Picture perfect system

[Muskiet]

Hi,

I'm looking into building a system with a primary purpose of re-working and processing pictures.
The pictures are mostly in RAW format (about 40Mb big) and I need to work on a lot as quick as possible.
I'll also be downloading a lot of pictures and I'll be moving and copying them around on my system a lot.
Not including a monitor (a Photoshop certified monitor will by itself cost me about $700) I have a budget of about $1000.

I can build myself a beauty of a 3D gaming platform, but when it comes to 2D photo processing I'm not sure what my system should look like.
Please take a look at my list below and I'd love to take any advise from people who know more about it then I do:

- CPU...
I'm thinking AMD 64 X2.
I think these are value for money and even though the system will not be running any high-end 3D games I need to have processing speed to get my pictures processed as quick as possible.

- GPU...
Not sure really, 6600GT with 256MB, or maybe a Matrox Millenium?
Remember... it's primarily for 2D applications, but I still need good quality and high resolutions.
But it definately should be PCI-E

- Motherboard...
I guess that's depending on what CPU I should get, but I do need PCI-E video and S-ATA with raid.

- Storage...
I'm thinking either two small capacity (maybe 10.000 RPM?), very fast HD's at RAID-0 for Windows and applications and a large capacity HD for storage or two very large capacity HD's at RAID-0.
Pictures won't get stored for a long time (I'll burn them to DVD) so I'm not too worried about backup (RAID-1 for instance).
I guess this choice will be made as soon as I know what the rest of the system is going to cost me, but what HD's can you recommend to me?

- Memory...
Another one that's dependant on cost of the rest of the system, but I think 2GB at least, not sure yet if it should be DDR or DDR2.

- Sound...
onboard is fine, but not even nescessary.
Pictures don't have sound.

- The rest...
This would be stuff like the case, which should only be functional, not exeptional and a DVD-writer.
I'm thinking this should cost me no more then $150.

So all of that with about $1000 to spend...
Anybody have any recommendations?

 

[shadowduck]

Hi,

I'm looking into building a system with a primary purpose of re-working and processing pictures.
The pictures are mostly in RAW format (about 40Mb big) and I need to work on a lot as quick as possible.
I'll also be downloading a lot of pictures and I'll be moving and copying them around on my system a lot.
Not including a monitor (a Photoshop certified monitor will by itself cost me about $700) I have a budget of about $1000.

I can build myself a beauty of a 3D gaming platform, but when it comes to 2D photo processing I'm not sure what my system should look like.
Please take a look at my list below and I'd love to take any advise from people who know more about it then I do:

- CPU...
I'm thinking AMD 64 X2.
I think these are value for money and even though the system will not be running any high-end 3D games I need to have processing speed to get my pictures processed as quick as possible.

- GPU...
Not sure really, 6600GT with 256MB, or maybe a Matrox Millenium?
Remember... it's primarily for 2D applications, but I still need good quality and high resolutions.
But it definately should be PCI-E

- Motherboard...
I guess that's depending on what CPU I should get, but I do need PCI-E video and S-ATA with raid.

- Storage...
I'm thinking either two small capacity (maybe 10.000 RPM?), very fast HD's at RAID-0 for Windows and applications and a large capacity HD for storage or two very large capacity HD's at RAID-0.
Pictures won't get stored for a long time (I'll burn them to DVD) so I'm not too worried about backup (RAID-1 for instance).
I guess this choice will be made as soon as I know what the rest of the system is going to cost me, but what HD's can you recommend to me?

- Memory...
Another one that's dependant on cost of the rest of the system, but I think 2GB at least, not sure yet if it should be DDR or DDR2.

- Sound...
onboard is fine, but not even nescessary.
Pictures don't have sound.

- The rest...
This would be stuff like the case, which should only be functional, not exeptional and a DVD-writer.
I'm thinking this should cost me no more then $150.

So all of that with about $1000 to spend...
Anybody have any recommendations?

Let's tackle each issue here.

CPU- X2 is a good choice, and most of them will be 50% cheaper after July 25. Look at the 3800+ or 4200+. S939 or AM2 is really up to you. AM2 will allow you to upgrade easier, and does not really cost that much different.

GPU- Get at least a 7600GT. They can be had for $150 and will offer you vastly superior performance to a 6600. Matrox is marginalized themselves now, no reason to get a Matrox card.

Motherboard: For S939- Asus A8N-E, for AM2.. the AM2 version of that board.

Storage- You don't need RAID- its useless for you and only increases your points of failure from 1 to 3. Just get a SATA II drive with 16MB cache. WD or Seagate will do nicely. Raptors are overpriced, and 10,000RPM is a marginal improvement. If you plan on doing video, RAID might be worth your consideration.

Memory- 2GB DDR-500 if you are going S939, or 2GB DDR2-800 for AM2. Here is some good DDR-500 memory: OCZ DDR-4000 RAM 2GB Kit

Sound- yeah onboard is peachy

DVD burner- NEC around $40 on Newegg

Case/PSU- Antec Sonta II w/ 450W PSU: Case

Edit: Oh yeah- only hit the Submit button ONCE.

 

[clue69less]

Storage- You don't need RAID- its useless for you and only increases your points of failure from 1 to 3. Just get a SATA II drive with 16MB cache. WD or Seagate will do nicely. Raptors are overpriced, and 10,000RPM is a marginal improvement. If you plan on doing video, RAID might be worth your consideration.

Hmmm, my photo and video editing box has two 74GB Raptors in RAID0 and two 400GB WD drives in RAID1. I do the active work on the RAID0, then back up to the RAID1 plus my NAS drive. I work with raw images up to 60 or so MB and the read/write to the RAID0 is clearly way faster than when I back up to the RAID1. I would not rely on the RAID0 alone for anything important, no doubt about it. What I'd really like is to have is six 500GB drives in RAID10, but I think that would more than trash the OP's budget just on drives! But the OP could go with a RAID0 of inexpensive drives as a work space, then have another larger drive like a 250GB as backup. The RAID0 drives could be something like an 80GB drive - look for a good sale.

 

[Muskiet]

I'm wondering about HD's,

I'm currently looking into two SATA-150 WD 74GB 10,000 RPM's in RAID 0, would this be faster then two SATA-300 drives of a different manufacturer?
I don't seem to find any articles that compare 150 to 300.

 

[pmr]

If you don´t game, any card will fit. Even an onboard one it´s enough for photoshop.
But if u want to do a little gaming consider at least the 6600gt and a good 400W psu.

 

[jap0nes]

i only disagree about the video card. As some pointed out, for image processing a big video memory is good, but the card itself is not much of an issue. But for that price, the 7600GT is a good deal anyway.

 

[clue69less]

I'm currently looking into two SATA-150 WD 74GB 10,000 RPM's in RAID 0, would this be faster then two SATA-300 drives of a different manufacturer? I don't seem to find any articles that compare 150 to 300.

You're looking at 2 or 3 variables here - drive platter rotational velocity, cache size and interface bandwidth. The third item, SATAI vs SATAII interface (150 vs 300GB/S) will have no effect on the performance you see. There are no HDs yet that will saturate a SATAI interface. The 74GB Raptor is now available with either an 8MB or 16MB cache. The 16 will have faster burst rate but how often you'll actually see this in real life usage is debatable. It is certainly measurable on the test bench and certain applications can benefit, but most people at home will not notice the difference. The platter speed does affect performance the most for a typical home user because it affects read and write speeds for larger files, where the difference is something easily perceived.

WRT the benefits of using RAID0 or not, it depends upon how important productivity is and what your real-usage duty cycle is. I fouind that once I got to the point that I was reading/writing 50MB files often, say 20 or more times an hour, I could clearly see the benefits of RAID0. But you want to have readily available a backup drive - and you need to be disciplined to use it. I've only had one RAID0 die and since I'd done regular backups, I didn't lose anything of significance. If you're not using your rig for sustained read and write-heavy applications, a RAID0 will be more for show than actually having a performance benefit.

 

[The_Abyss]

If you're processing pictures and spending big money on a quality monitor, the graphics card choice should be taken very seriously - something that delivers as perfect as possible 2D displays, and must have DVI connection (presumably - your monitor choice was not specific but it's a safe assumption).

In this respect, an ATI x1xxx series should deliver marginally better image quality that an Nvidia 7xxx or 6xxx series - only really noticeable with a top notch monitor.

 

[Suffix]

Everything looks good on your rig

74 gig raptors in a raid 0 array is going to set you back almost 1/3 of your budget if I understood correctly that your budget was $1000, not worth the marginal performance if it puts such a large hit on your budget if you ask me. What I recently tried with my new computer is a set of three small disks used for different tasks, but not in a raid array. This is how I set it up:
Disk 1 80gb sata1: Windows installation and small programs (mozilla, aim ect)
Disk 2 80gb sata1: Large porgram installations (photoshop, games ect)
Disk 3 80gb sata1: Windows AND photoshop scratch disks are set to this drive and do backups to a 2nd partition on this drive **make sure partition for scratch disks is 4 times your amount of ram if your using it for ram and photoshop, but the more the better, I have that partition set to 15gb with 2 gigs of ram.

The theory behind this is that the slowest part of the hard drive is the read/write head, so while your in photoshop the disk 1 hard drive head handles all the backround windows crap, disk 2 handles all the photoshop head moving and the third disk handles the scratch disks between windows and adobe, and the scratch disks are very important if you have an understanding of how windows virtual memory works. Youll notice faster file transfers ect. Also since all 3 drives are sata they have there own data channel, unlike ide drives who if 2 share a cable you can see a decrease in performance if both drives are moving large amounts of data. The best part is 80 gb hard drives are only $50 these days, so this whole setup could be acomplished for the same price as one of your raptor drives, add a 4th sata drive thats say 200gb for extra storage and backups of your photos and youve got 4x the storage you would have had and competitive speed. Then you can stand to pay a bit more for the nicer video card with dvi out, which as stated by the abyss will be very important for your nice monitor.

just my opinion though.

 

[PhoenixKnight]

For the processor, you might want to look into an Opteron 165. As for the video card, since you will not be using anything that requires DirectX, you should seriously look into the ATI FireGL and Nvidia Quadro cards. They are designed specifically for 2D and 3D design applications, have lots of memory, and are dirt cheap on eBay (the FireGL v7100 is about $250 on eBay, vs. almost $400 retail).

 

[pmr]

Do yourself a favour and don´t buy any quadro or firegl crap for photoshop. They are good and stable for pros 3d apps, they won´t do nothing better in photoshop than the other cards. Any card will do the job. The videocard should be bought acording to monitor/s specs. One or two monitors, resolutions, dvi or dual dvi etc.

 

[jap0nes]

Do yourself a favour and don´t buy any quadro or firegl crap for photoshop. They are good and stable for pros 3d apps, they won´t do nothing better in photoshop than the other cards. Any card will do the job. The videocard should be bought acording to monitor/s specs. One or two monitors, resolutions, dvi or dual dvi etc.

also, the monitor is more important than the video card itself

 

[Muskiet]

Wow... lots of replies, I thank you all very much for your input.
I haven't made a choice just yet, but I will definatly keep al your tips and recommendations in mind.
And of course I will inform you all about the final choice that I've made.

One thing for Suffix,

I did something simmilar with my "normal" computer, not that I play a lot of games, but I want it fast anyway.
I actually run my Windows with the small aplications on a dedicated 2x20GB (yeah... old system) Raid-0 drive with the first (primary) 5GB partition running my swapfile and a seperate 40GB HD for big applications and another 40GB HD for my documents, pictures, website projects etc.
This setup actually allows me to run pretty recent software to still run pretty decent on my old computer, so that's why I'm still inclined to stay with RAID-0, but I will keep your recommendation about cheaper HD's in mind.

Thanx y'all!

 

[jimytheassassin]

Maybe I'm old but, photoshop is notorious for using gobs of ram.. wouldn't faster ram be better than more video memory on some high end video card meant for games. 2d is not exactly hard to process and i've never seen proof that a video card mattered for more than support for a monitor..ram on the other hand makes a very noticeable impact when there's too little or timings are poor.

STILL, yes, get a good card for your needs. What monitor brand are you using, :?: LACIE?

 

[Suffix]

Wow... lots of replies, I thank you all very much for your input.
I haven't made a choice just yet, but I will definatly keep al your tips and recommendations in mind.
And of course I will inform you all about the final choice that I've made.

One thing for Suffix,

I did something simmilar with my "normal" computer, not that I play a lot of games, but I want it fast anyway.
I actually run my Windows with the small aplications on a dedicated 2x20GB (yeah... old system) Raid-0 drive with the first (primary) 5GB partition running my swapfile and a seperate 40GB HD for big applications and another 40GB HD for my documents, pictures, website projects etc.
This setup actually allows me to run pretty recent software to still run pretty decent on my old computer, so that's why I'm still inclined to stay with RAID-0, but I will keep your recommendation about cheaper HD's in mind.

Thanx y'all!

Yeah, you have the basic idea, if you got the money do a raid array for the OS partition, and just sperate drives for the others as originally mentioned, I think the key is just seperating hard drive intensive programs out over multiple physical drives, putting it on a different partition on the same physical drive uses the same read/write head and therefore might as well just be on the same partition, just keep that in mind and good luck!