dual p4's worth it for photoshop?

[dpopiz]

I'm going to build a comp for my sis in graphic design pretty soon. It's supposed to last her for about 2 years.
1. Will going for dual p4's help enough in photoshop to justify paying the extra?
if so...
2. About how much extra is it for a dual mobo?
3. What are some good dual p4 mobo's to look at?

 

[dbwillis]

1. it would
2. not sure, never heard of any
3. stick with name brands, Asus, Abit, Intel

 

[kalster]

forget asus and abit

use supermicro

rock solid mobo's for smp/server stuff

 

[Dreadogg]

depends on what kind of stuff your doing with photshop, I really dont think that it would be that much of an improvement. I would personally just get a good chip and lots of ram!

 

[human2k]

Asus Dual AMD board
Athlon MP 2600 x 2
DDR266 512MB x 4 = 2GB of ram (you know how photoshop loves ram)
Quadro 4 Video card


Alot cheaper than Dual P4's, plus the asus board takes up to 2gb of non registered ram.....

 

[dullard]

The P4 based Xeon motherboards are expensive. Expect to add $200 for the motherboard (compared to a normal P4 motherboard). Also note that the boards often require special power supplies - add more for that. AMD MP motherboards aren't that expensive - so going AMD will save on this cost. Although the MP processors aren't too much different priced than the Xeon processors.

Some photoshop filters benefit from dual CPUs. Most don't. If she needs the most speed possible, it may be worth it. If she really needs the power, the 2.8 GHz Xeons and the 3.06 GHz Xeons (no official release yet but places are selling them) will be as fast as you can get now.

Someone mentioned registered ram, very few people bother with that for simple photoshop work - don't get it for either an AMD or an Intel system. And yes get lots of memory - that means look at DDR not the RDRAM motherboards since RDRAM gets really expensive for the larger RIMMS.

 

[Spicedaddy]

I'd go with a single 3.06GHz P4 with 2GB ram...

 

[Varsh]

I have 1GB DDR RAM, XP1700+ and it all runs dead smooth of 4000*4000px @ 600dpi with 100 odd layers, to be honest, even though Photoshop loves the RAM, this is actually more than enough, unless you're going fr utter HUGE pictures, in which case I recommend the processor, more than 1GB DDR RAM and dual processors really aren't needed.

 

[zephyrprime]

I think you may want to consider registered ram if you are going to have 2GB or more. Here's an interesting article on ram power consumption: article

 

[m2kewl]

i can tell you my friends have used my amd duallie (specs in sig) for photoshop work (filtering, layering, multiple open images) and the dual cpus and 1gb of ram really helps, especially when there are multiple apps open eating up resources.

 

[tart666]

Somehow people forgot to mention that a second hard drive is more important than RAM amount or CPU speed. In case you forgot.

 

[Varsh]

True true, Photoshop runs much faster on a seperate HD other than the installed Windows HD, I have to agree with that, that's how my Photoshop is configured.

 

[jbond04]

Dual CPU's don't help much in Photoshop at all...that's just a myth perpetuated by Apple in an attempt to market their G4's. However, like m2kewl mentioned, it would help if you frequently use multiple applications at once. I think more RAM and a fast hard drive subsystem would provide a much bigger boost to performance than dual CPU's would...not to mention lowering the cost of the system.

I would go with a 3.06GHz P4, some sort of dual channel DDR setup, lots of RAM, and a blazing fast hard drive or two. If you have that kind of cash to burn...

 

[Varsh]

That's also still way over the top IMHO, I have more than 10 things, of which eat up a lot of memory, running in the background and it still runs as smooth as a baby.

 

[dpopiz]

lots of people are saying that installing photoshop on a separate drive from windows increases speed. does this include installing it on a separate partition on the same drive?

 

[Varsh]

Nope, having 2 partitions on one HD actually usually decreses performance as it's trying to read from two places on the same HD at once, this can also decrease the life of the HD (It's happened to me numerous times till I bought a seperate one). So in theory, having two seperate will run twice the speed as a dual partitioned HD.

 

[Dreadogg]

why not just set the scratch disk to the second drive or partition, should your really install the program in general to its own disk?

 

[Oreo]

Just get ALOT of ram. If you don't hit the disk it wont matter if you have it on a second disk or not.

 

[everman]

Originally posted by: dpopiz
I'm going to build a comp for my sis in graphic design pretty soon. It's supposed to last her for about 2 years.
1. Will going for dual p4's help enough in photoshop to justify paying the extra?
if so...
2. About how much extra is it for a dual mobo?
3. What are some good dual p4 mobo's to look at?

What exactly are you going to be doing in photoshop? If it's for learning photoshop then you won't need a very high end system. If she's a professional then you need all the power you can get. But from what you said

for my sis in graphic design pretty soon.

That indicates to me that she's just learning and doesn't need a high end workstation, certainly not dual processors.

Go with something like a P4 2.4, 512 ddr 2700 and a HD with an 8 meg cache. I doubt that she'd even come close to stressing that system for just learning purposes.

 

[GratefullySaved]

I'm a professional graphic designer that handles national ad campaigns, corporate identities, brochures and collateral materials, etc etc. I have both platforms and love mac more to be honest, but for a pc configuration I'd say the following:

first, what size file is she going to work on? For photoshop ram needs, just take your file size (say 50 MB) and multiply that times 5, then add another small chunk for the OS and for Photoshop itself to occupy. So for working on 50MB files, you want 250MB plus an extra bit, so I'd say go 512MB or 768MB in that scenario. If money is no object though, I would go 1.5 GB (three sticks of 512 DDR obviously) and she'll do just fine. I have 768MB on my G4 and am currently working on a series of prints that are 400-600MB in size. No problems whatesoever. And that's OS 9 on my mac, not OS X. I personally would also go with a 3 Ghz P4 and two fast HDs, but nothing exotic, just buy name brand quality 7200 rpm. I would do some research on finding quiet HDs and quiet fans, as I personally feel more creative when I can hear myself think.

Don't get TOO hung up on the hardware, although its a fun ride to configure these things... for a real designer, as long as you're not dealing with three year old technology, any current PC packed with enough RAM for their individual needs will be fine. I know of plenty of other designers still working on G3 macs for that matter, but I wouldn't necessarily do the same.

Don't forget to save some money for buying the educational version of the software she'll need (or maybe that's her job, dunno), and don't go all out buying the absolute best. With the money you'll by holding back a little now, put it in a bank and save it for the next processor upgrade in a year or so.

PS - If you go with less than a 3 Ghz P4 with HThreading, I'd probably go AMD and save some of that money I was talking about. Photoshop is not THAT big of a ram pig if you're not cranking out 200MB files on a daily basis.

OK< hope that helps, and I wish you the best in putting that rig together.

 

[teutonicknight]

I don't think it would. (Well I do, but I don't think it would be very cost effective.)

I think a P4 3 Ghz machine with HT, 2-4 GB ram, and 2 high preformance hard drives (Maybe 10,000 RPM) in a Raid 0 would do the trick; and be much more cheaper.

 

[DaTT]

According to Intel, P4 doesn't support Dual Processing (straight from Intels website)

 

[TonyB]

this system would be great for Photoshop

CPU - (2) Xeon 2.8GHz 533FSB 512k Cache Retail w/Hyper Threading
Motherboard - Supermicro X5DAE dual CPU motherboard E7505 chipset w/ Onboard Gigabit Lan
Memory - (6) Crucial 512MB DDR266 PC2100 ECC Registered Memory - 3GB
Video Card - ATi Radeon 9700 Pro AIW 128MB
SCSI RAID Controller - LSI MegaRAID Enterprise 1600 RAID (4 Channel) 64Bit 66MHz performance 128MB ECC SDRAM
Hard Drives - (6) Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 18GB U160 Hard Drive in RAID 0 - 108GB Max
Hard Drives II - (4) Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 73GB U160 Hard Drive in RAID 5 - 219GB Max
Floppy Drive - Any
CDRW - Plextor PX-W4824TABP 48/24/48
DVDRW - Pioneer A05 4X DVD-RW
Sound Card - Audigy 2
Speakers - Klipsch 5.1
Case - Supermicro SC850P4 Server Chassis
Power Supply - Supermicro PWS-0039 700W + 350W Redundant PSU
Monitor - Viewsonic 22" VP2290b LCD panel
Monitor II - Any

 

[Maelsturm]

Originally posted by: TonyB
this system would be great for Photoshop

CPU - (2) Xeon 2.8GHz 533FSB 512k Cache Retail w/Hyper Threading
Motherboard - Supermicro X5DAE dual CPU motherboard E7505 chipset w/ Onboard Gigabit Lan
Memory - (6) Crucial 512MB DDR266 PC2100 ECC Registered Memory - 3GB
Video Card - ATi Radeon 9700 Pro AIW 128MB
SCSI RAID Controller - LSI MegaRAID Enterprise 1600 RAID (4 Channel) 64Bit 66MHz performance 128MB ECC SDRAM
Hard Drives - (6) Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 18GB U160 Hard Drive in RAID 0 - 108GB Max
Hard Drives II - (4) Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 73GB U160 Hard Drive in RAID 5 - 219GB Max
Floppy Drive - Any
CDRW - Plextor PX-W4824TABP 48/24/48
DVDRW - Pioneer A05 4X DVD-RW
Sound Card - Audigy 2
Speakers - Klipsch 5.1
Case - Supermicro SC850P4 Server Chassis
Power Supply - Supermicro PWS-0039 700W + 350W Redundant PSU
Monitor - Viewsonic 22" VP2290b LCD panel
Monitor II - Any

How to tell if you're a real nerd: you shot your load when you read Tony's post

 

[DaTT]

I leaked a little at the sight of that case......