Need help build a AMD PC for photography

[jsurf]

My budget is about $450 excluding CD-roms, mouse/keyboard, monitor etc.
I need it to process raw scanned pictures about 300MB per picture ( big!) with photoshop CS2.

My questions: Is the video card the most important here or memory? CPU?
I looked at FX5500, Radeon 9600 with 256MB mem. Are they good enough?
How much system memory? pc3200 or pc4200?
Do I need athlon 939 or a sempron 754 is good enough
Please help! Thanks so much

 

[Bobthelost]

PC3200, PC4000 is overclocking RAM, or DDR2 RAM, either way it's not something you want on that budget or for an AMD system.

The newer/faster the better for the CPU, anything will do the job, it's just a matter of how long it will take. Your budget is pretty tight, if it weren't for your possesion of the peripherals i'd have pointed you towards a Dell/HP system.

 

[ProviaFan]

Your priorities should be as follows, from highest to lowest:

PC3200 DDR (1GB is probably all you can fit in the budget, but 2GB is better)
CPU
Motherboard
Hard disks
... other stuff ...
Video card

With the budget that you have, something reasonably high end is out (no dual core, unfortunately, could fit in that price range unless you went Pentium D and made absolutely terrible compromises on everything else - a horrible idea). A Sempron 64 CPU would be good, and please don't buy some cheap no-name motherboard if you can at all help it. The video card is the last of your worries, since it won't really affect anything that you'll be doing. 256MB RAM on a video card is overkill; save some money and get a 128MB model instead.

 

[dmw16]

I dont know much about this stuff, but I have read a few posts about photoshop. Let me address your questions in order.

1. Memory and CPU matter most. Video card doesnt really matter.
2. Any card will work really. I would imagine a good card for photoshop is a card with good image quality. I'd suggest an ATI. Perhaps a previous gen radeon. Or maybe something like an Radeon 8500. Check FS/T should be pretty cheap.
3. I think that photoshop can use either 3 or 4 GIGS (!!!!) of RAM, so the more the better. There is a "switch" that you add the to the executable to enable large memory sizes. Check around here or Google.
4. More speed is always better with CPUs. I think that a 754 or 939 would be fine. The advantage to the 939 is that if you get a 939 board you can upgrade your CPU as budget allows.

Also, a HD with a decent amount of cache would also be helpful.

 

[imported_Stew]

Originally posted by: dmw16
Memory and CPU matter most. Video card doesnt really matter.

Also, a HD with a decent amount of cache would also be helpful

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: jsurf
My budget is about $450 excluding CD-roms, mouse/keyboard, monitor etc.
I need it to process raw scanned pictures about 300MB per picture ( big!) with photoshop CS2.

My questions: Is the video card the most important here or memory? CPU?
I looked at FX5500, Radeon 9600 with 256MB mem. Are they good enough?
How much system memory? pc3200 or pc4200?
Do I need athlon 939 or a sempron 754 is good enough
Please help! Thanks so much

Those are big files. Your system RAM will be filling up very quickly, and matter more than everything else to start at least. The video card will have minimal performance impact -- you'll only see a fraction of that image at a time, in terms of pixels.

Processing speed will also matter, and a dual-core processor will help, but at your budget, you should probably start with 2x1GB of RAM, a MB with built-in video such as the Asus A8N-VM, budget for some decent HD size, and then add in the fastest CPU you could afford. I presume that a built-in 6100 or 6150 would have adequate image quality with your intended monitor; this needs to be confirmed.

 

[gsellis]

Everything I have heard, CS2 wants a scratch drive. Add another HDD for that purpose, but it does not need to be hugh and expensive.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: jsurf
My budget is about $450 excluding CD-roms, mouse/keyboard, monitor etc.
I need it to process raw scanned pictures about 300MB per picture ( big!) with photoshop CS2.

My questions: Is the video card the most important here or memory? CPU?
I looked at FX5500, Radeon 9600 with 256MB mem. Are they good enough?
How much system memory? pc3200 or pc4200?
Do I need athlon 939 or a sempron 754 is good enough
Please help! Thanks so much

Those are big files. Your system RAM will be filling up very quickly, and matter more than everything else to start at least. The video card will have minimal performance impact -- you'll only see a fraction of that image at a time, in terms of pixels.

Processing speed will also matter, and a dual-core processor will help, but at your budget, you should probably start with 2x1GB of RAM, a MB with built-in video such as the Asus A8N-VM, budget for some decent HD size, and then add in the fastest CPU you could afford. I presume that a built-in 6100 or 6150 would have adequate image quality with your intended monitor; this needs to be confirmed.

RAM is definitely going to be key for this system working with files that big -- a 300MB file with a few layers could easily be over 1GB by itself.

Get 2GB of PC3200 RAM (the cheap CL3 stuff is fine; you need capacity more than speed), and a motherboard with integrated video (I'd recommend one of the ones with ATI's new onboard chipset, but one with a GF6100 would probably also work fine). Then get the best CPU you can afford.

Ironically, Photoshop is one of the few things that Intel CPUs are actually competitive in. A system based around a dual-core Pentium D might actually be just as good or better, depending on prices and how much CPU power you'll actually need. Unfortunately, I suspect your VERY tight budget will preclude getting a dual-core CPU of any kind.

I'd probably recommend something like:

MSI RS482M4 motherboard (RADEON X300 onboard) -- $74 + $5 shipping
2x Muskin PC3200 1GB CL3 RAM -- 2x $79 + $5 shipping
A64 3200+ S939 Retail -- $164 + $3 shipping

Total: $414 for MB/CPU/RAM. I don't know if you meant the $450 to just cover this or to also include a case/PSU -- at that point, prebuilt systems from someone like Dell start to look attractive, especially if you also need an OS license.

This would give you the core of a relatively powerful and upgradable system -- you could add a faster dual-core CPU later, or step up to 3/4GB of RAM if you find 2GB is just not cutting it.

You could go for a S754 system and a Sempron CPU to save some money, but this hurts your CPU upgrade options.

 

[jsurf]

Thank you all so much esp matthias99. Really appreciate it!
I didn't know Vcard is not that important handling large image files.
Very helpful guys!