Rebuilding rig for photoshop,

[Andrew1990]

Well I have been wanting to start learning photoshop and have now started to fix my computer up for it. I will be dealing with photos around 1600x1200 give or take a bit.

My system is in my sig. I just bought this from newegg to help on my drawing skills,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16823100045

and it seems pretty good for a beginner.


Would getting 8GB of DDR2 be worth it for an amateur and what about a quad core AMD? Does a Hard Drive matter much also, such as a SSD?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

8 GB would be good if you plan to have a whole lot of photos open at once, otherwise I think 4 is fine for now. you are going to be running Vista x64 right?

Quad core is probably a good idea if you can find a good price. Hard drive, i'd just get a really fast regular one because SSD is still kind of expensive. but if i had the budget, i'd get a SSD plus a fast and big regular drive.

 

[Andrew1990]

Yes, I am running Vista Ultimate x64. I wont have many photos open at once, maybe around 4-5. Now would a quad core Phenom perform better than a lower end Intel Dual Core such as the E5200? It would cost the same to migrate over to Intel but having two more cores seems a better value but I heard otherwise.

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Andrew1990
Well I have been wanting to start learning photoshop and have now started to fix my computer up for it. I will be dealing with photos around 1600x1200 give or take a bit.

My system is in my sig. I just bought this from newegg to help on my drawing skills,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16823100045

and it seems pretty good for a beginner.


Would getting 8GB of DDR2 be worth it for an amateur and what about a quad core AMD? Does a Hard Drive matter much also, such as a SSD?

Your existing machine is just fine for your needs. The resolutions/filesizes you're working at are not demanding, even once you've got many layers and/or many files open at once.

If you've got the upgrade itch, I'd do a faster processor over more cores (more cores won't impact much more than filters, which don't get used all that much). After that..I dunno, if you're really searching for something to spend on, I'd say a faster hard drive. Seriously though, neither of those upgrades will have much impact on your experience unless your current processor is sluggish with Vista 64 (I've got plenty of experience with PS and hardware upgrades, just relatively little with vista and none with vista 64).

On specific elements:

CPU - Speed determines how responsive the app is - speed of brushed draws/effects (up to real time) being the most obvious; after two cores (once PS gets one of it's own more or less) the improvements fall off in all areas but filtering.

RAM - Volume matters - speed less so. The old rule of thumb was to have double the 'scratch' size of your image (see help under document efficiency).The object is to keep disk caching to a minimum. The image sizes you're describing would be fine with 1G for PS to work with (perhaps 2G total system ram)

Disk - Highly dependent on workflow; processing large volumes of photos (batch RAW processing, say) or working on very large images (billboards, murals, etc) that exceed RAM capcity and/or have large file writes when they're saved (1+ gigabyte flat images are not uncommon in some businesses). Depending on workflow/ work needs, a fast disk (or array of fast disks) could be called for. In your case, it's unlikely you'll be writing anything especially large and you've got plenty of RAM, so I'd expect your existing drive is just fine.

 

[rudder]

Upgrade your CPU although it is probably fine for now. I would concentrate on getting a good quality monitor along with a color calibrator.

 

[episodic]

Now look. Let us be realistic. You might 'want' 8 gb of ram, but 4 gb will be plenty. Get a nice dual or tri core processor. Make sure you get 2 hard drives. The second one use for your scratch drive and put your system cache on that drive, too. Raptors would be nice here. Have plenty of storage, half a terrabyte would be plenty to start.

With CS4, it can use your graphics card. I recommend Nvidia. Get a nice newer one. Unless you are a gamer, too - no need to go overboard here.

Now, here is where you spend the money.

Get a 24 inch or better monitor. Go ahead and splurge on the monitor. Finally, get a nice comfortable mouse AND a wacom graphics pad. I recommend the bamboo fun 6x8 if you are just getting started.

Finally get a spyder colorimeter. . .they can be had for less that 100 bucks.