is there a graphics forum Photoshop and computer hardware?

tived

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Feb 23, 2005
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Hi guys,

May be a silly question but does anyone know of a forum that is related to Photoshop and graphics in general, that also have some good knowledge regarding the hardware.

On hardware sites like this, people have great knowledge about hardware, overclocking and gaming. And on the graphics and photography sites they have great knowledge regarding their area of expertise. However, both graphics and photography is becoming so computerized that the boundries are overlapping. So with all respect to all, does anyone know of a good site, thanks very much

Henrik

PS: While I am at, I may as well as a question regarding hardware and test the waters here ;-)

I am in need of a new workstation for photo-editing retouching and manipulation. Now, I currently have a Dual Opteron 250, 8Gb Ram and 8 or so SCSI disks from 36 to 300Gb 15k and 10k drives, two Quadro FX3400 in a Chenbro 107 with SCA scsi hotswap Tyan S2895 mainboard. which is a great little unit. but It is beginning to feel slow, when working on 500mb to 2Gb files.

I was thinking of getting a new Tyan board S2915 with dual 2220 processor and 8-16Gb of ram. (AMD so I can swap the CPUS to Quad next year)...this is an expensive option and may not offer much over my current setup, I am also thinking of getting a pair of 285s to replace my 250.

I have also been reading alot about the new C2D cpus and they seem very fast.

which of these CPU's build into a system would give me the best performance. I will not be overclocking I won't be playing any games, this will be a working machine.

what is the consensus here, photoshop work is very memory intensive and it loves lots of ram.

what would be the best setup for what i want to do.

thanks very much

henrik
 

MarkPatterson

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Oct 16, 2006
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Im just amazed at your rig right now... 8GB of ram, what OS do u run that under?

What kind of images are u editing that are 2GB? - earth sized or just mega DPI?

I work with PS but never above 1080p at 300 dpi and I dont have performance issues with 2GB of ram and a Dual Core...

Out of interest what kind of work do u do?
 

tived

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Feb 23, 2005
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Hi Mark

OS is XP x64, very nice and stable, especially after I replaced my Enhance 650W powerssupply with a Zippy 850W (ouch $$$)

we do retouching for pro photographers local to us, WA Australia. with multiple layers in 16bit using camera such as the Canon EOS 1Ds MkII, scans of 6x17 at 300dpi will give me and 800mb file without any layers on it. we do stitching, collages etc...

Yes, my current box is very nice, no doubt it, but I am probably getting speed blind. I am however finding that when i do batch raw processing that it is slow (relatively) so therefor I am looking at building two new machines for my partner and I.

i have bought a pair of 285s but I will be setting it up so I use two machines at once, one for editing and one for batch, using remote desktop.

what sort of system are you using?

I also have an older 3.2Ghz P4 2Gb, all IDE and SATA. in one word SLOW! :)

Some have been recommending C2D systems, but they lack memory most are limited to 4Gb.
Most my drives are 15k SCSI execpt for two 300Gb which are 10K and that all seem to run fairly nice. maybe I just need faster processors ;-) sorry to sound like a spoild brad ;-) but I have worked and earned the machines and time is money!

Henrik
 

MarkPatterson

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I totaly understand where your comming from, I have had to work with a few 16bit image in my time, very rare for myself as I mainly do product vis in 3D, so they are static renders.

Personally im waiting for clovertown, so I can run dual quad cores, and ill invest in about 4GB ram.

I personally just require fast render times and lots of CPU cycles to process stress/strain analysis of components in 3D.

I think perhaps you might just require faster CPU's to process the images your working on within your Ram.
How much advantage do u think your Quadro cards offer, id die for them on my 3D rig but to be honest CPU speeds is my friend!

I have to say, that ive never really pushed PS that far so im not sure but its always great to hear what ppl are working on!
 

tived

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Feb 23, 2005
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Hi Mark

I am not sure if the Quadro makes any difference to what I do, given it is mainly 2D that we do. I got because I initially wanted 30" screens but ran out of money and settled with 2x 24" Dells which when calibrated with iOne is Ok, but not fantastic. expecially in the shadows there is not much detail there.

We have our data stored on a desktop server atm which we are moving to a HP Proliant DL380 G3 with a Mass Storage Array MSA-500 with 14x 73gb 10k disks, running over gigahertz nic. this is an area that I would also like to improve.

its the need for speed :)

thanks

Henrik