Graphic Designing System

[MatiasZ]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to help a friend build a new system for it's company. This PC is needed for the graphic design department, and the reason they are buying it is because they already have a Athlon 1.2 with 1G of ram, but ther are handling big images (~500MB each) and the system is getting REAL slow. So, we are looking forward to build something that can handle this kind of material with some sort of ease, at least compared to the current situation. The software used is mainly Photoshop, Corel and Illustrator.

So, I would like to know what are the recommendations of the people in the know. I was thinking something in the lines of an Athlon X2 (because of dual power ), with XP x64 and 4Gigs of ram, but I don't really know that much. Recommendations on hard drives would also be usefull.

Any comments are welcomed

Regards,

Matias

 

[MasterBaiter]

Sounds good to me. However I'd recomend 2 sticks of memory with the X2 or other Athlon64 for that matter, unless you don't mind running @ 333 instead of 400 (due to mem controller limitations currently). If you go Opteron, you don't have this issue. There are some single socket Opteron mobos out there now, so it might be a consideration...

I'm not sure how I feel about Win64 actually. The last time I tried to install Adobe Creative Suite it didn't want to play nice. Methinks that was due to the dual 32/64 folders/registry. Just a guess though. The gain in Win64 was modest as well. Don't expect it to make a significant difference.

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

This sort of question gets asked often at http://www.storagereview.com/

The typical (financially sane) response is two raptors, one for OS and programs, one dedicated to pagefile, and add a 5-600 Mb 7200RPM drive for files.

 

[MatiasZ]

Sounds good to me. However I'd recomend 2 sticks of memory with the X2 or other Athlon64 for that matter, unless you don't mind running @ 333 instead of 400 (due to mem controller limitations currently). If you go Opteron, you don't have this issue. There are some single socket Opteron mobos out there now, so it might be a consideration...

I thought the limitations where in the way of 1T or 2T, not 400 or 333 FSB. Since I would like to have 4Gb of RAM, buying two sticks is not really possible. Maybe having 4 gigs of ram is overkill, but this is not a common situation (dealing with such large images, I mean).

I'm not sure how I feel about Win64 actually. The last time I tried to install Adobe Creative Suite it didn't want to play nice. Methinks that was due to the dual 32/64 folders/registry. Just a guess though. The gain in Win64 was modest as well. Don't expect it to make a significant difference.

But XP x32 can't handle more than 3Gb of RAM I think, and even then it needs to be hacked through the registry to tell the kernel to use a specific amount, or something like that. That's the reason I was considering installing XP x64.

The typical (financially sane) response is two raptors, one for OS and programs, one dedicated to pagefile, and add a 5-600 Mb 7200RPM drive for files.

HD speed makes that much of a difference on this subject?

 

[Tahir2]

I have had issues with WinXP x64 not seeing all 4 GB of RAM in customer systems. You will need to be very careful with the motherboard you get as well as most motherboards will not allow you to see the full 4GB either.

 

[MasterBaiter]

Yep, the point about 4 gigs of ram on a WinXP32 system is valid. I'm pretty sure that WinXP can run on 4 gigs of memory, but I think that is total memory. Meaning you'd need to turn your pagefile off in order for things to register properly.
The effect of the 4gig size of memory will most likely default you to 2T timing & 333 speeds.
AFA hard drives go... I'd run a Raptor as the primary drive, but I don't think it's a requirement for the others. Go with the biggest thing that you can use (realistically). Raptors definitely make bootup and apps snappy on startup!

 

[mczak]

Yep, the point about 4 gigs of ram on a WinXP32 system is valid. I'm pretty sure that WinXP can run on 4 gigs of memory, but I think that is total memory. Meaning you'd need to turn your pagefile off in order for things to register properly.

Not quite. The address space is limited to 4GB in Windows XP Pro (32bit), meaning it will never be able to use the full 4GB, most bios nowadays (for A64 boards that is) can remap ram above 4GB but Windows XP will not see it, you may lose about 1GB (even though WXP Pro supports PAE). Windows XP Server (standard) is also limited to 4GB, but it indeed will recognize remapped memory. Of course the 64bit editions won't have that problem, but as already said some apps may not like it too much.

The effect of the 4gig size of memory will most likely default you to 2T timing & 333 speeds.

True, though I haven't seen a single board test in the last two years or so which would have had a problem with running 4 (double-sided) memory sticks at DDR400/2T.

 

[Diplo]

The difference between 1T and 2T is virtually negligible outside of benchmarks.

Photoshop is SMP aware so the more processors you chuck at it the better. Dual core with 1MB L2 cache would be way to go.

Some kind of striped RAID array for photoshops own page file would be smart, too.

 

[MatiasZ]

Great, thank you for all the answers. The system right now looks like this, more or less:

X2 3800+ - is the best I can get on dual core, even thow is 512KB of cache should be better than the other options for that price (400$ aprox)
Asus A8N-E or MSI something - dependes on what I can get easier. I would assume Asus ¡ better.
4x1Gb Kingston 400-C3
1x 74Gb Raptor for system + photoshop scratch- is the most I can spend on HD
X300 - good image quality, PCI-eX and cheap.

How do you guys think this looks?

 

[Diplo]

For the price that looks like good choices to me!

Once setup I'd try running Memtes86 to see if the RAM runs OK at DDR400 and T2. If you fail any tests drop down to 333Mhz.

 

[MatiasZ]

Thanks for the advice I´ll let you know what I got as soon as I have any news.

 

[MasterBaiter]

Would be good to hear about your experiences.

 

[Blazkowicz]

why not have 2x1GB + 2x512MB. so you spend less and in case win XP 64 is not suited for your work, you don't waste a full GB.

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

1x 74Gb Raptor for system + photoshop scratch- is the most I can spend on HD

If your budget wont stretch further might I suggest try for a 36GB raptor for OS and programs and something like a 160 GB Seagate Baracuda ST3160812AS for swapfile ect. The system will run smoother with two hard drives.

 

[MatiasZ]

why not have 2x1GB + 2x512MB. so you spend less and in case win XP 64 is not suited for your work, you don't waste a full GB.

That's actually a great idea. Besides, 3GB should be more than enough for the task. I think I'll go this way.

If your budget wont stretch further might I suggest try for a 36GB raptor for OS and programs and something like a 160 GB Seagate Baracuda ST3160812AS for swapfile ect. The system will run smoother with two hard drives.

But won't the performance difference of the raptor to the seagate negliject the improvement of the 2 hard drives vs 1? Shouldn't the Photoshop scratch and swapfile be on the fastest drive possible?

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

But won't the performance difference of the raptor to the seagate negliject the improvement of the 2 hard drives vs 1? Shouldn't the Photoshop scratch and swapfile be on the fastest drive possible?

Idealy you would want each on their own hard drive, but that's going to cost too much. Having concurrent access to each hard drive outweighs the speed difference between them. I strongly suggest asking this question at storage review, you should be able to get more depth answers.