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02-14-2010, 11:39 AM   #61
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Michaelina2 and wlachan, thanks for the tips. I'll apply those when I get home in a week or so.

QuoteOriginally posted by Michaelina2 Quote
BTW: I can remember when transistors were considered a "WOW" innovation and am a Heathkit, Tandy/C/PM (Z-C/PM), 35mm SP/Spotmatic (1964-95) graduate, too.
Before I got a girlfriend whose dad designed missile guidance systems and brought me 'surplus' semiconductors from the munitions plant, I scavenged discarded transistor radios for parts to build my insane circuits. I nearly creamed when I could get FETs and ICs. Ooh, the power, the glory... lots easier than building digital gates from NE-2a glow tubes.

And I never had a Spotty, but I sure loved my Oly Pen-FT, and Canon-Honeywell Dial-35, and other half-frame 135 cams, with images about the size of APS-C, same crop factor, etc. Forward, into the past...

02-15-2010, 06:58 AM   #62
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Computer man said I would be better off replacing computer. Really studying them now. Would like to be able to use two monitors at the same time. One for editing tools, other for image. What does the computer need (besides 2nd monitor) for this to happen? Will this be something an off the shelf computer can do or will it need to be added?

thanks
barondla

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02-15-2010, 02:24 PM   #63
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QuoteOriginally posted by Fl_Gulfer Quote
I have to disagree with you on the HD speed issue,(please don't take offence) I own a 5400 HD in my Laptop and it takes forever moving files from one drive to another, I move 20gig files between my raptors very fast and have never had a heat problem, but I do have a well ventilated case and a water cooled CPU and Vid Card.
Nowdays you can get external cases for HD's cooled with fans. I'm sure they use more power but it's worth the speed.
I use Western Digital Velociraptors. These are actually 2.5" drives with an aluminium heat sink around them, the size of a 3.5" hdd... They run @10k rpm and are very fast. There is no way you could compare an ordinary 5400 rpm drive with this. They are a day and night difference.

These are the fastest drives you can buy nowadays...
02-15-2010, 02:40 PM   #64
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QuoteOriginally posted by graphicgr8s Quote
raz-o I do a lot of PS work, have to it's my job. If you have enough ram you Photoshop won't be using swap files. Only time I ever have it go to a swap is when I am switching/using Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator all open at once. I have 2 drives but they are mirrored so there is no real increase in swap writes. And yes since I do full color layout my files tend to get huge.
Is that not what I said in point 1? Even with RAID striping, you can still run into contention if the OS is swapping stuff out to the page file (this is mitigated a lot in vista and windows 7 as long as an app isn't idle). However, with mirroring, every time you write something twice every time you write it. Mirroring increases latency of writes until both writes are done.

Striping - speeds things up, increases chance of failure
Spanning - speed is the same, failure is worse, but not as bad as striping, looks like a big disk.
Mirroring - copies data to multiple drives on write. decreases failure rate (really failures will occur at same rate as a normal disk, but the mirror lets you repair said errors), and decreases speed.

Mirroring wouldn't affect the rate of writing to scratch either. Exceeding the memory allocated to an app, or in general running out of ram or meeting/failing to meet the caching criteria is what increases the frequency writing to scratch.

02-15-2010, 02:41 PM   #65
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QuoteOriginally posted by Cloggie_UK Quote
I use Western Digital Velociraptors. These are actually 2.5" drives with an aluminium heat sink around them, the size of a 3.5" hdd... They run @10k rpm and are very fast. There is no way you could compare an ordinary 5400 rpm drive with this. They are a day and night difference.

These are the fastest drives you can buy nowadays...
There are plenty of 15k rpm drives out there. At least if you are running serial attached scsi.
02-15-2010, 02:46 PM   #66
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QuoteOriginally posted by barondla Quote
Computer man said I would be better off replacing computer. Really studying them now. Would like to be able to use two monitors at the same time. One for editing tools, other for image. What does the computer need (besides 2nd monitor) for this to happen? Will this be something an off the shelf computer can do or will it need to be added?

thanks
barondla

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A lot of the really budget PCs from most manufacturers can be hit or miss on dual monitor support. Unfortunately they try to be deliberately deceptive IMO.

Most video cards that are not integrated video, or gimped OEM cards for a specific manufacturer, support dual head.

It's easily attainable, shouldn't cost too much (well monitors aren't exactly cheap), but they make it fairly hard to shop around on that feature.
02-18-2010, 06:40 AM   #67
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Any advantqage of AMD Athlon II quad core vs Intel Q8400 processors? The Intel computer is approx $50 higher.
thanks
barondla

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02-18-2010, 09:20 AM   #68
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QuoteOriginally posted by barondla Quote
Any advantqage of AMD Athlon II quad core vs Intel Q8400 processors? The Intel computer is approx $50 higher.
thanks
barondla

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Intel CPUs with similar spec outperform AMD at the moment. Now comes the interesting part. If you are buying any budget PCs, the onboard AMD IGP would outperform any Intel graphics which are basically suck. But if you will be buying a separate graphics card, then by all means go for the Intel CPU.
02-18-2010, 06:12 PM   #69
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barondia: sorry, i am too tired to read the last pages. if you are still considering a repair, download something like the bellow, burn the cd, and boot it to see if your problems persist. you can run it without changing anything on your computer, just to test (copy files from one external disk to another, etc). if it is consistently usable and stable, than you most probably have a software issue (windows) and not a hardware issue.

Download Ubuntu | Ubuntu

hope this helps.
02-18-2010, 09:35 PM   #70
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QuoteQuote:
Computer man said I would be better off replacing computer.
They always say that.

QuoteQuote:
What does the computer need (besides 2nd monitor) for this to happen?
2 monitor ports.

QuoteQuote:
Will this be something an off the shelf computer can do or will it need to be added?
I think just about any current one will have that function.
02-18-2010, 10:02 PM   #71
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To speed up the system overall, split the pagefile across two spindles. Not two partitions on the same drive, but two seperate hard drives.

All versions of Windows, based on the NT kernal, (Windows NT Workstation 3.0-3.5-3.51-4.0-2000, XP-Vista-7) have been capable of asyncronous I/O. That is - when one drive (pagefile) is busy, the OS will use the "other" drive (pagefile) to swap virtual memory. This was one of the first "tuning" tips provided when NT first came out. (I have a copy of the NT 3.0 resource kit where it is all explained).

Take your page file and create two same sized page files on two seperate spindles (physically different hard drives). The OS will pick the pagefile that is not in use to swap out too. The whole idea behind async I/O is to get the OS to write/read from two seperate devices in what appears to be a parallel fashion.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL
02-19-2010, 06:53 AM   #72
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Computer man does this in his spare time. He doesn't sell any thing. Only fixes computers at work when needed. Has been a friend for years. His reasoning is the computer is barely doing what I want when working properly. Sees no point in spending money to upgrade it to the point I want (it is over 5 years old).

Thinking about checking a computer store to see what it would cost to build a custom computer.
thanks for all the help
barondla
02-19-2010, 08:01 AM   #73
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The AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz CPU is a best buy compared to an Intel CPU in the same price range without overclocking but above $180 Intel CPUs rule.
Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops
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