New PC time. Advice needed please.

So I was going to get a new lens or two, but as i have been trying to process my pics on a laptop, it has started to do my head in using it, so I think its time for a new PC, and put the Lens idea on the shelf till late next year, and use what I have more.

I have been looking at a dell desktop, spec is :-

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium - English
3072MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024+2x512]
320GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst cache
256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card
16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD Drives

And for the monitor, I have done a fair bit of looking round the net at reviews and I think I would like a BenQ 24" FP241w.

To top it off I will be adding a Epson R1800 or R2400.

So do any of you can tell me if that set up would be good for editing and printing my photos. Or another recommendations that you have will be appreciated.

Thank you , James.

If I were buying now it'd be an intel core2 quad, making sure it could also take the next generation of chips. I buy Samsung monitors and TVs and like them. I'd go with 2GB of RAM, and expand to 4GB if you need to - I just wonder if matched RAM is faster. I'd also get two hard drives, plus an external drive for backups. 24" is pretty huge, you'll need a big desk and I find bugger than about 20" you have to turn your next to see the whole screen, rather than just moving your eyes. I'd get Windows XP still. Not sure why you have two DVD drives but they're cheap.

The Athlon X2 is probably good value, if you go with it make sure it's the same platform as their next generation quad core model. I have an X2 4800+ (last generation) and it's still plenty quick for what I do.

For printing i'd suggest using commercial labs, there's no startup cost, the quality's great, and the only downside is it's not immediate. Printing yourself is a pain in the butt IMHO.

Cheers, just been looking and could get 2 gb ram instead of 3 gb and save 45 quid ,2gb should still be plenty i bet. if I were to get 2x250 gb hardrives that would be 60 quid more so think I would do that than get 3 gb of ram.

Well to start with I was looking at a 20" or 22" , but couldn't find one apart from a dell 2007 I think it was , but some revies said there were issues. so went with the idea of a 24"

cheers, James

grimreaper wrote in post #4281339
Or another recommendations that you have will be appreciated.

I'd get an iMac

I just upgraded my Core2Duo E6400 chip to the Core2Duo Quad Q6600 along with an additional 2GB of RAM for a total of 4GB. (3.5GB recognized in XP 32bit)

I've got the 2.4Ghz Quad Overclocked to 3Ghz at the moment and have gone through about 2 hours of stress testing.

All 4 cores are maxed out as I am writing this. In fact I don't see ANY effects from stress testing, at least in here. I can run the stress testing using just 2 out of the 4 Cores and the PC does't miss a beat.

That is a VERY sweet thing!

The Q6600 costs $279+ right now. I have a cheapo Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 Mobo and a 5 year old case, 3 hard drives plus an external drive, 30" Apple Cinema Monitor.

I think at $279, ths chip is a GREAT bargain. I paid $249 for the E6400 back in Jan 07...

Another for the Intel CPUs Q6600 or the E6600 much much faster even at stock clocking.

Well how much do you want to spend? Do you want to buy one that already built like a dell or do you want to build your own?

S.E.V. wrote in post #4281830
Another for the Intel CPUs Q6600 or the E6600 much much faster even at stock clocking.

Well how much do you want to spend? Do you want to buy one that already built like a dell or do you want to build your own?

buy one built i think, don't think I would be able to build one , well price wise max £500, to start with I was going to get a lesser spec than above but didn't think that wise,

Thinking about it I could put the printer on hold [or get a good A4 size one, and get bigger prints if i want them from a lab] and put the rest towards a better spec pc.

Well here are the specs of the PC i use currently.

AMD +4800x2
4gig ddr ram Corsair
4x320seagate sata hdd 2x 16x dvd durners
EVGA 8800GTX video card
Windows XP pro sp2
Printing on a Epson R1800
Veiwing everything on a Dell 24" Wide screen

I built it originally for gaming but does well for editing photos

just been looking again, and the above spec i posted would be around £460

but found i could get
PROCESSOR Intel® Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 Processor (2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 8MB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English
MEMORY 2048MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
HARD DRIVE 320GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst™ cache
GRAPHICS CARD 256MB ATI® Radeon™ HD 2600 XT graphics card
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
MOUSE Dell Optical Scroll Premium Mouse

for £690 , do you think the extra cost is worth it?

It says there are 2 pci slots as well, So I was thinking would I be able to get a better graphics card at a latter date and put it in there? or are dells just once you bought it thats it and you carnt do antthing else to them.

Cheers , James

You can NEVER have too much memory in a machine you are using for photoshop. If you are looking at installing the 32 bit version of vista you can only use about 3.4 gigs. I'm currently in that situation and thinking about moving up to 64bit vista purely for the ability to have more memory.

Of course it depends on what you are doing, if you find yourself working on multiple 8+ mega pixel images in raw format at the same time, you will feel the crunch. If you open and edit a single jpg at a time, you will be fine with 2gigs.

Imperitus wrote in post #4283911
You can NEVER have too much memory in a machine you are using for photoshop. If you are looking at installing the 32 bit version of vista you can only use about 3.4 gigs. I'm currently in that situation and thinking about moving up to 64bit vista purely for the ability to have more memory.

Of course it depends on what you are doing, if you find yourself working on multiple 8+ mega pixel images in raw format at the same time, you will feel the crunch. If you open and edit a single jpg at a time, you will be fine with 2gigs.

I will be doing one at a time , and if i have the money could get 3gb for 40 quid extra, so might be worth thinking about

Stay away form ATI cards right now, they have crappy vista support and not as powerful as a cheaper Nvidia card. The new 8800gt card is single slot, 512mb ram and FAST for $249....

Steve Beck wrote in post #4283995
Stay away form ATI cards right now, they have crappy vista support and not as powerful as a cheaper Nvidia card. The new 8800gt card is single slot, 512mb ram and FAST for $249....

i wouldn't be able to go that much , i could get a 256MB nVidia™ GeForce 8600GTS for a little extra would that be better than the ati hd 2600?

To me it is. IT benchmakrs fast in most areas and Nivida has drivers that are decent and updated very often to accomodate new applications etc. ATI is slow on the updates and have gone down hill in a bad way since AMD bought them.

Steve Beck wrote in post #4284126
To me it is. IT benchmakrs fast in most areas and Nivida has drivers that are decent and updated very often to accomodate new applications etc. ATI is slow on the updates and have gone down hill in a bad way since AMD bought them.

Thanks for that

so now this is top money that I am willing to spend on the PC

intel core 2 quad-core q6600 processor (2.40ghz, 1066mhz, 8mb]
genuine windows vista home premium
3048mb 800mhz dual channel ddr2 sdram
320gb (7200rpm) serial ata/100 hard drive with 16mb databurst cache
256mb nVidia GeForce 8600gts
16x dvd +/- rw drive

That comes to £777, hopefully that should be sweet for a couple years at least ,

Now just the monitor to decide , I would like a smaller than 24" I think , someone i know as just got a 22" but he got it for games. the BenQ 24" FP241w is still number 1 at the min I think