Need a better spec for editing... whats yours?

AshleyKent

AshleyKent

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400
Name
Ashley
Edit My Images
Yes
currently running windows xp 32bit
2gb ram
2ghz 64x 2 processor AMD
256mb graphics card

going to upgrade
3gb ram
3ghz 64x2 processor
1gb graphics card

will this make a big difference?

going to be editing 5DII images RAW

what are your specs?
 
It will make a difference. How much of a difference is hard to say without knowing how your pc is set up. E.g. How much unecessary apps and services are running in the background? How much hard disk space do you have free(at all times, editing needs lots of room to work)
if you can stretch to it get a 64 bit os and add 4gb of ram.
That said your proposed spec will be faster, no question.
 
I run an AMD Phenom 3.6 ghz Quadcore with 4gb ram, 1gb video card and a decent mainbord.

The biggest bottleneck now is my hard drives, they are SATA 5400rpm drives. I really need to update to SATA2 7200 rpm drives, but whats an odd second to wait in life.
 
I'd probably get a quad core processor as a minimum not many processors have only 2 cores these days - not sure what processor (type and model#) you are considering. My entry level pc has a Phenom II 905e (this processor is normally about £130). Also 4GB ram is pretty much "entry level". Photo editing is more processor intensive than graphics intensive so 1Gb will be fine - I have a cheap £60 512mb GT240 based card and works fine.

You need to make sure you have a reasonable screen, at least 1920x1080 IPS panel (not TN!) which will be about £230 ish as no point in having a wonderful PC with a cheap nasty budget TN screen.
 
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Gazamonk said:
It will make a difference. How much of a difference is hard to say without knowing how your pc is set up. E.g. How much unecessary apps and services are running in the background? How much hard disk space do you have free(at all times, editing needs lots of room to work)
if you can stretch to it get a 64 bit os and add 4gb of ram.
That said your proposed spec will be faster, no question.
Click to expand...

ChrisH said:
I run an AMD Phenom 3.6 ghz Quadcore with 4gb ram, 1gb video card and a decent mainbord.

The biggest bottleneck now is my hard drives, they are SATA 5400rpm drives. I really need to update to SATA2 7200 rpm drives, but whats an odd second to wait in life.
Click to expand...

boliston said:
I'd probably get a quad core processor as a minimum not many processors have only 2 cores these days - not sure what processor (type and model#) you are considering. My entry level pc has a Phenom II 905e (this processor is normally about £130). Also 4GB ram is pretty much "entry level". Photo editing is more processor intensive than graphics intensive so 1Gb will be fine - I have a cheap £60 512mb GT240 based card and works fine.

You need to make sure you have a reasonable screen, at least 1920x1080 IPS panel (not TN!) which will be about £230 ish as no point in having a wonderful PC with a cheap nasty budget TN screen.
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what 64bit os shall i consider, 7, vister or xp? should be able to upgrage to a good one for under 400 hopefully
 
AshleyKent said:
what 64bit os shall i consider, 7, vister or xp? should be able to upgrage to a good one for under 400 hopefully
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xp and vista are pretty much legacy and obsolete (and awful!).

Windows 7 is the first MS operating system I have been happy enough with to use on my home PC (always used linux before)
 
boliston said:
You need to make sure you have a reasonable screen, at least 1920x1080 IPS panel (not TN!) which will be about £230 ish as no point in having a wonderful PC with a cheap nasty budget TN screen.
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Can you use an IPS TV as a monitor if there is such a thing?
 
jimmyb said:
Can you use an IPS TV as a monitor if there is such a thing?
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TVs are normally 1920x1080 which is fine for anything up to 24".
That resolution on anything larger will look awful when viewed close up as the pixels will be far too big as TVs are designed for viewing at 6' +
 
boliston said:
xp and vista are pretty much legacy and obsolete (and awful!).

Windows 7 is the first MS operating system I have been happy enough with to use on my home PC (always used linux before)
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know where i can get windows 7 64 from, is ultamate much better than normal 7?
 
AshleyKent said:
know where i can get windows 7 64 from, is ultamate much better than normal 7?
Click to expand...

I'd just get the upgrade home premium version which is about £90 normally, assuming you have xp/vista now. You should get 2 dvds in the box, one 32bit one 64bit. Got mine from amazon.
 
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boliston said:
I'd just get the upgrade home premium version which is about £90 normally, assuming you have xp/vista now. You should get 2 dvds in the box, one 32bit one 64bit. Got mine from amazon.
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thats quite a good price, although i need to get a 1TB hard drive and install them from scratch, so this would not work or will it...
 
Just a thought, Keep the drive you have and spend an extra £32 on a Samsung spinpoint 320gb F4 drive and install your new OS on this along with your photo editing and other software and keep your existing drive just for photo/data storage. The new spinpoint has just 1x320gb platter instead of the multiple platters of other hard disks so ther is no jumping around different platters by the read/write actuator arms. This means fast quiet operation and is close to SSD speeds in some situations :thumbs: remarkable performance for the money. I did this same change recently and the benchmark on the spinpoint was double that of my previous Barracuda drive (which isnt slow by anyones standards) for such a small outlay its worth the trouble. Also remember that once you go to 64bit you can really ramp up the ram size to up to 128gb but 6 or 8 really makes editing much easier (32bit OS cannot access and use more than 3gb of your 4gb ram with a 1gb vid card fitted)

http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/review-of-samsung-spinpoint-f4-320gb-hard-drive/
 
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You need to make sure you have a reasonable screen, at least 1920x1080 IPS panel (not TN!) which will be about £230 ish as no point in having a wonderful PC with a cheap nasty budget TN screen
Click to expand...

Sorry but I run an IIyama Provision E2710HDS screen and an IIyama 1902 Both aren't an IPS panel and are neither cheap or nasty.

You could run windows XP but to be honest you'd struggle to find drivers for the 64bit version. Forget Vista 64bit for the same reason. I've had both and they aren't well enough supported.

I now run Windows 7 64bit Home premium. The higher versions don't offer anything more for the average user. If you buy the full version you will only get one DVD in the box, either the 32bit or 64bit. The full versions don't have both dvd's.

It will cost you £73 form Microdirect for a full legit version. Your better off formating and starting again than upgrading. I have been to no end of pc's where they have gone the upgrade route and had problems.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/42562/Microsoft-Windows-7-Home-Premium-64Bit-OEM

Up to now I haven't changed my drives which are all Maxtor drives. I run a 320gb for my filesystem and programs, and 2 x 500gb drives for data.
This is the only thing in my machine I'd consider upgrading to a faster alternative. It's very much horses for courses but Samsung won't be on my list of drives.

Before you go buying 1tb drives be aware that the highest number of drive failures tend to be 1tb and above.
 
ChrisH said:
Sorry but I run an IIyama Provision E2710HDS screen and an IIyama 1902 Both aren't an IPS panel and are neither cheap or nasty.

You could run windows XP but to be honest you'd struggle to find drivers for the 64bit version. Forget Vista 64bit for the same reason. I've had both and they aren't well enough supported.

I now run Windows 7 64bit Home premium. The higher versions don't offer anything more for the average user. If you buy the full version you will only get one DVD in the box, either the 32bit or 64bit. The full versions don't have both dvd's.

It will cost you £73 form Microdirect for a full legit version. Your better off formating and starting again than upgrading. I have been to no end of pc's where they have gone the upgrade route and had problems.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/42562/Microsoft-Windows-7-Home-Premium-64Bit-OEM

Up to now I haven't changed my drives which are all Maxtor drives. I run a 320gb for my filesystem and programs, and 2 x 500gb drives for data.
This is the only thing in my machine I'd consider upgrading to a faster alternative. It's very much horses for courses but Samsung won't be on my list of drives.

Before you go buying 1tb drives be aware that the highest number of drive failures tend to be 1tb and above.
Click to expand...

so what do you think then, 512mb one?
 
AshleyKent said:
so what do you think then, 512mb one?
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Assume you mean a 512 GB disk drive?
(that samsung drive doesn't look anything special to me, most of the effects in those tests I would discount as cache effects, but, when I test disks, I generally test for different types of access, not OS access. The random IO for a start shows the down-fall of the single platter idea and small cache).

Basically, it depends on how much you care about the data on it.

1) You should always consider a backup of all data, even the OS.

2) The more sectors there are on a disk (the larger it is), the greater chance that any one of these sectors might go faulty.
If there is no backup, or no RAID, then that part of the data stored there is unrecoverable (probably).

Personally, I am considering a 3 tier storage+backup.
1x SSD for base OS
2x 500GB disks in a RAID 0 stripe for live data
1x 1TB disk for old data/games storage
(+1x 2TB USB disk for backups of OS disk and the other 3)
(+ Blueray writer for copying photos to)

I am still at the consideration stage. I would like to have a RAID 1 system in there, as I don't entirely trust SSD yet, but cannot afford it I don't think.
 
Or do you mean 512MB graphics card?
I am considering somewhere between 512 and 750, but I would also like to spend some time gaming perhaps.
I am also considering some GPGPU, but as the TCC driver for windows doesn't work properly, (IMO) then I guess I won't be.
 
I use a 1gb video card, Ati radian I think if I remember correctly. Fast enough for Photo editing.

Not being a gamer I wouldn't have a clue if it's good enough for games.
 
All i am looking for is a decent system where im not waiting too long to process 21MP raw images from the 5DII,

my current system is:

xp - 32bit
AMD athlon 64x2 dual core 3800+
2gb ram
256mb GeForce 7600 GS

would upgrading the processor to a 3gHz processor (AMD Athlon 6000) and 1GB more ram
also a bigger graphics car 512mb mayb....

big difference?
 
Budget?

I think biggest bang for buck will probably be upgrading the disks (SSD if you can afford it - but do some hunting around as not all SSDs are equal) and possibly having more than one too. Closely followed by as much memory as you can put in plus Win7 64. The processor is fairly old and is a 939 socket - I think the 6000 is a AM2 socket, so incompatible. This means new motherboards and potentially alll new memory....

Graphics cards? Unless you're using CS5 which has hardware acceleration through the graphics card, it doesn't matter what you have. If you do have CS5, it uses the back end graphics hardware to do some of the processing. I'd go with a gaming card (whatever the top end Nvidia is probably) but you'll need a reasonable power supply to run that and have to contend with the fan cooling the darned thing... A mid range graphics card will probably do OK - I have a 9500GT that is passively cooled which does help with some of CS5s functions.

Personally, I'd start from scratch with a modern spec PC....
 
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arad85 said:
Budget?

I think biggest bang for buck will probably be upgrading the disks (SSD if you can afford it - but do some hunting around as not all SSDs are equal) and possibly having more than one too. Closely followed by as much memory as you can put in plus Win7 64. The processor is fairly old and is a 939 socket - I think the 6000 is a AM2 socket, so incompatible. This means new motherboards and potentially alll new memory....

Graphics cards? Unless you're using CS5 which has hardware acceleration through the graphics card, it doesn't matter what you have. If you do have CS5, it uses the back end graphics hardware to do some of the processing. I'd go with a gaming card (whatever the top end Nvidia is probably) but you'll need a reasonable power supply to run that and have to contend with the fan cooling the darned thing... A mid range graphics card will probably do OK - I have a 9500GT that is passively cooled which does help with some of CS5s functions.

Personally, I'd start from scratch with a modern spec PC....
Click to expand...

no budget at the moment... just spending all my money on a new kit...

will try n upgrade computer in the first quater of next year... hopefully around 4-500 budget
 
I have on my main desktop:

Intel Core i7 930 (OCed slightly to around 3GHz)
3x2GB Triple Channel DDR3 (OCed slightly to around 1700MHz in line with the CPU OC)
Radeon HD5870 1GB video card (will probably end up crossfired)
60GB SATA3 Crucial SSD for OS and important programs
2TB Western Digital HDD for storage and big programs
Dual screens 22" and 24"
Windows 7 x64 Professional

As you can guess I don't have many issues running Photoshop :D

Unfortunately I don't have an IPS panel, both mine are TN, which are faster even though the colour reproduction isn't as good (fast response times are more beneficial for me :p)
 
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redddraggon said:
As you can guess I don't have many issues running Photoshop :D
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But do you need ear defenders for all the fan noise? :D

Seriously, that's the sort of setup I'll be building for my next PC (probably in a year or twos time). Top end CPU, as many channels of memory as it will support (will we have quad channel by then) a couple of SSDs and a big HDD. I'll probably still go for a passive video card tho as I don't do any gaming...

I already have the 2x24" IPS panels ;)

As to the OPs question - for £500 I'd get a new system - something like

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239775

or

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/225761

(the first will probably be slightly faster for image editing....). These are computer only - you'll need to supply monitor/keyboard/mouse/speakers etc from your old PC.

You would probably be able to build one for less, but you'd need to be confident of that before starting out.
 
AshleyKent said:
are 60gb SSD's getting to run OS and programs... the question is will it be alot different to Sata?
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SSDs are SATA.

I run OS/MS Office/Photoshop/Browsers/Battlefield Bad Company 2 on my 60GB SSD, and still have around 10GB free. Most of my other apps reside on a partition on my 2TB drive.
 
It's possible to build something pretty damn good for 400 quid. Mine is this:

Athlon II x4 3.2ghz quad
8 gigs OCZ gold DDR3 RAM
Asus M4A78LT-M 760G mobo
OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W PSU (completely silent!)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II

Win7 64

Now, this is fast enough as it is, but I'm still looking for a GPU to speed things up running CS5. I wouldn't consider anything slower running those huge 5DII files.
 
arad85 said:
But do you need ear defenders for all the fan noise? :D
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It's not that noisy to be honest, but I sit in Labs all day with vacuum pumps pumping away and extractor fans, and in the office I sit next to a 8ft tall server. My computer is relatively silent in comparison :geek:
 
redddraggon said:
It's not that noisy to be honest, but I sit in Labs all day with vacuum pumps pumping away and extractor fans, and in the office I sit next to a 8ft tall server. My computer is relatively silent in comparison :geek:
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I run 3 computers in my home office - my main PC (as described above), a home server (AMD quad core with 5 disks in) and the works laptop. The works laptop fan (when it kicks in) makes the laptop the noisiest of the three :cuckoo:
 
The23rdman said:
It's possible to build something pretty damn good for 400 quid. Mine is this:

Athlon II x4 3.2ghz quad
8 gigs OCZ gold DDR3 RAM
Asus M4A78LT-M 760G mobo
OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W PSU (completely silent!)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II

Win7 64

Now, this is fast enough as it is, but I'm still looking for a GPU to speed things up running CS5. I wouldn't consider anything slower running those huge 5DII files.
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sounds like a good set up... GPU i am hopefully gettings is:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SAPPHIRE-HD...UTF8&coliid=I29AHRP1N7CFJO&colid=O6VBVYANXWYJ

would this one be good?

also this set up for MOBO RAM AND CPU

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/237057

lets see some opinions on these products... im vague with all of this...

i am looking now at a set up for january. should not cost too much
 
It would be worth looking at task manager while you're doing some "typical" editing to see where the bottlenecks are. I moved away from PCs last year and now have an iMac, but the same principle applies. I mostly use aperture (essentially the same as Lightroom) and found that RAM was only lacking when i was exporting / converting image formats, and also when assembling large panoramas. However, i do a lot of panoramas so upgraded RAM to 8GB (remember thay memory is cheap now!)

Faster hard drives will help mostly when browsing through photos - once you start editing they'll be cached in RAM (as long as you have enough) and the hard drive becomes less important. Hard drives are also an expensice upgrade for the performance increase.

Faster processor will always help - but be careful when people are suggesting quad core etc - whether you benefit from that will depend on the software you use, since not everything can take advantage of more than one core.

David
 
scuby said:
It would be worth looking at task manager while you're doing some "typical" editing to see where the bottlenecks are. I moved away from PCs last year and now have an iMac, but the same principle applies. I mostly use aperture (essentially the same as Lightroom) and found that RAM was only lacking when i was exporting / converting image formats, and also when assembling large panoramas. However, i do a lot of panoramas so upgraded RAM to 8GB (remember thay memory is cheap now!)

Faster hard drives will help mostly when browsing through photos - once you start editing they'll be cached in RAM (as long as you have enough) and the hard drive becomes less important. Hard drives are also an expensice upgrade for the performance increase.

Faster processor will always help - but be careful when people are suggesting quad core etc - whether you benefit from that will depend on the software you use, since not everything can take advantage of more than one core.

David
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when starting to edit the processor max's to 100%, i am going to rebuld to a high spec, 8gb ram, 64bit, 1gb graphics, 3.2ghz x4 processor. should be good.

i have seen alot of comments on lightroom, is it good and what do people use it for that CS doesnt have...

i use cs5 currently and i find it has everything i need.
 
AshleyKent said:
i have seen alot of comments on lightroom, is it good and what do people use it for that CS doesnt have...
Click to expand...

Lightroom (and Apple Aperture, on Macs) is intended to manage your whole photography workflow - everything is done in the one application, from importing, editing, tagging / rating / categorisation, through to uploading to galleries, printing, preparing presentations or books, etc. They're also on-destructive editors, which is a key feature - your original RAW (or jpg from the camera) is never modified, it just remembers every edit you make and re-applies them on the fly (or from a cached preview).

Obviously that limits some of the editing ability - you con do some localised editing like heal/clone, selective brushing of effects, but you can't do complex layer edits, merging to panoramic / HDR and that sort of thing - for that you need to export to make the changes (though integration with eg Photoshop make the process painless).

Personally the only edits i ever do outside or Aperture are the panoramic or HDR merges - everything else i can do without leaving that one program.

Doesn't suit everyone, but i find it much easier to manage my library in Aperture than my previous efforts which relied on lots of untagged photos in a vague directory structure. Think they both do a free trial. Only thing to bear in mind is that if you do start to use one, if you then change your mind you'll have to export any photos you've modified - remember that the originals are never touched!

David
 
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