Which graphics card for CS4

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My Dad is renovating his second PC for using photoshop when the other computer is being used, he's going to have to buy new mobo, processor RAM & graphics card, but is unsure what level of graphics to be going for. Does CS4 use the power of the graphics card or just processor power to work its magic?

The budget is around £200 all in new Mother board (Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L), Intel dual core processor (E5300), 4 gig ram and then he is unsure on graphics but i think £50 to £70 is realistic.

What graphics card would you recommend or is there a better spec of components he should consider to come with in budget (no more than £220) and is 4 gig ram excessive or is this about right?

Sorry for all the questions, it's been a long time since i put a PC together, so i don't know what's good and what's not any more.

Thanks

Kev
 
what's the power supply in the case he's using like?

i'll do some spec'ing tommorow if no-one else has suggested anything but my brain is le fried at the moment :)
 
I'm not a 100% sure but I dont think you need to go over the top with the graphics card unless you are going to be using it as a games machine.

I think for 50-70 quid you should get something more than adequate to display photoshop properly

Scott
 
I got a new mini itx board with intel atom 1.6ghz dual core and a few gig of ram with a basic onboard graphics card. its running cs4 the same as my 2.0ghz intel dual core and
3gb ram with a 7300gt nvidia card. A better processor and plenty of ram will do more than a graphics card
 
skunky are you saying both your machines run cs4 the same? if so are you editing 50x50 pixel 16 colour images or something? :P

seriously an atom would bork pretty heavily at any large image edits
 
i use an i7 920 with 6gb ram and a 4890 1gb, not had any problems with photoshop so far.
 
RAM is a lot more important than graphics card when it comes to photoshop. I suppose as long as it has Open GL then you should be fine. Obviously if you go above 4GB then 64 bit is order of the day. I recommend Windows 7 64-bit but some older hardware devices may not have a compatible W7 64-bit driver.
 
I had a Nvidia 9600GT in my old tower and it was more than enough for CS4. You should be able to pick one up for the budget you stated.
 
Thanks for your input with this everyone, I'll pass the messages on to him so he can have a scout around to see what suits him.
 
SkunkyF said:
I got a new mini itx board with intel atom 1.6ghz dual core and a few gig of ram with a basic onboard graphics card. its running cs4 the same as my 2.0ghz intel dual core and
3gb ram with a 7300gt nvidia card. A better processor and plenty of ram will do more than a graphics card
Click to expand...

i think people are forgetting that CS4 can utilise GFX memory (see the adobe link earlier)

Adobe said:
Photoshop CS4 leverages the graphics display card's GPU, instead of the computer's main processor (the CPU) to speed its screen redraw. For Photoshop to access the GPU, your display card must contain a GPU that supports OpenGL and has enough RAM to support Photoshop functions--at least 128 MB of RAM--and a display driver that supports OpenGL 2.0 and Shader Model 3.0.
Click to expand...

sure if youve got CS3 or lower then a GFX card is going to make squat all difference.
 
alexkidd said:
skunky are you saying both your machines run cs4 the same? if so are you editing 50x50 pixel 16 colour images or something? :P

seriously an atom would bork pretty heavily at any large image edits
Click to expand...

I've been using it to edit raw files. I wouldn't do a huge amount of editing few touch ups and abit of cropping so nothing major. An extra 2gb of ram helps significantly.

It does however run very well overclocked to 2ghz with 4gb ddr in it for an atom processor. (just need to purchase the extra 2gb and stop pilfering it from the other machine)

Its no quad core but suits my needs. Its ultra quiet for a home built mini itx system which suits me to the ground. I worked in the pc hardware side of things for 10 years until last year when i left. Very little satisfaction made for a grumpy employee ie me.



Neil_g . I read your link before the post. My onboard graphics is running the same graphics chipset as the 7300 pci-e graphics card in my older system. Many onboard graphics chipsets are even more advanced that that now. So it would only matter on older boards. Any new motherboard coming of the production lines now will have at least somthing similar.
 
As a slight aside, I noticed NO difference in speed using Elements when I upgraded from 4Gb to 8Gb :)
 
mrgubby said:
As a slight aside, I noticed NO difference in speed using Elements when I upgraded from 4Gb to 8Gb :)
Click to expand...

It could be the type of images you are working with and the amount - I may have upto 5-10 images open at any one time (or use layers). A small JPEG would barely make any dent in 4GB but several raw files open concurrently will often be dropped to disk by means of 'paging' if there is not enough available RAM to accomodate them all. This is where the extra RAM comes in handy.

HTH,

Mark
 
neil_g said:
but worth remembering that most onboard graphics chipsets use a portion of the system memory.
Click to expand...



indeed, its not a huge worry when you've a enough ram :D

Back to start of thread. Sorry

Avoid high spec motherboards as they have more to go wrong. Unless your going for a board that comes from intel which are a lot more expensive but generally very litle will go wrong. Medium spec board would do the trick. Best processor and plenty of ram plus a 64bit os likes win 7 as mentioned. (which is the os i'm running myself and like)

Best of luck
 
SkunkyF said:
indeed, its not a huge worry when you've a enough ram :D
Click to expand...

true.. although every little helps ;)

Avoid high spec motherboards as they have more to go wrong. Unless your going for a board that comes from intel which are a lot more expensive but generally very litle will go wrong. Medium spec board would do the trick. Best processor and plenty of ram plus a 64bit os likes win 7 as mentioned. (which is the os i'm running myself and like)
Click to expand...

huh? id like to know what youre basing "more to go wrong" on.. secondly boards from gigabyte, asus, zotac, DFI et al are all highly rated these days (most are intel chipset based anyway).
 
neil_g said:
true.. although every little helps ;)



huh? id like to know what youre basing "more to go wrong" on.. secondly boards from gigabyte, asus, zotac, DFI et al are all highly rated these days (most are intel chipset based anyway).
Click to expand...

I spent my last few years testing faulty hardware before I left for a different industry.

I never dealt with dfi on a large scale so can't comment.

Asus is one of the worst motherboard manufactures i've ever dealt with. The return ratio on the top spec board was pretty much 50%. Faults from bad onboard sound, lan, sata raid (numerous occasions on one particular board I can't remember the exact model, had issues of blowing harddrives), bad fan designs which resulted in total board failure the list could go on. Their lower end board although problematic at times were generally of better standard (but far from good in my own opinion)

Gigabyte not just as bad, for ever good board they always had a bad one. The bad boards usually being the 'high spec'. the majority (again in my experience) either worked or didn't. Not so many problems with certain areas of the board not working correctly.

I only ever dealt with zotac graphics cards

Proper intel boards I experienced the least amount of trouble with. Put many types of these boards into home users to business pcs or basic file servers. Very rarely did i see one come back.

I'm not talking 2 or 3 years. I refering to the majority of the 10 years i did this for a living.

This is where I base ' more to go wrong' from. My own experience not someones online review.

Thats all behind me now. Much happier else where doing somthing that doesn't involve computers other than basic use . ahhhhh :lol:

Apologys for the thread hi jacking.
 
stokecity_m said:
i use an i7 920 with 6gb ram and a 4890 1gb, not had any problems with photoshop so far.
Click to expand...

what other parts did you get?? I just bought the same cpu and 6 gig ram 650W psu and gigabyte mobo.. now looking at cases and gpu...

OP...also think about db or how loud the fan is on the GPU you dont want a cyclone going on inside the case...:bonk: I'm thinking along the lines of the vapourx series of cards as they are considerably quieter than their siblings..:thumbs:
 
onform said:
what other parts did you get?? I just bought the same cpu and 6 gig ram 650W psu and gigabyte mobo.. now looking at cases and gpu...
Click to expand...

er.....

i use an antec 300 case, as desk space wasn't great - my i7 is overclocked at 3.5ghz and even in the small case sits at about 38 -40c
running with a Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir and two front fans
 
You need a decent dual or quad processor and at least 6GB of RAM. Then start thinking about the GFX, which doesnt have to be powerful.
 
kev, i note you've passed on the suggestions but as others have also said the psu is of considerable importance

not to be a pedant just rather repeat myself and save you some cash than it all going pear shaped because of a $3 psu :)
 
i have to agree - a good PSU is the base of your computer, if that fails etc you could damage important parts.
 
Thanks for all your thoughts here everyone. I'll certainly let my Dad know about investing in a new PSU, if he isn't spending as much on a graphics card then that money could go towards a new PSU.
 
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