What would you do with 2k budget?

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

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.

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.

Youch, I'm rethinking Sandy Bridge now. I just came across an article here about hardware-level DRM protection.

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

BeritOlam wrote in post #11573010
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$)
Monitors (300-1000$)

Sp1207 wrote in post #11573328
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!

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!!

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.

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.

BeritOlam wrote in post #11574222
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!

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, 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.

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.

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.

vipergts831 wrote in post #11572466
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.

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?

SillyGuy wrote in post #11601109
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).

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.

BeritOlam wrote in post #11604246
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.

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

-reign- wrote in post #11604984
=-=reign=-;11604984]1k on comp, 1k for the dell 30inch ips

This.