[SuperAkuma]

cs3 comes in 64 bit flavour and I've used more than 4gb of ram stiching together massive panoramic images (70mega pixel +), if that is something your interested in doing you might like more ram

Also get three hard drives, one for windows, one for photoshop and one for photoshops scratch file.

cs3 also supports video card acceleration but only with certain high end cards. The real issue will be support for high resolution monitors with no video card.

Adobe never release a 64bit version of CS3, only the CS4.
You CAN install cs3 on a 64bit OS but still have a limited memory access in the program itself.

As far as memory goes, like what everyone else said, you should get atleast 4gb because RAM is so cheap. You can get a pair of 2GB for under $50 easily. As far as the hard drive goes, I would get a raptor drive if you have the money or get a 1tb drive for the main drive. Typically the bigger the drive the faster the drive. I would NOT get anything smaller than 500GB for a 7200rpm drive.

For the video card, just get a decent updated video card. You don't need to buy top end one, but something at least $100 or so.

As far as the cpu goes, I would recommended the intel over amd. Amd are great processor but right now intel has better bangs for the bucks. I wouldn't worry so much about the amount of watts the cpu use unless if you are getting a notebook where battery life is important.

[WerTicus]

that was a typo i ment cs4 and ram is so cheap so why not 8 gb? or 12?

[Wheatfield]

that was a typo i ment cs4 and ram is so cheap so why not 8 gb? or 12?

Fine if he is running Vista or 64bit XP. XP pro won't address more than 4gb.

[johnmflores]

Some good advice here. Let me add one more - buy the biggest monitor you can afford. Big monitors = less time scrolling and panning and zooming and more time doing actual post processing.

[Venturi]

Update on my own upgrade's progress...

Mistake #1: Assumed the advice from my colleague that my old RAM would work was correct. That cost $100 extra.
Mistake #2: Did not check the CPU power connectors matched between the PSU and MOBO. That cost $10 for an adapter.

I should have it up and running tonight - only 3 days behind schedule...

[reeftool]

I would build for the fastest CPU and most memory and storage you can afford unless you want to repeat this process next year. The .avi files you mention use more space than any other video format, something like 180 Mb per minute of video if I remember correctly. That can fill up a hard drive rather quickly. I try to build for at least 3 years or more of use before I need to upgrade again.

[Ex Finn.]

What is the max. processor cores that PS supports?, just curious. I am running NEO P31 MOBO, intel core2 duo 3,12 gig processor , 1033 fsb. 2gig RAM.XP Pro. AND it is not enough..
Yes, this is a year old.computer.

Cheers. Mike.

[mattdm]

What is the max. processor cores that PS supports?

It's not technically any different to support 16 cores instead of 4. It's just that you get diminishing returns as overhead at all levels creeps in. The question is basically: where to draw the line.

As for hard drives: I'd recommend getting two and mirroring them. This isn't a backup strategy, but will save you inconvenience when one of them goes bad.

[Ex Finn.]

It's not technically any different to support 16 cores instead of 4. It's just that you get diminishing returns as overhead at all levels creeps in. The question is basically: where to draw the line.

As for hard drives: I'd recommend getting two and mirroring them. This isn't a backup strategy, but will save you inconvenience when one of them goes bad.

And all I want is a A*600,.
Thanks for clarification.
Cheers. Mike.
Or A* 1200.
Takahashi would be good too, any flavor.

[gamgee]

Same question bothered me recently.
I did some research and just upgraded a week ago and this is what I did
(given very limited finances) :

Motherboard - Gygabyte MA 770-UD3 (long lasting capacitors)
CPU AMD ATHLON X2 7750 (Phenom cores in Athlon package - better)
RAM 8 Gb standard edition DDR2 800 Mhz

Vista x64 + Lightroom x64 + Photoshop CS4 x64

Believe me, 8 gig RAM IS NOT overkill.
RAM is one most important factor in processing large picture files in Lightroom and Photoshop (research paid off this time).
The moment the computer fills up RAM and starts to scratch on hard drive like crazy (virtual memory) is the moment when productive and comfortable work ends and slow motion movie begins, probably ending in freeze up.
It does not matter if our files are far smaller than 8 or 4 or 2 Gb, there are numerous reasons why so much RAM is needed: for holding large photo library and being able to normaly browse and work in it (in Lightroom for example), for holding all that OS needs (so it uses virtual memory as little as posible), for Photoshop + some plugin needs (some filters/plugins need large amounts of raw RAM to do their work and refuse to do it when RAM runs out).
So, if you add all that up - Vista (resource hog - can't wait for 7) + Lightroom (with large catalog) + Photoshop (with his scratch, layers, history and plugins) - very large amount of RAM will be eaten right at start just to have everything in it. Then you still have to have enough free RAM to comfortably work in.

When doing panoramas I feel that even 16 Gb could be put to good use while stiching
RAW files pano from K20D in full resolution - those can get longish - 5, 6 meters - I just don't have money to print them =((

[Venturi]

I'm trying to decide whether to go ahead and grab a copy of Vista64 or just wait to see what happens with Winbloze 7. I'm wasting a gig with XP Pro right now.

I do miss Linux an aweful lot too; just wish that WINE development would get a kick in the pants.

[bymy141]

If you don't want to build a computer yourself, check out the Acer M7720 series.
In case you are considering using the system for video editing, most main stream editing s/w can use all 8 processors/hyper threads. That will give you a lot of power.
It features an Intel I7 920 processor, 6Gb DDR3 RAM, 1Tb disk and 2 front slots to plug in 2 SATA II harddrives which you can configure in RAID mode (any striping use for best performance).
Make sure your temp files etc are using these drives.

Building a similar system from parts here in Holland will cost you 20% more than the lowest on-line prices. It's €920 for the M7720 versus € 1150 for the parts.

- Bert

[rpriedhorsky]

1. 2GB RAM enough, or should I go to 4GB?
2. Will 2 separate hard drives (one for the OS, one for photos) make a noticeable difference?

Hard drives these days are big, cheap, and unreliable. I would never, ever, ever run a solo disk anymore -- always redundantly in a mirrored RAID or RAID 5 (note that striping is not redundant). Ideally the two disks would be from different manufacturers or production runs at least to minimize the chance of simultaneous failure.

As for speccing a system, for the past few builds (spanning a decade or so), I've been a fan of the Ars Techica system guides.

[FHPhotographer]

Greetings -
I'm upgrading/building a PC for editing using Lightroom or something similar.
Capable enough to handle those big Pentax raw images quickly.
I'm not a gamer.
I'll also likely have to edit the .avi files that my boy shoots on his Canon SD790IS.

Suggestions welcome, as would be answers to the following questions:

1. 2GB RAM enough, or should I go to 4GB?
2. Will 2 separate hard drives (one for the OS, one for photos) make a noticeable difference?
3. Is the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz a fast enough CPU?
   (I rather like the idea of only drawing 45w)
4. Do I need a separate video card and, if so, how much RAM should it have?

The goal is to spend, intelligently, just enough -- but not overspend.

Thanks much.

- Richard

This reminds of the old arguments about high-end stereo specs, where stereophiles would argue incessantly about technical specs that simply didn't apply in the real world and sound contours only a dog could hear.

I think you'll find that unless you are running 3D gaming programs you don't need a lot of this stuff for 2D graphics. I just downgraded from an Intel Quad Core 2.4 MHz with 4 MB of RAM, dual RAID hard drives, discreet nVidia video card etc etc. to a much simpler system with 2MB of RAM and an integrated graphics chip. I can run every current photography-related graphics program like Photoshop CS4 while multitasking other programs and don't see any qualitative performance difference between the current low-end system and the expensive system. Sure the specs aren't as good as the higher end components mentioned here, but you run cheaper and cooler, with less component integration issues and (possibly) fewer crashes.

For photo processing what matters is a reasonable dual core processor running at 2 to 2.4 MHz with one of the newer integrated graphic chips like the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, a couple of megs of RAM and 1066 front side bus, and a single 320 GB 7200 rpm hard drive ( and that will comfortably hold all your programs plus leave enough room for about 10,000 10MB images) . Everything past that is nice but, again, you don't need the hardware for photography work and won't see any significant performance differences without the high-end components. And you'll spend a lot less money.

As the old cowboy said when asked about what horse to buy, the sleek but expensive thoroughbred race horse or the dirt brown hammerhead quarter horse, you can't ride a color,
Brian

[pedrojoper]

Go for 4GB, it's a no-brainer. You should check a graphics card with a GPU supported by the software you use, both my RAW converters (ACR and DxO) use the GPU to speed things up. As for the CPU, it's not that big of a deal, most PC's these days have a fast CPU and a bottleneck like low RAM slowing down the whole system. The biggest bottleneck may be the hard drive, so consider buying two smaller drives instead of a bigger one and setting them in a RAID array, that would nearly double the speed...