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Need to build a pc for Graphics

B

Bushman5

Senior member
What setup would be the perfect thing to do heavy graphics on illustrator cs2 and photoshop cs2.

I was just gonna do a regular gaming rig with more ram 4gb but i thought i would ask the experts.

also i need a monitor as well wide screen. its all about perfect colour
 
Intel C2D Processor with as much ram as you can afford, basically. It all depends on how much you want to spend after that, do you have a budget?

Oh, and I just ordered an NEC MultiSync LCD20WGX2 to go with my new system, though I'm only a photoshop amateur really so it's mainly for gaming, supposed to be very good for the price. Can't give you a proper opinion sorry as I won't be able to use it for another couple of weeks when I go home for a week to collect / build everything.
 
Originally posted by: Bushman5
What setup would be the perfect thing to do heavy graphics on illustrator cs2 and photoshop cs2.

I was just gonna do a regular gaming rig with more ram 4gb but i thought i would ask the experts.

also i need a monitor as well wide screen. its all about perfect colour
Click to expand...

Depends on what you want to do. If you work on very, very high-resolution images (especially with multiple layers), or you like to keep lots of files open, you'll need a lot of RAM. Some image operations can also require substantial amounts of memory. Keep in mind that single applications can only use 2GB of memory (3GB if you do some tweaking) unless you run the 64-bit version of WinXP or Vista. So having more than 2-3GB will help if you have multiple apps open, but won't make a single memory-hungry program run better.

If you run lots of complex filters, are constantly resizing big images, etc., you will want a fast CPU. I'm not sure how much PS/Illustrator benefits from having multiple CPU cores (although they will help if you are doing other stuff in the background).

The video card is pretty much irrelevant for 2D work such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

For the best color reproduction, you generally want a high-end CRT. Barring that, there are some 'professional' LCDs that are designed for very accurate color work, but I don't know if there are widescreen versions of them available. Be prepared to lay out serious cash if you want the best.
 
look into the Quadro series, FireGL cards, or even 3Dlabs' line of graphics if you're truly determined to take on intense workstation projects.

don't forget about an extreme quality PSU/UPS, RAID array configuration and a crisp monitor that will offer at least a .26 pitch and advanced color features.
 
A Geforce or Radeon graphics card will do fine unless you want to get into 3D apps like Maya. Obviously, you want a graphics card with plenty of memory on it for high-res work. Max out your system RAM, and get yourself a large hard drive.

The tricky part is the monitor. Gaming LCDs don't have a ghosting problem, but their color reproduction isn't on par with professional graphics LCDs. Those LCDs though, have much longer response times, so they have a ghosting problem. Ghosting does not affect photo editing or any of that, it will only mess up games and movies. If you want it all, you may need to clear your desk for a good 21-22" CRT. Those babies don't have the ghosting problem and they have historically had the best color reproduction.

I almost forgot, get yourself a good Wacom Intuos3 tablet. Those are totally awesome for 2D work.
 
I do a lot of photo editing in CS2 and often have to work with 700MB TIFF files, so I'd like to think I know a bit about this stuff:

Video Card: Really anything will do. CS2 is not about video acceleration.

RAM: Get lots of it. I have 2GB and often max this out. Go for 4GB. CS2 also has a habit of NOT freeing up RAM when you close finished pictures, so CS2 using 2GB of RAM will keep on using 2GB of RAM even when there are no opened pictures in CS2.

HDD: The absolute bottleneck. If you work with large image files, you want a fast HDD to get the data you're working on into RAM as fast as possible, and also to have a fast swap file and CS2 scratch disks. Programs outside of CS2 will also benefit from a fast HDD. You can probably benefit from RAID.

CPU: Any current CPU will do. I like dual cores because it leaves a core free for doing other things when the other core is pumping away on image data. But note that you don't need to get the fastest dual core because your HDD is your bottleneck. In my experience HDDs just don't feed data to the CPU fast enough if you're working on large files. Even doing simple things like levels adjustment on a 1GB file will take a long time, with CPU utilization at only 25% but with the HDD going absolutely nuts.

Monitor: Get a good monitor for color accuracy. There is a monitor sticky in the video forum that has a section on good photo monitors, the best being the NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2.

Color Calibration: All this doesn't mean anything if your monitor isn't calibrated and real world color output doesn't match what's on your screen. Look around for monitor calibrators. Spyder isn't that great. I personally use a Monaco Optix XR because it's forgiving on cheaper monitors like my Dell 2001FP.

Invest in back ups for your work.
 
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