recommended cpu for heavy photoshop work

[shockX]

i'm the IT guy at this art firm i work at, and we're in the process of upgrading our computers. we do a LOT of photoshop work, manipulating images that are 50-100MB+. currently we're using workstations with dual 650MHz P3s with PC100 SDRAM (512MB) and SCSI 10k rpm disks on win2k.

with the files that we're working with, its taking forever just to even load up the images, not to mention manipulating them. we're definitely looking for a faster solution for our photoshop editing work, in terms of cpu, would sticking with dual or going single but having a very fast cpu be better?

we're not tottally rich so we're looking at about $1500 per system, maybe a bit more.

i was thinking about getting those intel p4 c's with the 800mhz fsb & hyperthreading and maybe overclocking them. are they any good for oc'ing? would they be any good at photoshop work?

thanks for reading

 

[gwuasg]

athlons usually out perform P4's in photoshop, lots of ram will speed it up more than memory bandwidth. poke around a little you will find some benchmarks. IMHP best bet cost wise would be some dual channel board with a barton 2500 ($87)(usually overclock to xp3000-3200 speeds)and 2 512's and a 1G dimm PC3200 so you can bump th FSB(if youwant togo crazy). 100M images get pretty big with multiple layers etc. P4's will have less power but more memory bandwidth.

 

[Corporate Thug]

i agree, get a 2500+, oc to a 3200+ and throw in a gig of ram. all under $300

 

[shockX]

alrite, the barton 2500+ sounds good and cheap too

but i'm usually an intel guy so i dont really follow amd stuff..

anyone care to recommend a good stable amd motherboard for overclocking? i'll probably be fitting it out with as much memory as i can humanly cram on it

a bit off topic but.. should i go for SCSI or SerialATA? i'll definitely be getting 10k rpm drives but i'm not sure if i should go for SCSI or SerialATA, not quite sure on which one is faster. thanks for the response guys!!!

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

scsi is still faster....serial ata doesn't seem to be living up to the hype some were giving it.

 

[Corporate Thug]

serial ATA does next to nothing, as for a mobo, i REALLY REALLY like the abit nf7-s rev2

 

[Peter D]

for a good stable amd overclocking board, go for an nf7-s of course!

 

[darqice]

serial might still be a little expensive if you need the kind of storage capacity (100+ gigs) for storing all your large psd files. A good 7200rpm 8 mb cache drive like the WD special edition 120 gb is $106 @ newegg shipped.

Once you get the pic loaded your real speed benefits during processing will come from a fast cpu and plenty of ddr ram running at 400mhz.

a good stable board Imho is the epox 8rda+. others may agree or disagree.

However, keep an eye on your temps and be careful with the overclocking. If stability is your main goal (and it should be for work computers) you will probably want to sacrifice a litttle speed in the case of relaxed memory timings or what have you to keep your pc's stable

 

[shockX]

alrite thanks guys! you guys helped me out a lot

i'll be going with an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, the NF7, a gig of pc3200 ram, and a big ata133 hard drive.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: shockX
alrite thanks guys! you guys helped me out a lot

i'll be going with an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, the NF7, a gig of pc3200 ram, and a big ata133 hard drive.

all good choices, make sure you get a rev2 nf7-s so u cen acheive 200mhz fsb

 

[gwuasg]

biostar mc7cd pro 80$ good overclocker rated for 400mhz fsb (no firewire or nvidia sound). check www.nforcershq.com for info. I have a 1700XP @1937mhz with 1.25G ram and I seems much faster than a 2.4 P4 1G at work. I still prefer using a dual 1.25 mac. if you can wait a couple months the new Dual G5 should crush anything in photoshop has 8 dual ddr ram slot so you can toss in 8G (16G later when 2G modules start showing up) of ram 4G pretty inexpensively.

 

[Doh!]

Dual G5 sounds good but it in no way will be less than the $1500 budget mentioned.

 

[Fallengod]

Originally posted by: gwuasg
athlons usually out perform P4's in photoshop, lots of ram will speed it up more than memory bandwidth.

What are you smoking....p4's are far faster in photoshop. Get an intel rig for photoshop use. For any use for that matter.

 

[alent1234]

First do some research in the kind of tasks that your users do in photoshop. Different tasks stress different parts of the PC, and you may want to spend more money in the area that they use most.

In your case I would buy SCSI workstations with at least 512MB RAM, and most likely 1GB. Depending on the tasks your users do most I may upgrade to a better SCSI controller or better RAM. Don't know about AMD, but we have 2 servers with the P4 3.06Hz Xeons and they smoke. We even get SMP with Win2000 server.

And to minimize support headaches I wouldn't build anything myself, but buy from a legit place. For Intel workstations you can't go wrong with Dell. Don't know who is big in the AMD arena.

 

[Chumpman]

Originally posted by: modempower

Originally posted by: gwuasg
athlons usually out perform P4's in photoshop, lots of ram will speed it up more than memory bandwidth.

What are you smoking....p4's are far faster in photoshop. Get an intel rig for photoshop use. For any use for that matter.

This isn't a contest to see who the biggest fanboy is ...

 

[Cheetah8799]

If you really are planning on using this for a professional work system I would suggest NOT overclocking. I know someone is going to say that you won't have any problems, but why take the risk? You don't want to have to deal with broken computer parts when a project deadline is coming up all because you tried to squeeze out a few extre mhz...

 

[Corporate Thug]

as long as he tests for stability, there is no harm in OCing, esp if he does it @ default voltage

 

[darqice]

agreed

and management just loves the 100's of dollars saved by going athlon oc vs intel.

don't skip the stability and temp tests though. you get one system crash on a photoshop project that hasn't been saved in a few hours and all your savings go right out the door.