photoshop gaming build - what do you think

well if your're only into photshopping and not gaming then you don't need a good graphics card. next version of photshop is supposed to have gpu acceleration. but i'm thinking that you do game and it's a wise decision to wait around for the new cards. couple of weeks away.

also the two seagate drives in raid 1 for os. i'm thinking that two 250gb 7200.11 with 32mb cache would be even faster. the 320 are of older and slower geneation. try maybe even 2x 500 gb 7200.11gb drives. but since it's only for os and you have plenty more space, get the 2x250gb.

EDIT: sorry just noticed that it's also a gaming computer, please disregard the first remark.

why not go for 8gigs of ram? If you're using this for photoshop the more ram the better. Also transcend? Kinda a no name brand and with memory prices the way they are I would at least go with a brand name like G.skill.

geofelt - I actually meant raid 0 (stripe) not raid 1 (mirror) I have external backups (three) and want speed not redundancy.. I like the idea of the velociraptor but they are super pricey, especially here in Australia.

Dagger - what MB would you look at? All I want is a board with raid (ICH9r) anything else isn't that important. I will run a slight overclock but I am not going to push it at all...

I will probably go for 8GB of RAM eventually but at the moment I am keeping to about $1000 (Australian) if I get a cheaper CPU I will get more RAM. Will have a look at the G.skill price.

Thanks

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind i a single user desktop environment.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki- [...] iveVsRaid0

They have a database of the fastest drives; look for comparisons with your application.
There are some specific applications that will benefit from raid-0, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

If you are running your application now, turn on the performance monitor, and see how cpu bound you are, and how i/o bound you are. Spend more money on your limiting factor.

Photoshop is 32 bit(or at least mine is), Will this not limit its memory access anyway?

unless you run multiple copies.

thanks all for the advice, still haen't settled on the motherboard but the rest is looking like

Q6600 (the Q9450 is nearly twice the price here in Oz so not worth the small performance jump)
8GB g.skill PI RAM - with the saving on the q660 I am bumping up the RAM
8800 GTS Gigabyte VC. Like the new ATI cards but the 8800GTS is faster and quieter...
DVD±/CD-RW: Samsung SH-S203N
HDs 1x velociraptor for the OS and 3x 750GB seagate in raid 5 for image files 1 500gb eSATA for photoshop scratch disc. looks like the velociraptor beats the raid setup in performance and power usage.
OS Vista 64
PSU Antec TruePower Trio 650
Case Antec Sonata

So can anyone suggest a good MB for this rig?

thanks nukemaster. I already have the case and PSU. The price wars will take a while to reach Australian shores as will the new cards... Will wait till the end of the month and put in the order.