video card to look for... (or other vital computer specs)

Hi everyone

I'm STILL in vapor-lock about what new desktop to get. I know that I should look for an Intel chip, the faster the better.. get a big hard drive... (min 500gb)

What Video Card should I seek out, or merely just avoid like the plague? I go to the websites that will help you "build" a computer online but I never know what to look for in that department.

If there are other things to avoid like the plague, let me know. When I do this "build" it comes up with something that looks like a good price and a lot of features, but I have no idea if the components offered are great or not.

Many thanks...

A good cost effective option would be an Nvidia 8800 GT 512mb. Plenty of power for doing any photo display and processing and if you're a gamer on the side it will hold its own.

Get a good solid video card, but this won't be the bottleneck for PP your work. My 4 year old card only has 128MB RAM, but it still chugs along pretty well.

Absolutely make sure you get a second hard drive to act as your scratch disk. This will speed up your processing tremendously. You do NOT want to be processing and storing your image files on the boot drive. I have three internal hard drives - 2 are scratch disks - as well as three externals for additional and backup storage.

Get the maximum ram the system will hold and recognize. My old XP machine has 4GB of RAM even though only 3.25 is recognized. That's ok though - it was onsale when I upgraded and did speed things up a bit. Hope this helps. - Stu

Best performance for $$ is the Core 2 Duo E8400. When I priced it (3 wks ago), I think it was like $170-$180.

If you do not like this chip (color, price, smell, whatever ...), when you buy chip look for size of internal cache - E8400 has 6MB I believe. The bigger the better. The speed of chip (MHz) is somewhat important, but can be misleading. If you have the $$, you can also go with "Extreme" or "Quad".

If you are going to use Photoshop or Lightroom, I recommend going with Vista 64-bit so you can use more then 3MB RAM. I had my new system specced for 8MB - I went with 1333 ones, two stick of 4MB.

Decent motherboards will run you from $150-$250 ... go above this and you are in luxury gaming type models. I specced mine with an ASrock that was in $150 range. It is SLI (2 video cards) - I had8800 GTs specced - I went with a "more generic brand" for around $140 each - forgot the brand, it was "forgetable".

Add in two DVD writers, a case, two 750GB HDs (Western Digital) and I think my total came out to a little under $800 - no tax or shipping included. I already have Vista 64-bit so that's not included.

Have not pulled trigger because trying to decide whether to go ASrock m/b or an ASUS around $250

Primary reason I am looking to upgrade is "DPP" - that darn RAW conversion process taking too long on my first generation Core 2 Duo. Also, Elements feel "slow" - if it's anything like Photoshop, extra memory should make it happy. AND I heard Lightroom 2.0 is optimized for 64-bit computing - YEAH!! Probably can't afford LR2 after computer, but can always wait for it be available academically.

smcclelland wrote in post #6182399
A good cost effective option would be an Nvidia 8800 GT 512mb. Plenty of power for doing any photo display and processing and if you're a gamer on the side it will hold its own.

I recommend the same. Excellent bang for the buck and probably the best value card out right now.

wow guys, this helps a lot. not that I understood everything you said, but I will seek out those components now. I was looking through newegg and you can "filter" your computer specs by type... which narrows it down a little bit.

ps Myst - how did you get that "built"? where would I go?

sa pearl, what do you mean by scratch disk? how do you use that?

OK guys, if you are reading this - how are these specs?

http://www.bestbuy.com …=product&id=121​0379087904

That's not too bad of a computer itself, but if your going to get it from Best Buy, get this one: http://www.bestbuy.com …=product&id=121​4611180474

It's a faster Centrino processor and a tad cheaper too.

Hi Beth - a scratch disk is another (physical) hard drive in addition to your boot drive C:.

On Windows machines there's always a lot of disk fragmentation through normal daily use and web surfing. I imagine similar things happen on a Mac, but I don't have that platform so can't speak with any authority. Photoshop and other image editing programs work best when all the data files are in ONE place, and have been subjected to minimal fragmentation.

When you setup Photoshop, you can specify a scratch disk. You are telling PS where to specifically go to retrieve, save and work on your image files. And this physical disk is a different location than the disk holding your program files. PS runs a lot fast and more efficiently when you have a scratch disk. - Stu

skywalkerbeth wrote in post #6185903
sa pearl, what do you mean by scratch disk? how do you use that?

I never buy pre-built computers. You could build the same specd computer with better quality components for a lot less if you build it yourself.

Dang... well, if you were to get a pre-built desktop, Costco.com was selling a Gateway FX desktop with a Quad core processor (a T9300 I believe), at least 4 GB of ram (maybe more), 64-bit Vista, and two 8800 GT cards in SLI. Plus, it was going for something like, $1000 or something. If you have a Costco membership, definitely check out their computer section, sometimes they have some nice things that come along.

Thank you so much everyone! I got the Dell screamer for 1200 bucks. I really appreciate the information you all gave to me - and Myst, if I were talented I'd have built one with your specs but I am not, alas. So I have to buy one...

Sounds good Beth - glad it worked out. I'm sure you'll be very happy with your new machine.

skywalkerbeth wrote in post #6220636
Thank you so much everyone! I got the Dell screamer for 1200 bucks. I really appreciate the information you all gave to me - and Myst, if I were talented I'd have built one with your specs but I am not, alas. So I have to buy one...