Computer Crossroad?

Honestly the only issue I see IS with the video card/SSD. You don't need a vidcard as the 2400 is more than sufficient for photo editing, and the money saved there will allow you to get a larger, faster SSD like the Vertex 2.

J-Blake wrote in post #11699218
I recently upgraded to a 1Ds MKII and the 17 meg files are a bit too much for my current system. I'm currently using a Core Duo X2 processor with 3 gigs of RAM. I'm considering a computer upgrade, but keeping in mind my budget I see my choices are to add memory or replace my motherboard/processor/​RAM.

If I upgrade just my memory I can max out at 8 gigs for about $120. If I go the motherboard/processor/​RAM route I can get into a Athelon II X4 640 for about $250 or a Phenom II X4 965 (Black Edition?) for about $300. I could also go a step up from there into a Phenom II X6 1055T for about $320. Each of these prices on new systems assumes 8 gigs RAM and each motherboard would be USB3 and SATA 6 compatable.

I have no way to measure the impact to my processing speed though and haven't a clue as to whether it's worth just adding RAM or replacing the boards. If it's the later, is there enough difference to warrent the extra cost of the X6? Here's the information I'm basing these upgrades on. I'm new enough to photography that I have a ton of things to buy, so saving this money would be extremely helpful. However, I don't want to be pennywise and pound foolish either. Any advice out there?

The DDR2 RAM in your Core2Duo is also more expensive than DDR3. If you have a 3 GHz or faster Core2Duo the money you get for the existing stuff isn't zero.

I wouldn't go with too many cores. I still rate per-core speed as important since you spend extended periods of time in single-threadec contexts, just starting with your web browser. Sure, some PS plugins might be threaded, but the general PS framework just huddles along sequentially like ever.

Also, the modern systems for DDR3 can take 4 GB modules, so even through most have 4 slots they can take 16 GB RAM, theoretically even 32 if they ever release 8 GB modules. I can tell you have 8 GB do not save you from shortages if you really rip it up with layers in a high-res photo from your camera. Another reason to jump ship.

Currently I like the AMD systems better. Cheaper boards, partially with better features (for example the cheap Asus AM3 boards have firewire, more expensive Sandy Bridge boards often don't), cheaper options to get unlocked multiplier CPUs and ECC unreg memory without having to go Xeon. The only thing I liked better about the i7 systems so far is that thanks to triple-channel memory you can have 6 slots in an unregistered memory board and have 50% more RAM. But now Sandy bridge has nothing so far, no triple channel memory, no ECC. There are a few other minor things better with Intel.

Don't get an Athlon, needless dumping of performance compared to a Phenom. I would get the cheapest Asus or Gigabyte made AM3/DDR3 board and 2x 4 GB modules and then a fast clockspeed CPU. 3 cores are sufficient if you lack cash.

I'm sorry Sp, are you saying that because I got the i5 2400, I'm not going to benefit from the graphics card upgrade?

I showed the salesman the CPU-Z output so he knew my old card and he was of the opinion that any graphics intensive programs including LR and PS would see a performance gain, though none of my other programs would. I let him talk me into this because the price of the upgrade after rebate was only $60.

Looking at the specs on the Vertex vs. the Microcenter SSD I bought, they both have very similar read/write speeds. Is there another measure of the speed that I'm not seeing? The capacity difference from 64 to 80 doesn't seem worth the $70, unless I have close to the 64 gig in programs which I still need to check.

To me the two issues are mutually exclusive. If the video card needs to go back or if I went wrong with the SSD then I need to correct these issues independently.

J-Blake wrote in post #11736710
I'm sorry Sp, are you saying that because I got the i5 2400, I'm not going to benefit from the graphics card upgrade?

Well, photoshop and lightroom have very limited support for GPU acceleration, which is basically limited to a few specific filters. A GPU is much more useful for Adobe's movie products with the mercury engine. For photoshop it has very little benefit, and the i5-2400 has a strong enough GPU to run photoshop/HD video/flash games fine.

The issue is that PS and LR are CPU and disk bound. A videocard will make games and some video transcoders go faster, but frankly Sandy Bridge is much faster than any other GPU at transcoding anyway, and if you were gaming the 430 isn't really fast enough for modern games.

For only 60$ it's not near as close to getting the 128GB Vertex 2 (~210$ at Newegg).

The Vertex 2 has some special sauch firmware that's a bit faster in random work, but I doubt you'd notice the difference.

For 70$ I don't think it's worth it either. But 100$ for twice the capacity is a much more attractive proposition.

Sure. Photoshop and lightroom will run fine on the integrated GPU of the 2400, and the GTS 430 will offer little (nothing?) in terms of performance. The SSD may be an issue because with the money saved from the 430 you're much closer to a 128GB drive. There's not really anything wrong with the Microcenter branded drive (all SSDs basically 'feel' the same in terms of speedup), there's just faster/larger ones out there that might be a better use of money.

Are you saying that I should use the integrated graphics card on the mother board, or use my old graphics card?

I just looked at my HD to see how much space I was using and I'd like to be able to report on it, but I was getting weird inconsistent results. When I did a properties on the C Drive it told me I was using 64 gigs, but if I clicked on C: and highlighted the files on the right it totaled 46 gig. To further complicate the issue, when I drilled down into my user folder I was getting more inconsistent results. For example I did a properties on a folder it gave me one set of results say 3 gig, but if I went into that folder and searched for the culprit I couldn't find anything close. Then when I backed out and checked the same folder again I got a much smaller number like 40 meg Something strange going on......

Incidentally, I have hidden files turned on, so the difference shouldn't be that. I keep most of my documents on D:, except for the stubborn ones. There's other stuff I can move onto D:, but it does look like I would benefit from a bigger SSD.

I think it is unlikely that you will see a large difference in photoshop between using GPU acceleration on the SB CPU or an older PCIe graphics card. I wouldn't worry about it.

I wouldn't worry about the difference between some SSD controller or another either. Most likely they will feel the same on a regular desktop load as long as they are the same generation. Of course bigger is better

Microcenter has a bunch on sale this month which are in the 120 - 128 gig for around $200 and may or may not still be available. Looks like the best thing I can do is go back, return the SSD and VC and look to find the best deal on a bigger SSD. Are there any brands to avoid?

Kingston is a low-end brand, Intel's SSDs are slowish, anything Indilux-based.

I would personally toss out your old video card as the 2400 is faster, less likely to break and uses a ton less power. Not to mention all the new features/standard compatibilities it has.

OK thanks. So how does that work? Do I tell the system how much RAM to use for video? And if so, how much?

Sp1207 wrote in post #11737685
Kingston is a low-end brand, Intel's SSDs are slowish, anything Indilux-based.

I would personally toss out your old video card as the 2400 is faster, less likely to break and uses a ton less power. Not to mention all the new features/standard compatibilities it has.

Well, very serious concerns have been brought up about how long the Sandforce-based SSDs hold their performance, with forum threads indicating that even read performance might collapse. The Intel X25 might not be the fastest but it doesn't have a Sandforce controller.

Kingston does not make SSDs. Kingston-branded SSD drives are made by Intel and Toshiba and possibly others.

I also wouldn't say Kingston is low end. I default to buy their RAM for more than a decade and it served me very well, better so than other manufacturers.

So, let me ask it another way, are there any to look for?

http://www.anandtech.c​om/bench/SSD/65

And I love Kingston, it's just right now their SSD's are aimed at the low-end market.

J-Blake wrote in post #11737739
So, let me ask it another way, are there any to look for?

My opinion still is that the proper cure to waiting less for your disk is more RAM. This particularly applies if you use Windows Vista or Windows 7 since they have the (more or less) intelligence speculative prefetch of disk blocks. People hated that feature when it came out but that's because they lacked RAM. The best combination is prefetch and lots of RAM. That beats SSDs any day. Sure, SSDs deliver random blocks faster than HDs but it's nowhere close to RAM.

I still don't use SSDs at home and only consider one for my gaming machine. Apart from concerns about technical properties of SSDs I also heavily dislike partitioning. I really like having as much of my space in one large filesystem and I only make separate partitions when I actually need space separation (e.g. uucp and mail spool). I hate shuffling directories across partitions and disks. That's huge disk waiting time for you right there. Of course if you use Windows before Vista you don't have symbolic links either (apart from abusing drive letters for symbolic links) making that a really bad thing.

In contrast, I use SSDs in all my systems because of how quickly they pay for themselves. Ram is nice, but I'd much rather have 4GB of ram and an SSD than 8 and a hard drive.

If you ask me, you just spent over $600 more than you needed to.

The first question to ask is how you work with your photo's. If you are trying to run Photoshop with 4+ pictures open at one point in time, then you will be memory starved. One solution is not to. Or get more memory.

Your biggest problem is that you CPU is getting rather old, and it just doesn't have the processing power that you are looking for.

You could have gotten a better CPU for your current motherboard. this

It will replace your current out of date AM2 x2 core with a faster core. I have run photoshop with older WinXP with 3gb ram running CS5 with my 50D that is about the same size RAW files as your 1DS2.

I will admit that I do now have a SB2600K and it is faster. How much faster? I'd say about 20-30% faster. The whole system cost me $800 when you add in the cost of 8gb ram, motherboard, cpu, video card, case etc..

The jump from an old X2 to a Phenom X4 is about 150-200% speed improvement. And if you could do that for under $100 bucks then you could have saved a whole bunch.

But that is just my thought.