Quad or Duo / Gaming or Workstation for graphics design

Hello and welcome to the forums  
For your tasks you will benefit from a Quad core CPU,however socket 775 CPUs are out of production so consider i5/i7 CPUs instead

Well a workstations GPU is not better per say but its made mainly for the workstation enviroment. That also means, like server CPUs, they are more expensive.

If you want a good mix then for the production end you want to do a Core 17 920 is probably the best for the price.

For gaming part then a 5870/5970 is the current best you can go unless you want to wait for nVidias DX11 offering against the DX11 5800 series.

For Photoshop / GIMP etc, you don't really use the graphics horsepower as it is all CPU and RAM dependant. Only if you are working with CAD do you need a huge graphics card and then you would be a lot better going with the professional GPUs rather than the consumer versions (which will underperform in CAD applications by design).

Personally I'd go for a professional workstation with a grown-up warranty if this is your money-earning activity. Reliability and peace of mind are more important then bling at work! I can't remember how many photoshop plugins etc are true multi-core capable, but I'd always recommend quad over duo in that situation as whatever software you are using now will more than likely be upgraded over the course of the hardware's lifespan to use multi-cores efficiently.

Kyz

Kyz

A dual core just wont cut it here my friend. A quad is in demand for what you want to work with. Photoshop now comes with grafix card acceleration. (although I dont know about photoshop 7) Get the quad!!!! I still use a S775 Q9550 for a workstation at work and it still beats down on the work load. A bad boy epensive workstation is not a must. But I do suggest a 5870 at least for your grafix needs, for multiple reasons.