Rig for graphic production

[hixen]

what would be a good rig?

AMD or INTEL?

high end graphic card needed? (we mostly do photoshop & indesign)

since we dont use them for gaming, video editing, etc.. it seems it dosent have to be that exspensive, or?

storage aint a problem for us, as we have tons of it..

it would also be very intressting if someone that works with grapic production could post there rigs aswell.

would also be fun if the system could last 2-3 years..

now we have p4 2Ghz HP/COMPAQ 750MB ram.. (and personally i'm ashamed) but since none at work know anything about computers, i feel they get ripped of by the big companies over and over again.. i know little, but not as far as some of u guys..

thx in advance, sorry for my poor english

 

[imported_Kensai]

AMD. You just need massive proccessing power, not graphics power.

 

[ProviaFan]

I am putting together a system designed for Photoshop (well, I claim that it's for the engineering apps that I'll be running when I go to college this fall, but off the record I can speak as an amateur digital photographer and tell the truth), with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+, 2GB RAM, etc. Whether you go with Intel or AMD (I suggest AMD), you should be looking at dual core processors and plenty of RAM (the folks that say to get 1GB instead of 2GB are looking at performance in non-memory limited games - this does not apply to the Adobe CS). For the graphics card, you don't need anything fancy, but it should have dual DVI outputs (if you envy the 30" Apple LCD, you'll need at least one of those to be a dual link DVI port) if you plan on using two LCDs. Tell us more about whether you plan to build or buy, and other information about your usage (large drum scans, or rather more vector-based stuff in Illustrator?), and we might he able to help more.

 

[sandorski]

What's "indesign"?

Yes, lots of ram for sure. At least 2gb, but that all depends on what size(filesize) of graphics you'll be editing.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: sandorski
What's "indesign"?

Page layout program, like Quark XPress. Much better than MS Word or Publisher for anything with slightly more layout complexity than an average letter.

 

[hixen]

ProviaFan: Thx for your nice feedback

Well we are mostly working with Adobe InDesign CS and Photoshop 7.0 (i'm praying for an upgrade soon) We are 2 groups, one that work alot with InDesign CS, and they big cataloges with alot of high-res images.

the other group (me) work alot with webbdesign, and yes our .psd files can get pretty heavy aswell, when working with big sites and alot of graphic content.

But overrall i think both groups need the same system, as we sometimes when we have heavy work load and alot of projects help each others.

The question with DUAL DVI, is that i dont think we really need it atm since none here have ever worked with dual screen, execpt me.. did alot of motiongraphics and 3D. and i dont think we have the biggest budget ever, atm we just need new computers.

AMD is the way to go, that much i know, and we thought of 2GB ram.

then the biggest concern, we need a rockstable system that dosent make noise, at the moment we have this really bad computers, they are slow, and we all hate them.. but they never reboot (unless we tell them to), and they are really quiet (intel based, p4@2ghz).

And from my previous experiance building computers, there is allways some MOBO that are better then the others in diffrent questions, features, stabillity, oc:ing etc.. so now i'm looking for a good performance, rock stable mobo for dual AMD's.

Anything more i should know about building a rock stable system? RAM, PSU?

and thx again, for reading and helping

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I use my machine for rendering in 3D Studio Max R5, and I haven't had any problems with my dual Xeon 2.66GHz, SuperMicro X5DAE mobo, and 2GB RAM. I have a Quadro 4 900 XGL and a BFG 6800 GT OC. (The Quadro sucks for gaming). Good luck...
Tas.

 

[hixen]

yeah, intel seems to be good in building rock stable systems, but i'm looking for a rock stable amd system, since it's more firepower, or soo they say =)

 

[ProviaFan]

On the silence aspect: If you're going to build, get Zalman HSFs or Thermalright XP90 with a quiet fan for the CPUs, and try to find motherboards without a fan on the northbridge (you can mod it with a big fanless northbridge heatsink, but that's not a good idea in your situation given the warranty concerns). Also, the video card isn't a huge concern since you aren't gaming, to try to find one with passive (fanless) cooling.

 

[Pabster]

I'm going to say Intel on this one. I assume you are doing this for a living and stability as well as performance are mission critical. If not, the AMD alternative is both cheaper and in some cases will be faster as well.

Adobe software is major bloatware. Load up the Adobe suite and you better have 4GB of RAM at a minimum if you are working with large files.

 

[ProviaFan]

If you're careful, it's very easy to build an extremely stable AMD system (and on the contrary, if you're not careful, it isn't too hard to build an unstable Intel system). While the ideal in terms of having someone else support it when it breaks is to buy from Dell (which means you're stuck with Intel) or HP (you can get AMD there if you want), building your own - whether AMD or Intel - can produce great performance with excellent stability.

 

[hixen]

Pabster: why should i go with an intel instead of AMD? i read everywhere that AMD offers much more processor power than any intel can offer for the same price range? is it stabillity problems?, performance?.. would be nice if u could give me some indepth details, since i'm giving all this to my boss, it's pretty hard to convice him, Pbaster on internet forum said i should go with Intel, while ProviaFan said i should go with AMD duals =)

and do u really need 4GB?

at the moment we have p4@2Ghz 750Mb ram and ppl here working dont know better so..
we also dont have creative suite atm, and we are currently working with ps7.0 =/

ProviaFan: how do u mean careful? give me tips on being careful? or are u saying that Intel is more stable then AMD or?

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: hixen
Pabster: why should i go with an intel instead of AMD? i read everywhere that AMD offers much more processor power than any intel can offer for the same price range? is it stabillity problems?, performance?.. would be nice if u could give me some indepth details, since i'm giving all this to my boss, it's pretty hard to convice him, Pbaster on internet forum said i should go with Intel, while ProviaFan said i should go with AMD duals =)

and do u really need 4GB?

...Because the Intel machine is better suited to graphics-intensive tasks and heavy multitasking. If you came in and said you were looking to play BF2 at work I'd certainly have a different reccomendation Honestly, if price is the major concern, you could put together an AMD machine somewhat cheaper. But the Intel one will be better for the tasks you mentioned. It is really a toss-up.

Do you need 4GB of RAM? Probably not. But with RAM prices so cheap now, it doesn't make sense to skimp on it. Especially when you start working with video.

 

[imported_rod]

If you can afford it, an intel (maybe a dualcore) and 2GB (maybe even 4GB) of RAM would be a good choice. Depends on how much you want to spend. The intel will be stable, and should perform better with graphics than an AMD.

A small Video Card like a 6200 or X300 would be good. And if you're worried about noise, i think you can get the 6200 with a passive heatsink.

RoD

 

[nick1985]

i also suggest the x2 AMD

 

[biostud]

matrox

for highest 2D quality go matrox for videocard.

 

[svi]

This actually isn't the clear-cut decision that some people are making it out to be, as evidenced by the fact that there are people saying it's a clear-cut decision and favoring different sides.

Bar graphs speak louder than words, so here you go:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/cpu/amd-athlon-64-x2-4800.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=5
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-fx53_15.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2456&p=4

It seems that single-core P4s are better in Photoshop 8/CS, but A64s are slightly better in Photoshop 7 (or at least AT's PS7 test).

And something you won't find in the benchmarks: it's tough to make a Prescott system genuinely quiet. "Noise-reduced" isn't difficult, but quiet is something else, and you won't be seeing silence without liquid cooling or downclocking.

Recommendations that should apply no matter what processor you go with:
- Get at least 2GB of RAM. If your budget can fit in 4GB, get that, but it's not essential.
- Get good, quiet hard drives (Seagate 7200.8s seem to be commonly recommended, but naturally there are many choices out there) too, since loud hard drives are, well, loud.
- Get quiet, high-quality PSUs such as the Seasonics commonly recommended on these forums, again for noise control.
- Get a passively cooled video card if you can.
- Get high-quality quiet fans (Panaflo L1s, Yate Loons, etc.).
- Get solid, high-airflow cases that are recommended for building quiet/silent PCs. The Antec P180 is nice, if you're on a tighter budget the Antec SLK3000B is still a good quiet PC case.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: rod
The intel will be stable,

So will the AMD. Quit parroting falsehoods.

and should perform better with graphics than an AMD.

svi took care of benchmarks on this one. Sometimes they're slightly better, sometimes they're slightly not. In this case, I think that one should decide for one or the other based on other reasons (including ability to cool it quietly, etc.).

 

[jpeyton]

My advice:

Athlon 64 X2 System $1389.94

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ - $585

Chaintech VNF4 Ultra - $92

NEC ND-3540A DVD+/-RW - $45.99

Hitachi 160GB SATAII Hard Drive - $87

ThermalTake Sonic Tower Heatsink - $47.99

Antec Sonata II ATX Mid Tower Case W/ 450W SmartPower PSU - $120

MSI X300 256MB PCI-Express Video Card - $92

(4) Corsair Value Select 1GB DDR 400 - $79.99

Because this is a production system, that means no overclocking, and no need for high performance accessories. That is why I went for Value RAM and a fan-less heatsink.

I highly recommend the ThermalTake Silent Tower + Antec Sonata II combo because they work very well together; the Sonic Tower is the best fanless heatsink available, and it pairs very well with the Sonata II's fan duct. Your system will run very quiet and cool.

The video card isn't terribly important for graphics work, but the 256MB onboard memory is good if you're doing design work on high-resolution screens and/or on multiple monitors.

While 4GB of RAM may seem like overkill for some of you, I would definitely argue otherwise. Using any RAM Drive software, you can partition 2GB of the memory into a RAM Drive which Photoshop can use exclusively as its scratch-disk. This makes an INCREDIBLE difference in performance because Photoshop never has to hit the hard drive while working (unless you work with incredibly large files, in which case it will still increase performance).

If the price is a bit too high, think about substituting the X2 for a Athlon 64 3500+.

EDIT:Changed the video card to a fanless MSI X300, for lower noise. Also, the Sonata II's duct may or may not fit nicely over the Sonic Tower, in which case you can alway use the standard configuration of a quiet 120mm fan @ 5v on the Sonic Tower blowing rearward, and using the included TriCool fan @ 5V to exhaust any hot air.

But I own an X2, and they run very cool at stock, so you probably don't have to worry much about cooling.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
While 4GB of RAM may seem like overkill for some of you, I would definitely argue otherwise. Using any RAM Drive software, you can partition 2GB of the memory into a RAM Drive which Photoshop can use exclusively as its scratch-disk. This makes an INCREDIBLE difference in performance because Photoshop never has to hit the hard drive while working (unless you work with incredibly large files, in which case it will still increase performance).

If the price is a bit too high, think about substituting the X2 for a Athlon 64 3500+.

While I agree with the 4GB, I don't think using a RAM drive is the best way around the situation. Let PS have the maximum that it can manage on its own, and then let the OS handle the caching of the scratch disk - thus, you have total flexibility if the OS needs to reclaim some of the cached memory to allow another program to run at the same time as PS, instead of being forced to swap stuff to the pagefile because PS has already claimed 2GB and the RAM disk has the other 2GB.

The system you listed looked fine, though. I'm sure they wouldn't have any complaints about the performance or the quietness of that hardware. :thumbsup:

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: jpeyton
While 4GB of RAM may seem like overkill for some of you, I would definitely argue otherwise. Using any RAM Drive software, you can partition 2GB of the memory into a RAM Drive which Photoshop can use exclusively as its scratch-disk. This makes an INCREDIBLE difference in performance because Photoshop never has to hit the hard drive while working (unless you work with incredibly large files, in which case it will still increase performance).

If the price is a bit too high, think about substituting the X2 for a Athlon 64 3500+.

While I agree with the 4GB, I don't think using a RAM drive is the best way around the situation. Let PS have the maximum that it can manage on its own, and then let the OS handle the caching of the scratch disk - thus, you have total flexibility if the OS needs to reclaim some of the cached memory to allow another program to run at the same time as PS, instead of being forced to swap stuff to the pagefile because PS has already claimed 2GB and the RAM disk has the other 2GB.

The system you listed looked fine, though. I'm sure they wouldn't have any complaints about the performance or the quietness of that hardware. :thumbsup:

The best compromise would obviously be Gigabyte's PCI RAM Disk, if they ever get around to releasing it.

 

[hixen]

I thank u guys enough. nice system Jpeyton.. now the hard part, finding a company in sweden who can offer us that sytem, with warenty, service and all those stuff a company think they need if something goes wrong.

well i'm about this close to buy it myself.. this is like surfing p o r n, but much much better

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: hixen
this is like surfing p o r n, but much much better

 

[ProviaFan]

One knows that one has a problem when one finds fondling the components on the inside of a computer more pleasurable than looking at naked women.

 

[Oyeve]

Indesign ROCKS! We use it at work, mostly on Mac workstations, but I have tested it on PCs (AMD and Intel) and while I am not an Intel fanboy, Indesign is more stable on an Intel system in our testing. We have run the gamut on all platforms of many different cpus and we came to the conclusion to rollout Indesign and phase out Quark on the macs and use Indesign on Intel platforms. I wanted AMD cuz the systems we tested on (HP corporate PCs) were cheaper and faster in everything BUT indesign. Bummer.