Upgrade sanity check - e7400

[expatCanuck]

Greetings -

Spec'ing a budget-ish upgrade from my Athlon 64 3000+ (single core) / ABit AX8 / 1 MB for speedier photo editing.

e7400 C2D ($120)
Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L ($80)
2 x 2G 1066 PC2 8500 RAM - ($50 - $60 or so)

reuse my old (silent pipe) GeForce 6600 PCI-E x16 (w/ a whopping 128 MB o' RAM)

My thinking was that CPU power and RAM are the most likely bottlenecks.
I've got a couple of SATA drives so I can put the OS & App on one and the data on another.

Any significant oversights?

Thanks much.

- Richardat

 

[stridervm]

Photo Editing?

How huge are the file sizes we're talking about?

In simple pictures that's 5MP or lower, the old PC is I think enough for the workload, and upgrading won't do much any good.

I'm thinking you should buy a Phenom II X3 with another gig of RAM for an upgrade of sorts (Plus a Radeon 4650 if there's anything left), but in my opinion a better idea is to keep your old PC in a better shape by reformatting often.

 

[expatCanuck]

I'm editing 10-15MB RAW files, and find that the image refresh is a bit on the sluggish side.

Read about the 4650 on TH earlier today -- thanks, good suggestion for a budget card.

 

[g3force]

Greetings -

Spec'ing a budget-ish upgrade from my Athlon 64 3000+ (single core) / ABit AX8 / 1 MB for speedier photo editing.

e7400 C2D ($120)
Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L ($80)
2 x 2G 1066 PC2 8500 RAM - ($50 - $60 or so)

reuse my old (silent pipe) GeForce 6600 PCI-E x16 w/ a whopping 128 MB o' RAM

My thinking was the CPU power and RAM are the most likely bottlenecks.
I've got a couple of SATA drives so I can put the OS & App on one and the data on another.

Any significant oversights?

Thanks much.

- Richard

Looks solid, but I'd actually say the 6600GT is the "bottleneck" at the moment. I suggest you invest into something such as the 4650 if your on a tight budget and plan to game on this system. If you can spend a bit more, I'd suggest the 4770. Both these options are heavily dependent on the current PSU in your system: the 4770 consumes substantially more power than the 4650. Could you therefor list the name and wattage output of your PSU, and preferably the amperage on the 12 volt rail?

EDIT: Oops, I missed the key words "photo editing" . Disregard my statement above.

 

[expatCanuck]

Yep, I game not.
Photo editing & music recording / mixing are the most CPU intensive things I do.

In any event, the PSU is a SeaSonic 380. Not certain how to determine the amperage on the 12v rail.

 

[Outlander_04]

A gfx card doesnt do any of the image processing in a photo editing program .
Use what you have .

The e7400 will be a good upgrade from the single core athlon

Stick with 800MHz RAM . Unless you are overclocking to more than 400MHz [ 1600MHz ] there is no reason to buy more expensive RAM since the mb cant use the extra bandwidth anyway

 

[dna708]

Outlander_04 is, for the most part, correct. However, if you're using Photoshop CS4, I'm pretty sure you can use an Nvidia card with CUDA to accelerate photo editing, but unless you need to edit extremely large photos with many layers and textures (several hundred megs approaching 10ish gigs) then the video card wouldn't really be needed.

 

[batuchka]

Hmm for render/photos/blue ray CUDA has its merits so how about a quad bundle on a CUDA enabed IGP and a free printer included LOL
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html

 

[expatCanuck]

Hmm for render/photos/blue ray CUDA has its merits so how about a quad bundle on a CUDA enabed IGP ...

CUDA-enabled merits investigation ... but no quad. I'm wanting to keep power req'ts modest -- 65w or so ... to make do w/ the 380w SeaSonic PSU.

 

[batuchka]

Err PSU needs not tied to CPU rather its how powerful a GPU set up u running and even then that would be amps on the 12V hehe I have clients on P2X4s/IGP on far inferior PSUs that Eartwatts/Seasonic 380! Think Cooler Masters hehe