few layers on a 16bit MF file and you've used 1.5GB+ of RAM.. so you'll benefit from more RAM..

[Zepher]

is the search feature broken?

[Philipthechef]

Originally Posted by Zepher

is the search feature broken?

why?