[p0opstlnksal0t]

you can tweak win 7 to use almost as little resources as xp, so im not sold on this mentality bro. also, maybe state your budget and you can get some replies as to what you can build. i pieced together a i7 920 rig for a buddy for less than 800. with 6 gigs ddr3 in triple channel and a 4870 ati card. on air right now it runs at 4ghz stable... very fast computer... if you dont want to spend the money on ssd's pick up a couple 640 gb WD 7200 rpm hdd's and use intel matrix onboard raid drivers to raid 0 a partition or two. you can find these hard drive for like 50 bucks a pop

[joeyc]

if you dont want to spend the money on ssd's pick up a couple 640 gb WD 7200 rpm hdd's

These are what I use. Currently using two, but may add more or go for adding a TB or 2. I can't say enough about them - fast and quiet and relatively cheap. Price hasn't changed in 5 month though...

Oh yeah, they are OEM so you would need the appropriate SATA cables.

[p0opstlnksal0t]

These are what I use. Currently using two, but may add more or go for adding a TB or 2. I can't say enough about them - fast and quiet and relatively cheap. Price hasn't changed in 5 month though...

Oh yeah, they are OEM so you would need the appropriate SATA cables.

I have the same exact drive, only i have 4 of them in raid 0 and raid 1 array using intel matrix. i picked up mine with a newegg coupon for 25.00 off each

[p0opstlnksal0t]

I built a fairly similar setup for myself although when i built mine it was more costly, lol about 6 months ago... i7 920 d0 stepping at 4.2 ghz on air... 4x WD 640 blacks, 2x 4870 ati crossfired, 6gb ocz ddr3 1600, and dual hanns 28" monitors 1920x1200 res. lol maybe oberboard but they were cheap, and look gorgeous

[Alfisti]

I'm running 3BG RAM, 2GHx dual core processor and LR runs just fine. It is a Lenovo machine though which always seem to run a little meaner for soem reason.

[eva2000]

you can tweak win 7 to use almost as little resources as xp, so im not sold on this mentality bro. also, maybe state your budget and you can get some replies as to what you can build. i pieced together a i7 920 rig for a buddy for less than 800. with 6 gigs ddr3 in triple channel and a 4870 ati card. on air right now it runs at 4ghz stable... very fast computer... if you dont want to spend the money on ssd's pick up a couple 640 gb WD 7200 rpm hdd's and use intel matrix onboard raid drivers to raid 0 a partition or two. you can find these hard drive for like 50 bucks a pop

Exactly, one can tweak and tune win7 to use less resources... playing with win7 ultimate 64bit and vlite to reduce iso and install size to 1078MB iso and 5.67GB install

around 500MB idle

[mkz]

I like the look of this forum,

A lot of people strong on hardware knowledge.

Let's talk about cost effective performance.

Quad core processor (phenom or intel.....)
You're all right when you say that the developing process will be faster

4 - 6 gb of ram will be perfect (dual channel or triple channel)

Windows 7 64-bit (let's reduce resources like eva2000 says)

Use internet when necessary (disable for the most part)

2 final questions:

I don't see any valid reason for spending 200+ on a graphics card (unless I'm playing call of duty 4)

I will be using dual monitor DVI, (I can get that on a 100+ card)

What do you think about getting a 128 gb SSD for Win 7 + Apps
And a 7200 rpm for data (RAW photos)

Any potential speed increase?? worth the extra $$$?

-mike

[F-Stop]

I just put together a new budget system a month ago. It's only a temp computer for photo editing and will be the Home Theatre PC - HTPC in a few months as I need one anyway and will be willing to go bigger/better for a work system.

If you want to strip XP down use nLite, it's a great free program.



The system I'm running XP and LR on now cost a total of $302 CDN taxes and shipping included.

AMD Athlon II X2 240 Dual Core Processor Socket AM3 2.8GHZ - $65
MSI 785GM-E65 785G mATX AM3 DDR3 - $79.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA2 3.5IN 8.5MS 7200RPM 16MB $54.29
G.SKILL F3-10600CL8D-2GBHK PC3-10600 2GB 2X1GB DDR3-1333 CL8-8-8-21 - $49.99

I'm using the onboard ATI 4200HD graphics card with no issue. LR does slow down a little when I'm editing up to 800+ photos loaded at once. By slowing down I mean less than 1/2-1sec before changes show. For the most part it's near real time. With less images it's a dream to use. Exporting/Rendering 830 photos took about 5min vs. 1hr per 150 photos on my old Athlon 1.2Ghz.

Dual core is a must and both are definitely used. I read LR doesn't utilize 4 cores for most work anyway but I will be getting one for the next built just to make the system run that much smoother and allow head room if work is to be shared to the other 2 cores. I usually have the TV running through a tuner card on the computer while I'm working also.

Unfortunately this computer is on the net right now so by rights I will have a 3rd system for every day use and the other for photo editing. Before that happens I'm eyeing a few 24-26" e-IPS monitors; I'm embarrassed to say but I'm still using a 15"(14" viewable CRT).

[p0opstlnksal0t]

stay clear of the first generation ssd's with the jmicron controller...
You will see significant performance increases going from a single 7200 rpm drive to a ssd. if your OS and programs are installed on the ssd, loading times, and boot times will be cut drastically. quadcore is good for multitasking... if you want to run multiple instances of LR at the same time to spread the load across the 4 cores that would be the best bet. Until we get more software that can spread the workload evenly across all threads (which is actually 8 worker threads with some i7 chips 4 cores w/ hyperthreading) phenom is a very good budget choice as well. if you are on a budget and cant spring for an ssd, maybe get a cheaper phenom to compensate the cost. you can find a decent 64gb ssd for 150-200... 2 of these in raid-0 would be much faster than 1 single 128gb... but you will increase the risk of data loss. this is why i would use a 7200 rpm to store pictures and data. also, I would make an image of your OS onto a dvd so if one of you OS drives heads south, you can just fix the problem then copy that image back onto the fixed array. for me the increase of performance in a raid-0 far outweighs its risk of data loss... this may not be true for others who cherish dependability and data security greater than performance

[johnmflores]

stay clear of the first generation ssd's with the jmicron controller...
You will see significant performance increases going from a single 7200 rpm drive to a ssd.

Agreed, seek times of a good SSD (be careful, there are some poor performers out there) are crazy fast. Put your OS and Apps on there for sure, but also put your Lightroom catalog (a page of thumbnails = a lot of seeks) and Photoshop swap file on there.

[pb_red]

with regards to SSD, it all depends on what's important to you. if you want apps to start up crazy fast then it's worth it. also, if you're doing a lot of reads from the drive then again it's worth it. writes are much slower than reads so if you're writing a lot then you won't see THAT much of a perf increase.

so if like john said, you put your OS, apps, and lightroom/ps files on the SSD you should see good perf. however, if all of your images are on the slower disk and you are doing a lot of reads on those then lightroom will not be lightning fast since that will be your bottleneck.

again, figure out your budget and go with the best you can given that budget. my advice is to spend money on - in order of importance - RAM, disk(s) / SSD, monitors, vid card, cpu.

also keep in mind while reading reviews and benchmarks that most benchmarks do NOT provide a typical user scenario and perceived perf differs greatly from benchmark perf. for example, spending an "extra" $200 on a higher grade CPU will yield great benchmark perf increases but in the real world taking that $200 away from your CPU budget and putting it toward faster disk / SSD will yield much more noticeable perf increases.

[F-Stop]

I haven't read much on SSD's aside from the limited write cycles and eventual data integrity issues. For that alone I wouldn't trust anything critical I'm working on to be saved alone install the OS on it. I've experienced corrupt OS issues on regular HDD's, I can't imagine what an SSD would be like over the long term. There's a fair amount out there to read on SSD if it's something you're looking for but I'd rather a regular, larger and cheaper HDD. For the type of work you're probably going to do and if building a budget system like I did you won't notice enough to warrant having solid state.

[p0opstlnksal0t]

I haven't read much on SSD's aside from the limited write cycles and eventual data integrity issues. For that alone I wouldn't trust anything critical I'm working on to be saved alone install the OS on it. I've experienced corrupt OS issues on regular HDD's, I can't imagine what an SSD would be like over the long term. There's a fair amount out there to read on SSD if it's something you're looking for but I'd rather a regular, larger and cheaper HDD. For the type of work you're probably going to do and if building a budget system like I did you won't notice enough to warrant having solid state.

for alot its not the most practical... the write performance degradation is real and cant be fixed this is just the nature of ssd's. until ssd's are rid of this problem, I dont think they will be practical for alot of people, especially the premiums they demand. But this for me is not a big problem seeing as i reformat about every 6 months anyways... lol. my 4 WD blacks in raid-0 are just ever slightly faster than 1x ssd. take 2 of them and they would make my raid-0 array look ancient

[johnmflores]

so if like john said, you put your OS, apps, and lightroom/ps files on the SSD you should see good perf. however, if all of your images are on the slower disk and you are doing a lot of reads on those then lightroom will not be lightning fast since that will be your bottleneck.

again, figure out your budget and go with the best you can given that budget. my advice is to spend money on - in order of importance - RAM, disk(s) / SSD, monitors, vid card, cpu.

I agree on the priorities. Regarding Lightroom, if you put your catalog and preview on the SSD, then it should fly when you are in Library mode (Grid and Loupe) and normal when in Develop mode. It may partially depend on how big you make your JPG Preview files.

[pb_red]

F-Stop,
ssd's, just like any usb flash, compact flash, sd, etc do suffer from degradation over time. however, this segregation is controlled and impact is minimized. the same exact thing happens on HDD's when the drive detects that there is a bad sector on a disk. all that happens is that the sector is marked bad and is not used. in most cases this is completely transparent to the end user and has very minimal impact.

with regards to life-span, sdd's should be about the same or better considering that hdd's fail very frequently after about 5 years (personal observation of home and many work machines.)
lastly, in most cases when hdd's fail they fail hard - there is a mechanical problem and the disk is no longer readable. sdd's on the other hand degrade which is still problematic but could be easier to handle.

the bottom line is that if you want your data to be safe you have to make backups regardless of the original medium.