Working with 50mb and larger image sizes. Getting a new digicam that will be giving me large file sizes to start with.
Have heard the Pentium chip is better for graphics than AMD. Know if there's any truth to this?
Am building a new PC which will have at least 512Ram. Any other suggestions on what I might need.
I get info from other photo forums but am wondering what you guys think.
Thanks,
Allen

The Pentium will handle graphics a lot better than the AMD, it has problems with OpenGL and a few other things.  You also need to look at Windows 2000 if you want to use that much RAM, as the other Windows products (with the exception of NT) will not utilize that much, even if you have it in the machine.

It depends upon the applications being used.  Most commercial graphics apps like Photoshop 6.0 and others are all geared towards the Intel processor when it fomes to x86 platforms because of the SSE optimizations of the processor.  However, AMD has just licensed the SSE instruction set for their latest Athlon chips, so you will do well to go with either.  AMD is going to be cheaper and offer greater performance per MHz, while the Intel will win in pure clock speed.  Personally, I'd go with an Athlon.  I'd also go with at least 768MB of the fastest RAM the motherboard supports, as RAM is really cheap right now.

Also, do your eyes a favor and go with a flat monitor, preferably a Sony Trinitron (or OEM trinitron tube) no smaller than 17".  You'll be amazed at how much strain this will take off your eyes, allowing you to work longer.

God Bless Texas

Those are good suggesations. Am looking for more. I like the idea of the higher RAM. Actually, someone mentioned a Gig of RAM and I can see uses for that in the near future.

When taking Sr portraits, we will need to dump 50 or so high rez images of one Sr. into a desktop for instant previewing by the customer.

Actually we will need about 4 machines. Probably two dedicated to PShop and other nifty progs and then others for image showing and admin duties.

I lean to the P chip myself and have been reluctant to look elsewhere.

I already use a 19" now and am looking at a 21" monitor later along with a Wacom tab.

Buy up RAM like a squirrel storing nuts for winter.   It's so damned cheap right now you could easily afford to throw a gig worth of RAM into your system if the motherboard will permit you and if you're using an O/S that can take advantage of it.

Just got 256megs of Crucial PC133 RAM for 44 dollars delivered.   Would have brought my system up to around 512megs but I'm using windows ME and I'm not sure if the difference between 384 and 512 would be noticable.

Have an AMD 1200 Athlon Tbird running on 256 megs of ram with a 30g harddrive(you need more for video processing).

Graphics card is a Geforce2GTS 32 MB card, sound comes from a run of the mill Soundblaster 128

19" monitor and cable internet completes the setup.

Got this system a two months ago, very pleased with the AMD's performance.

Processor speed is like the nuclear arms race of the cold war, someone is always gonna get more/bigger/faster processors and someone is always gonna produce something to compete with it.

Kuiper

Just saw in a recent ad that Intel has just released the new 2GHZ processor. DAMN! that is one smoking peice of silicon. Prices for 1.7ghz and 1.8ghz are going to be falling fast. Now's the time to upgrade.

You want the fastest bus/chip speeds for the money. Never buy the latest and greatest, go for close second. 1 gig of DDR ram, 1.5 gig P-4, a fast 40+ gig IDE hard drive, minimum Geforce 2 with 64megs of ram, and a fast updated motherboard to support all these new chipsets.

The extra memory will help a lot and keep your processor free from having to constantly cache your hard drive for virtual memory. As your layers in Photoshop grow, you can easily turn a 50meg file into a 500meg file really fast.

You'll want to use Win 2000 Professional, a very fast, stable OS that will give you back your memory when you are done. Stay away from any consumer grade OS's like Win 98 and ME.

As a photographer I am more a user rather than an expert in putting systems together. Was thinking of trying to keep this system at 2K or below if posssible.
One of the Seniors I photo'd last year is going to build it for me. Seems like a good deal. He's starting his own business.
The Gig processor sounds great but it won't run graphics well unless I have lotsa [:P] RAM, at least thats what I have heard. Didn't realize that W2000 is the way to go.
I may be networking this PC eventually, would I run into any compatibility issues? Maybe thats too broad a question.
BTW, I will not buy Compaq again (bought one 2.5 years ago). I tried to install a SCSI card for a Nikon Coolscan and kept getting IRQ conflicts. What a pain. Compaq lpoadfs up there IRQs and even hides one or two so you can't access them!

And those Pshop layers can build up!

Remember Win2k Pro, not Win2k ME. I've heard a lot of people complain that ME is actually worse than Win95. For Professional Apps, you need a professional OS. All my video games seem to work too. [:)] Networking has been a breeze with all of our new Win 2k computers. 2kPro is the first OS that seems to have some intelligence. It doesn't try to force all kinds of out dated drivers and dlls onto your hardware. It makes all the right choices and seems to find your new hardware "correctly" which makes your job much easier.

IRQ problems can sometimes be cured by moving the card to another PCI slot. Some cards, especially graphic cards do not like to share IRQ's. I usually leave the PCI slot immediately below the AGP slot empty.

Check pricewatch.com for comparisons. You should be able to build your own PC for well under $2000 using second best hardware. Prices drop quite a bit when the new generations come out. I just bought 768megs of PC100 ram recently for about 60 bucks. DDR is pricy, but nothing like it used to be.

OK< first let's dispell a few myths.  AMD has no problems with the OpenGL API.  It has no issues with operating systems.

Now, The AMD Thunderbird, clock for clock, stomps the Pentium 3 and the Pentium 4, no doubt about it.

The Pentium4 is the slowest clock-for-clock processor that Intel has ever produced.  They increased the length of the pipes, and made it run less operations at once, and that allowed them to achieve higher clock rates(Mhz).  That is marketing crap.  The truth is that in alot of applications, the 1.3Ghz P4 is slower than the 1Ghz P3.  

Mhz is not the end all be all in real world performance.  What that chip DOES with it is key.  The P4 1.7Ghz gpot spanked by a 1.4Ghz TBird, in almost everything except Quake3 Arena.  In fact, the P4 at 2Ghz, lost more things than it won, against the 1.4Ghz TBird.

So, for things like Photoshop, the TBird kicks ass, but more important than that, is your hard drive and RAM.

You will be using large files and will be needing to move them all around.  At that point, your hard drive and your RAM will be your system's bottleneck.  Then look to the video card.

Frankly, you would be better off with a 1Ghz TBird, but have it equipped with a RAID array and 512MB of DDR RAM, rather than a 2Ghz P4 with 256MB RAM of a single hard drive.

And the AMD systems are cheaper.  You can get a 1.4Ghz Tbird for $135, and a top of the line RAID motherboard for $165, and half a gig of DDR RAM for under $100.

Add a pair of 40GB IBM 60GXP model drives for about $225 for the pair, and you will have a true powerhouse multimedia rig.

For video, it is hard to beat the ATI Radeon when it comes to 2D graphics and visual quality.  Not a bad gaming card either, but not as good as NVidia...

So do not fall prey to the marketing gimicks. Don't see "2Ghz" and let your eyes glaze over.  

The P4 runs at a real world deficit of about 500-600Mhz when comparing to AMD.  If you get a P4, you will NEED to get the 2Ghz model to not get your as handed to you by a tweaked TBird...  hehehe

If you have any questions, head over to our computer forum, it is full to the brim with geeks and hardware junkies, and they can help you build a machine that will blow the doors off of anything you will see at CompUSA, and for half the money.

[url]www.delphi.com\madscientist[/url]

ANd there are plenty of us gun nuts at that computer forum as well.

AR15 kicks ass, but if you want dedicated computer stuff, head to the link above...

with images sizing 50MB and up, it sounds like you're doing serious image processing.  If you are going to be manipulating images as well as displaying them you might want to look into this setup.

Two AMD Duron processors: because they're dirt cheap.  Also photoshop supports SMP so you'll have lots of processing power to use.  Choose AMD, they have a better floating point processing core and beats pentium.  The new Durons have SSE2 in addition to 3D-now on them, so it's fully Intel compatible now.  Biggest bank per buck, not including RAM

lots ram: already stated above

SCSI hard drive: If you plan on using up all your RAM and do more, you might want to look this option up.  SCSI devices have a higher bandwidth to your memory system and they don't utilize 100% of your CPU in disk intensive operations.  This option probably has the least bank per buck

OS: stated above

Most importantly, is your video card and monitor.  In the past, I thought a graphics card was a graphics card and ditto for a monitor.  Not true.  If you are running at high resolutions 1600x1200 and up, a crappy graphics card might not be adequate.  I am sorry to say, this does include the GeForce.  When running 2D apps at high res, the GeForce is quite fuzzy, to the point I can barely read the words.  I recommend a Matrox G400, it is designed to work with large high quality monitors.  As far as monitors go I can say that Sony makes great montiors, although they are a little expensive.  This is not something you want to cut corners on.

Hope this helps!

SquireSCA is correct!!

A fast athalon using DDR ram was put up against a p4 and the P4 was destroyed.

Also many of the P4's are going to came with ramdac (god awful expensive crap). GO with athalon and DDR ram. I think the PC 2600 ddr is the best going right now and get the athalon chip w/ the 266 FSB.

Happy computering.

Here, I just went to www.Pricewatch.com to piece together what I would suggest as a "killer system"...

AMD Thunderbird 1.4Ghz(266fsb)   - $105
Abit KG7-RAID motherboard        - $160
PC2400 DDR RAM- 512MB(256x2)     - $140
ATI Radeon 64MB DDR              - $150
Soundblaster LIVE sound card     - $50
IBM Deskstar 60GXP- 40GB         - $202(for the pair)
Pioneer 16X slot-loading DVD     - $50
Plextor 16X CDRW                 - $160
Antec 350W mid-tower case        - $100
MS Optical Intelli-Mouse         - $50
MS keyboard                      - $30
Viewsonic 21" monitor            - $500
----------------------------------------
                TOTAL      = $1,697+ shipping

That system would kick ass.  Polenty of CPU power, and those IBM drives in a RAID 0 array(striping) will move data at blistering speeds.  The RAM is top of the line, and the Abit KG7 is a spectacular board.

The ATI Radeon gives some of the best image quality around, and has video in and video out, plus hardware DVD decoding.

So factor in shipping and stuff, and you can build that system for under 2 grand EASY.

Yes, go with a ton of RAM...1 GB would be great.  Check the motherboard to see if it will go higher than that.

For the CPU, MHz-per-MHz the AMD does appear to give better performance.  Figure an AMD 1.4GHz roughly equal to a 1.8GHz Pentium 4.  The 2GHz P4 may actually be faster...  So I'm also partial to the AMD for a single CPU system.

But for Adobe Photoshop, it's multi-threaded at the application level, so you could take advantage of that with a multi-CPU system.  A dual-Pentium III even at 933MHz would actually be duking it out with the AMD or P4.

The current AMD's are not yet "multi" ready, but their multi-ready Athlon 1.5Ghz is due out anytime.  A dual-1.5GHz is planned to be [i]¡muy rapido![/i]

The other speedsters in the multi-CPU arena is the Xeons.  The PIII Xeons with their extra caching are quite fast.  Intel also makes Pentium 4 Xeons which in a multi-CPU format are about the fastest things out there for retail consumers.  Though if you look up "Xeon" in the dictionary, I believe the definition means [i]"to multiply the price by two."[/i] So they'd probably push you out of your price range.

If you need fast hard drive access, a dual-drive ATA-100 setup on RAID 0. Here's what my drive looks like with two IBM 75GXP 30GB drives in RAID 0 and I'm only on ATA-66 (motherboard restriction) as tested with Sisoft Sandra:

[img]http://www.southwick.org/pb2/raidbenchmark.jpg[/img]

And Windows 2000 Pro is the way to go. Very stable!

- Robbie

The 1.2Ghz AMD Palomino, that does SMP, is currently available.

But he wanted to keep the price under 2 grand...

You're right!  I missed that one.  Available in 1GHz and 1.2GHz flavors.  Pricewatch has the 1.2 at $162 which would be $324 in total CPU costs...more than a P4 1.8, but less than the P4 1.9.  The dual AMD motherboards start around $210 though...

  *modifies Squire's pricing*

Dual AMD 1.2GHz  - $324
Tyan Tiger dual AMD mobo - $208
PC2400 DDR RAM- 1GB(256x4) - $280
ATI Radeon 64MB DDR - $150
Soundblaster LIVE sound card - $50
IBM Deskstar 60GXP- 40GB - $202(for the pair)
Promise Fasttrack100 RAID - $75
Pioneer 16X slot-loading DVD - $50
Plextor 16X CDRW - $160
Antec 350W mid-tower case - $100
MS Optical Intelli-Mouse - $50
MS keyboard - $30
Viewsonic 21" monitor - $500

We went over with $2179 which oddly enough is the same price (within $30) of the 486 I bought back in '93.

- Robbie

Robbie, those Sisoft scores are a bit low.

I have the 1.4Ghz TBird on an IWill K266, but even when I had my IBM 30GB 75GXP on an Asus CUSL2-C board as a single drive, I got about 23,500 in Sandra...

My buddy has twin IBM's, same model that we have, and got a score of 43,000!

BTW, we could use some more computer geek/gun nuts at "The Laboratory"...

[url]www.delphi.com\madscientist[/url]

Yeah, my friend has dual 75GXP's in RAID 0 and he's higher than me too.  I'm thinking the mobo slows me down a bit.  I've been considering swapping it out and then spinning my PIII 700's to 933 (my mobo won't go above 100MHz on the bus).

Have you tried overclocking your TBird yet?

Mine came unlocked, it was a 1.2Ghz AXIA chip, and was unlocked from the factory... I run it at 1.4Ghz, using 9.5x148fsb CAS2...

Does not clock as high as I had hoped, so I am gonna get one of those new stepping chips... A vendor had 50 of the 1Ghz chips, and they were overclocking demons.

The lowest one they had clocked stable at 1.485Ghz!

Most of them were 1.5Ghz-1.65Ghz...  Crazy...

For me, its nothing but Intel.  I used to use AMDs, but started having problems with the VIA chipsets.  I only build servers, and not gamers or graphics boxes, so stability is the most important factor for me.  Overall, my Intel boxes are substantially more stable than the AMDs.  They run 24x7 and are rarely rebooted.

With RAM being so cheap, you can make a decent gamer for $1000.  AMD offers the most bang for your buck if you don't mind the occasional blue screen.  

Actually, the problems are that people don't take the time to install the 4-in-1 drivers properly...

I have been a long time Intel fan:

P60
P120
P166MMX(at 208Mhz)
P200MMX(at 250Mhz)
PII233(at 292Mhz)
Celeron 300a(at 450Mhz)
Celeron 400(at 500Mhz)
Celeron 500(at 565Mhz)
Celeron2 566(at 850Mhz)
Celeron2 566(at 908Mhz)
PIII 1Ghz

And now I finally tried an AMD TBird and LOVE it.

I only reboot once a week because I feel like I should.  Before the Athlon I never would have bought an AMD chip, but their current chips are great...

Great Info. Thank you much.

Graphics? Get a Mac!

I have to agree with Paul and BKinzey on this one, gentlemen — In order to get the right answer, you have to ask the right question:

G3 or G4 — which is BEST for graphics?

[IMG]http://the-tech.mit.edu/Macmade/macmade-blk.gif[/IMG]

Talking to several other photographers that use Mac's about PC vs Mac. I was told since I already have a PC inhouse that I should stay that way. The PC's are doing just fine and supposedly there are more appl's available for PC. A number of years ago that wasn't true but the PC platform has caught up with Mac's in the graphics area.

At least that is what I am being told.

The G4 does look spanky though...