What Processor for mostly photoshop work

I'm going to build a new computer which I have not done for a few year and am wondering what processor is recommended for mostly Photoshop work? I am not a gamer so do not take gaming into consideration.

So far my 1st choice for a processor is the Intel E8400. I'm wondering if I would be better off to go with a Q6600 instead.

If you have any thoughts about a processor suggestions and comments are welcomed.

MorrieC

true that.

He's photoshopping, not gaming.



Yes, the Q6600 will be fully utilized in Photoshop, Premiere Pro and other Adobe (and other professional) applications that can take advantage of all 4 cores.

If you're on a budget, something like this is all you really need for photoshop:

$255 - Q6600 (oem from clubIT - G0 stepping)
$21 - Freezer Pro 7 (CPU cooler)
$70+ - 4gb DDR2-800 ram (photoshop loves memory)
$70+ - Nvidia 8600gt or ATi 2600xt
$95 - Gigabyte P35 motherboard
$120 - 2 x 250gb 7200rpm hard disks (1 for windows, 1 for editing)
$30 - DVD / CD burner
$35+ - case with 120mm intake and 120mm exhaust fans
$40+ - decent power supply

I should take the advice of everyone here!
Quad-core,
Lots of fast RAM,
quick hard drive(s) with a big cache/buffer (32MB) and if you can afford it, have a RAID config.
A mid-range graphics card should do fine.

Yep, Photoshop will make use of all the CPU's, or CPU cores you can throw at it. It will use as many cores or cpu's that are available to render an image. Lots of memory and a fast drive does not hurt either. You don't need much of a video card for photoshop, any lower mid-range card by todays standards is fine, and probably even still overkill.
You definetly DO NOT need a 8800GTX as someone suggested. 3D accelerated cards are useless for Photoshop.

The processor speed allows the actual computationally intensive parts of photoshop to work faster.

The fast drives will allow your system to access the scratch memory (on the drives) much quicker to allow the system to keep working faster. RAID is usually available on most motherboards built-in, but does provide a big boost to the read/write speed.

The memory allows for larger files to be manipulated and bigger chunks to be handled at a time by the processor...

Video Cards, although normally for games, DO help photoshop process things faster, since video cards are efficient at graphics processing and photoshop takes advantage of the cards. My 3850 cost 180 but helps a LOT with processing in CS3... plus the visuals are all much smoother.

SO... you really want to combine these ALL to get the best photoshop performance.


PS - Yes it does take advantage of the video cards...

ooo, ooo, my turn.

Yes, I would go with a quad core. You do not need an expensive graphics card but if you plan on using a 30" monitor you need to find a card with Dual Link support. Also the best bet for disk performance would be to put the OS on a RAID 0 and then have a 3rd drive for the scratch disk/page file disk. With the price of 250GB drives this can be done for just at 200$. As usual the more memory the merrier but remember you have to be running a 64 bit OS to see/use over 4 GB.

i am not sure if its the raid or cpu or gpu

but i am sure the quad cpu is alot better - for graphics they use multicore


MANY GRAPHICS PROGRAMS ARE MULTI THREADING!

best gaming cpu is an E8000 series

How many programs actually take advantage of the GPUs yet?


Folding@ does...