My gf is going into graphic design next semester.. what to get for her computer?
- Thread starter TallBill
- Start date
Anubis
No Lifer
if shes gonna be doin a lot of CAD type stuff you might wanna get her a dual processor comp. runnin a Quadra Pro4. that woudl kick teh crap out of just about anything
I would avoid getting her anything with the words MICRO, or SOFT in it.
OTOH - I would think she'd need lots of RAM. WTH - Get her the BIG STICK.
huck, huck!
OTOH - I would think she'd need lots of RAM. WTH - Get her the BIG STICK.
huck, huck!
Anubis
No Lifer
If she is just starting out with graphic design I doubt she will need much more of a system than the uses now. I doubt she'll be working with 100+mb photoshop files too soon. Now a graphic design professional would want 1+gig ram and even a redundant raid array.
Anubis
No Lifer
Originally posted by: spankyOO7
aren't workstation video cards for graphic design and cad insanely expensive? maybe u should offer to get the monitor and have the parents get the video card
yea the quadra pro costs a fortune
I used to do quite a lot of cad and photoshop work. a fast disk is good and cheap scsi setups are affordable, lots of memory e.g. 512mb minimum, and if its cad work dont bother going workstation class, a geforce 4mx is a very good choice and very cheap. Lastly a good lcd monitor with DVI
Lots of RAM, a stable OS that handles big files with ease (Windows 2000 or XP, no 98 or ME please), a decently fast HDD ... and dual monitors. A big, nice, color calibrated one for the image, and some old junk to arrange all the menus and palettes on. Graphics card speed is unimportant, display quality is.
LCD monitors are a bit problematic because of their rather limited colorspace.
LCD monitors are a bit problematic because of their rather limited colorspace.
Here is the bottom line:
If you want to work in a 2d enviroment only, get the following.
Based on Price:
HIGH PRICE
VIdeo card: Quadro 4 NVS 400
Processor: P4 2.53+
Motherboard: Any that supports P4 533 FSB
Ram: Crucial or Edge or Mushkin DDR or RDRAM (1.0 gig or higher)
SOund Card: If one is needed, make sure it handles 5.1 AC3 Audio, for digital audio on a demo reel etc.
Monitor: Do not get an LCD, only a CRT. Get a Flat Screen Model such as a Trinitron/Dell 19" or larger, Prefferably 2 Monitors.
Thats about it, the rest is rudimentry. Hardd drives should be large. One scsi or ata 100 or ata 133 at 60 gigs will be fine to start. You can always add more later.
LOW PRICE
VIdeo Card: QUadro 4 NVS 200
Processor: p4 2.0+
Motherboard: Any that support the 533 or 400 FSB
RAM: Generic or Samsung DDR or RDRAM(1.0 gig or higher)
Sound Card: None
Monitor: One 19" of either Non perfect flat, or perfect flat CRT.
This gives a good jump into the world of 2d design. WOrks good for photoshop, after effects, premiere, studio, etc.
If you want to work in a 3d enviroment only, get the following.
by entereing into the world of 3d, you generly will add cost to your final computer.
HIGH PRICE
Video Card: Quadro 4 XGL 900
Processor: p4 2.53+
Motherboard: Any supporting 533 FSB
RAM: Crucial or Edge RDRAM(1.5 gig or higher)
Sound Card: Creative Audigy 2
Monitor: 2 19" or 21" Sony Trinitron Perfect Flat CRT's
LOW PRICE
Video Card: Quadro 4 XGL 550
Processor: p4 2.0+
Motherboard: ANy supporting 400 or 533 FSB
RAM: Crucial or Edge DDR or SDRAM(1.0gig or higher)
SOund Card: Any
Monitor: one 19" Flat Screen CRT
These are naturally very expensive systems. BUT hunt the internet and you will find your deals. I found on CompUSA they are selling quadro 4 550's for cheap, something like 200 bucks. I bought one the other day and it works great.
Hope this helps you out some.
-Steve
If you want to work in a 2d enviroment only, get the following.
Based on Price:
HIGH PRICE
VIdeo card: Quadro 4 NVS 400
Processor: P4 2.53+
Motherboard: Any that supports P4 533 FSB
Ram: Crucial or Edge or Mushkin DDR or RDRAM (1.0 gig or higher)
SOund Card: If one is needed, make sure it handles 5.1 AC3 Audio, for digital audio on a demo reel etc.
Monitor: Do not get an LCD, only a CRT. Get a Flat Screen Model such as a Trinitron/Dell 19" or larger, Prefferably 2 Monitors.
Thats about it, the rest is rudimentry. Hardd drives should be large. One scsi or ata 100 or ata 133 at 60 gigs will be fine to start. You can always add more later.
LOW PRICE
VIdeo Card: QUadro 4 NVS 200
Processor: p4 2.0+
Motherboard: Any that support the 533 or 400 FSB
RAM: Generic or Samsung DDR or RDRAM(1.0 gig or higher)
Sound Card: None
Monitor: One 19" of either Non perfect flat, or perfect flat CRT.
This gives a good jump into the world of 2d design. WOrks good for photoshop, after effects, premiere, studio, etc.
If you want to work in a 3d enviroment only, get the following.
by entereing into the world of 3d, you generly will add cost to your final computer.
HIGH PRICE
Video Card: Quadro 4 XGL 900
Processor: p4 2.53+
Motherboard: Any supporting 533 FSB
RAM: Crucial or Edge RDRAM(1.5 gig or higher)
Sound Card: Creative Audigy 2
Monitor: 2 19" or 21" Sony Trinitron Perfect Flat CRT's
LOW PRICE
Video Card: Quadro 4 XGL 550
Processor: p4 2.0+
Motherboard: ANy supporting 400 or 533 FSB
RAM: Crucial or Edge DDR or SDRAM(1.0gig or higher)
SOund Card: Any
Monitor: one 19" Flat Screen CRT
These are naturally very expensive systems. BUT hunt the internet and you will find your deals. I found on CompUSA they are selling quadro 4 550's for cheap, something like 200 bucks. I bought one the other day and it works great.
Hope this helps you out some.
-Steve
To start this off. most of you guys are insane. His gf is mostly starting beggining photoshop, illustrator, maybe webdesign in college. She doesn't need a quadro card and she doesnt need a 2 Ghz computer!
If she is doing work using the programs above, the only things she really has to worry about are a nice quality monitor and RAM.
As a general rule of thumb, Photoshop likes having at least 8x as much memory as the size of the file being worked on. If she is working on mainly web-related projects, she wouldnt need to devote more than 200MB of RAM to photoshop. 512MB of ram would be more than enough. If she will be working with large print documents, and will be printing using Postscript and large, high quality TIFFs, then it would serve her to invest in more ram.
The most important thing for her is to get a nice, large, monitor, that supports at least 85Hz at a resolution that is comfortable to her. She will be spending ALOT of time in front of her computer and she'll want to minimize distractions like eye-strain etc. She'll want at least a 19" class monitor with a near-flat screen and a low dot pitch. I think a 17" flat panel would be great for her especially if she'll be in the dorms.
Video-card wise, she wont need a quadro unless shes trying to render 3d models. This is overkill for most applications. Get her a vid card that has good 2d like a Radeon 8500, or a Geforce4 (probably still overkill if she's not gaming). I believe that Illustrator and Photoshop are largely CPU dependant and rely very little on the videocard for any accelaration.
Just my 2 cents
If she is doing work using the programs above, the only things she really has to worry about are a nice quality monitor and RAM.
As a general rule of thumb, Photoshop likes having at least 8x as much memory as the size of the file being worked on. If she is working on mainly web-related projects, she wouldnt need to devote more than 200MB of RAM to photoshop. 512MB of ram would be more than enough. If she will be working with large print documents, and will be printing using Postscript and large, high quality TIFFs, then it would serve her to invest in more ram.
The most important thing for her is to get a nice, large, monitor, that supports at least 85Hz at a resolution that is comfortable to her. She will be spending ALOT of time in front of her computer and she'll want to minimize distractions like eye-strain etc. She'll want at least a 19" class monitor with a near-flat screen and a low dot pitch. I think a 17" flat panel would be great for her especially if she'll be in the dorms.
Video-card wise, she wont need a quadro unless shes trying to render 3d models. This is overkill for most applications. Get her a vid card that has good 2d like a Radeon 8500, or a Geforce4 (probably still overkill if she's not gaming). I believe that Illustrator and Photoshop are largely CPU dependant and rely very little on the videocard for any accelaration.
Just my 2 cents
I agree with DrVos. My wife is doing lots of Photoshop/Illustrator/HTML work (community college courses) and the single smartest thing I did was to get her a dual monitor setup. The computer is rather weak in itself.
Celeron at 1.2GHz
30GB hard drive
768MB RAM (cheap PC133 SDRAM)
Matrox G400Max 32MB
That is all she needs and it works perfectly. I would suggest you start with a dual monitor setup. An ATI 8500/9000 or a Geforce4 MX should be more than enough. Good quality monitors even if only 17" make a huge difference. She would take her dual 17" over my single 19" any day.
Start simple and build from there!
Good Luck!
Celeron at 1.2GHz
30GB hard drive
768MB RAM (cheap PC133 SDRAM)
Matrox G400Max 32MB
That is all she needs and it works perfectly. I would suggest you start with a dual monitor setup. An ATI 8500/9000 or a Geforce4 MX should be more than enough. Good quality monitors even if only 17" make a huge difference. She would take her dual 17" over my single 19" any day.
Start simple and build from there!
Good Luck!
I agree with the last two - I'm a graphic design major and I use the computer for more projects than most people I know. As long as she can run Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign she's fine. Obviously a good 19" monitor is the most important thing, along with a decent video card and 1ghz+ processor. 512mb of ram is good too. Does she even know how to use any software now? If not then I don't see the point.
Yea but some are missing the point here. Its fine if you can run a ok computer with dual display, for, say, photoshop OR illustrator OR Maya OR 3dsmax etc etc. . .
BUT
LET ME see you run them all at once, which is usually what is required for much digital work. I always have illustrator, photoshop, frontpage or dreamweaver, and flash, perhaps premiere open all at once to multitask different things at once, which aides in getting form over function complete.
See, you need a powerfull graphics card, one which is stable, and will function as a performer with enough ram and dual display. I HIGHLY recommend a quadro 4 550 for around 200 bucks. I know the QUadro 2 pro's without dual display are going to around that even, so its a good deal right now. A bare minimum processor speed would be 1.5 GHz. Why bother for less? It costs only a small amount to go up these days. Think longevity on this.
I mean, a computer like you envision, being simple, dual output, 1 ghz, 512 ram, etc, will work, but what happens when you want to run all the programs. . .at once?
I know when once may want to jump to the 3d world, its nice to have enough ram and processing power to handle a render queue, and a photoshop EPS file for credits, all at once.
-Steve
BUT
LET ME see you run them all at once, which is usually what is required for much digital work. I always have illustrator, photoshop, frontpage or dreamweaver, and flash, perhaps premiere open all at once to multitask different things at once, which aides in getting form over function complete.
See, you need a powerfull graphics card, one which is stable, and will function as a performer with enough ram and dual display. I HIGHLY recommend a quadro 4 550 for around 200 bucks. I know the QUadro 2 pro's without dual display are going to around that even, so its a good deal right now. A bare minimum processor speed would be 1.5 GHz. Why bother for less? It costs only a small amount to go up these days. Think longevity on this.
I mean, a computer like you envision, being simple, dual output, 1 ghz, 512 ram, etc, will work, but what happens when you want to run all the programs. . .at once?
I know when once may want to jump to the 3d world, its nice to have enough ram and processing power to handle a render queue, and a photoshop EPS file for credits, all at once.
-Steve
Unless a person is doing a lot of rendering, investing in a quadro based card is a waste of money. I'd hazard to say that a Quadro would make no difference to her endeavors in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver or even Premiere. The same goes for the cpu. If she is just starting her studies in graphic design, then it would make much better economic sense to invest in the ram and a nice monitor for now.
We have no idea if she will go into 3D or even digital movie editing at all at this point and it does not make much sense to go spending so much money before we know what direction she wants to pursue. Now if bob970 ammends his post that budget is no problem and that his GF will be doing a significant amount of 3d work then i will agree that a better card and more ram would be in order.
stebesplace, i know you are thinking longevity on the purchase, but from what i could guess from the original message, they weren't planning on spending alot of money. It seemed to me, that for a beginning graphic design student, a modest videocard purchase would help cover the purchase of RAM which would be her most significant upgrade besides the purchase of the monitor.
Its easy to assume that people wont be happy unless they have a blazing fast system, but not everyone has the budget for the best. It doesnt mean that they wont have the tools to get the job done. Heck, at work I will often use Pagemaker, Photoshop, Flash, and Dremweaver at the same time... on my PII 266 with 256MB RAM.
Again, just my two cents.
We have no idea if she will go into 3D or even digital movie editing at all at this point and it does not make much sense to go spending so much money before we know what direction she wants to pursue. Now if bob970 ammends his post that budget is no problem and that his GF will be doing a significant amount of 3d work then i will agree that a better card and more ram would be in order.
stebesplace, i know you are thinking longevity on the purchase, but from what i could guess from the original message, they weren't planning on spending alot of money. It seemed to me, that for a beginning graphic design student, a modest videocard purchase would help cover the purchase of RAM which would be her most significant upgrade besides the purchase of the monitor.
Its easy to assume that people wont be happy unless they have a blazing fast system, but not everyone has the budget for the best. It doesnt mean that they wont have the tools to get the job done. Heck, at work I will often use Pagemaker, Photoshop, Flash, and Dremweaver at the same time... on my PII 266 with 256MB RAM.
Again, just my two cents.
Viewsonic makes some great monitors, I use a P220f for AutoCAD and love it. Perfectly flat and great clarity. She will most likely need a 19" or larger monitor for any type of graphics work. Make sure there is no curve to the screen and that it has a small dot pitch. Drives me nuts to stare at straight lines that look curved on the screen. Stay away from from the low end stuff (get the p or g series monitors), if they don't want to spend a lot there is the occasional deal on discontinued monitors or you can buy refurb if you fell lucky at ViewSonic Outlet but usually not much better than anywhere else online.
What type of graphics card depends on what type software she will be using. Adobe Photoshop is heavily CPU intesive so a good 2d card would work fine since it is not going to be handling very much of the load. I run AutoCAD 2002 and use a TNT2 Ultra since all I do is 2d. However if she is modeling things in Maya or 3DS MAX then any of todays midline gaming cards (Ti4200, 9500Pro) should do well for entry-level educational purposes. Obviously this would not work the greatest if she was doing highly complex professional level stuff, and if she is just entering the program it may be a while before she needs anything much more powerful and by then todays cards will be cheaper, and better cards will be out for the same price.
What type of graphics card depends on what type software she will be using. Adobe Photoshop is heavily CPU intesive so a good 2d card would work fine since it is not going to be handling very much of the load. I run AutoCAD 2002 and use a TNT2 Ultra since all I do is 2d. However if she is modeling things in Maya or 3DS MAX then any of todays midline gaming cards (Ti4200, 9500Pro) should do well for entry-level educational purposes. Obviously this would not work the greatest if she was doing highly complex professional level stuff, and if she is just entering the program it may be a while before she needs anything much more powerful and by then todays cards will be cheaper, and better cards will be out for the same price.
- Apr 29, 2001
- 46,017
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Well thanks everyone for the input! Feel free to keep it coming. Right now I think I'll be giving her my radeon 8500 or getting at least a 7500 if I dont upgrade my current card over break. I'll also up her RAM to 512 megs for now.
But the big thing right now is the monitor situation. Her current monitor is a 19 inch hulking monster from dell.. its decent in quality, but a nice flat screen crt would be nice. She really wants an lcd to save space... but I doubt her parents can get more then a 17" LCD... thats gonna be a big step down.. especially when you can get a nice 19" CRT flat for less.
Am I right to convince her that a bigger 19" CRT will kill a 17" LCD for graphic design.. and unless shes got a few grand for a plasma, she should go with crt.
But the big thing right now is the monitor situation. Her current monitor is a 19 inch hulking monster from dell.. its decent in quality, but a nice flat screen crt would be nice. She really wants an lcd to save space... but I doubt her parents can get more then a 17" LCD... thats gonna be a big step down.. especially when you can get a nice 19" CRT flat for less.
Am I right to convince her that a bigger 19" CRT will kill a 17" LCD for graphic design.. and unless shes got a few grand for a plasma, she should go with crt.
Keep in mind that a 17" flat panel is about the same size as a 19" CRT since a typical 19" CRT only has about 17.8" viewable while a 17" flat panel is usually the full 17". Crts do have a broader color range than most flat panels IMO. And I'm not too keen on the entire color shifting effect you get by changing your viewing angle on an LCD. I just like the idea of flat panels because they are thin and light (great for collge kids), and can ease strain on eyes. Another cool thing is that she can take advantage of the DVI connector on the Radeon 8500 and your GF can enjoy a very crisp image without having to worry abot geometry patterns.
That said, there is a killer deal at Dell right now. They've got a 20" 1600x1200 flat panel going for 759 shipped. You can check out the details on Got|Apex
Edit: er, thats a 20" not a 21"
That said, there is a killer deal at Dell right now. They've got a 20" 1600x1200 flat panel going for 759 shipped. You can check out the details on Got|Apex
Edit: er, thats a 20" not a 21"
kylebisme
Diamond Member
- Mar 25, 2000
- 9,396
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without a budget it is hard to say what would suit your situation best but were i starting over again i would hope for at least a trinitron/diamondtron tube crt suporting at least a 17" 1280x1024 @ 85hz monitor and a a built by ati 8500le. if you have a little more cash to throw around or can find a good deal up the monitor to a 19" 1600x1200 @ 85hz or even a 21", then possably go for a 128mb version of the 8500le or if you realy want to spoil her and give her a card that could last a while you can get a 9500/pro to make her ready for quick 3d rendering and even dx9 ablities. fast hard drives and plenty of ram are wonderful as well but she wont miss it untell she tries it, so stick with what ya got for now and when things start feeling slow to her you know what to look into.
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