Id go with the 800 pentium. The AMD is way to overpriced right now and the GHZ are still pretty slow. Anyone tryign to tell you "the mac guys" that ghz doesnt matter is a retard. I listened to these "cult" folowers a couple years back and got tricked into buying a brand new g4 with a super drive dvd burner. I ended up spending $3000.00 on this computer and the AMD 1.4 Thunderbird custom I built with 512 ddr 266 and a IBM 7200 rpm Hard drive runing windows 2000 pro Blows it away…. hands down. In both Speed and Stability. Dont get led by these new inovations. Stick with what works and what you are familiar with. The Intel boards with 800 FSB is definetily the way to go as of right now. I would feel very secure with the purchase of the 800 fsb stuff. Give the 64bit stuff time to develop and then convert.
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks DV8R,
That’s the way I was leaning, especially since the new AMD (the cheap one) is SO new. Hasn’t really been "field" tested yet. Not to mention trying to find hardware driver updates, that probably won’t be released until 64 gets a little more mainstream.
Sorry to hear about your G4. That’s the one reason I never went mac. The same stuff, just more $. That oughta start some comments!
My only thought and yes this is the first one in sometime. 🙂 Is that given that there is no Windows or Windows Application support for a 64-bit processor why bother. By the time there is your computer will be junk so why invest in technology that isn’t going to do you a bit of good? I would go with the P4 and as fast as you can with as much memory as you can as well as two large fast hard drives so that you can get the PS swap file on a separate drive.
Robert
I have been studying the same problem, and I would definitely agree that going with the p4 is the way to go.
I also would stick to Intel for the mobo . Either the 865 or 875 chipset. Reviews of the intel boards scream and moan about the unavailability of tweaking, to which I say: Great! A stable board is where I want to be.
Be sure you pay careful attention to the memory sticks.
if you can wait til after the new year, intel will be releasing the prescott line of p4’s. seach intel, google or your favorite tech rag. sounds promising. or if you really want speed check out the p4 extreme chips. happy googling.
PhotoHelp – yet it’s not true. The G5 is still the fastest for Photoshop, by a long shot.
Chris,
I hate to burst your bubble but we don’t all JUST use Photoshop.
The G5 is still the fastest for Photoshop, by a long shot.
I disagree. It sounds like you need to step up your test systems. Benchmarking PIII’s and G5’s doesn’t work so well. Then again maybe your programming team just needs to talk to the guys working on Premier and find out what you are doing wrong in the Photoshop code?
Thanks for the help everyone. It’s looking like the P4 2.8 is going to be my choice. I don’t want to spend over $225 for the processor, knowing that I’ll probably rebuild in 2-3 years around the 64 bit platform. The new Intel’s look nice (although WAY overpriced) but just don’t seem practical. I didn’t see anything about price regarding the Prescott chips. They start at 3.4 ghz so I assume they’ll be $500 + at launch.
Enjoy your bickering. Gotta love mac vs pc keeps things fresh!
Richard,
Gotta love mac vs pc keeps things fresh!
I guess. Competition is good for consumers. At this point no one should convert. You either run what you always have because of your software investment and comfort level or you run both platforms.
Overpriced is an understatement!
For the price of a chip, I can have a G5 and then some.
After running CS for a while, the smart move it seems is to go for max ram. To be able to run the intel boards at 800MHz FSB takes a lot of $$$ to attain sufficient ram capability. Running the Athlon at a modest speed and a much lower FSB, like 333MHz is far less expensive, and I still get to go 3 G on an Albatron board.
BTW, concerning the crashes on Asus, my vendor tells me that it’s a conflict between the nVidia chip and certain video cards. So, if I don’t go with the high priced spread (all Intel) I will stick to boards with the VIA chip set.
That is unless I hear problems there also!
To be able to run the intel boards at 800MHz FSB takes a lot of $$$ to attain sufficient ram capability.
I paid $759 for my barebones system Larry, you’ve seen the specs.
1 gig ddr pc3200 400mhz ram. 450w power supply, 4 fans, intel d865perl board, 2.8c hyperthreaded p4, tower case.
not bad.
I run out of 1G in one minute, it seems, with CS. Even B&W files that never exceeded the available ram now surpass 1G. So, if I am going to improve, 3 to 4G is indicated. There goes the price tag!
I am also eying the Raid0 capbilities of the 865perl.
The alternative, for your cost, is to go with an AMD and forget 800MHz FSB, and Raid. I can get 3G that way, maybe 4. and, I won’t need to buy another HD.
I forgot; who built your box, dave?
Dave,
That’s the EXACT box I was planning on building before I started thinking about the AMD64. You’re happy with it so far? What are your plans on upgrading from here?
Thanks!
Richard
I run out of 1G in one minute, it seems, with CS.
Memory’s cheap. The board goes to 4 gig.
You’re happy with it so far?
Insanely.
What are your plans on upgrading from here?
Since then, I’ve added a 160 gig serial ata (supported on board – already had a 20 and a 40 gig 133 eide drives, also supported) and an ATI AIW 9700 pro, oh and a 52x cd-rw. Future? Maybe another 2-512 sticks. Maybe a blue light dvd burner as I understand they just finally agreed on a standard. Time will tell. Nothing major (‘cept maybe the memory) for at least a year or more!
Cheap? The Kingston 1G 400 MHz is $572. That’s $2288 for 4G.
Mac is no better. 4g was quoted at $2300. The store looked around and found (since the box can accomodate 8G) a set of lower capacity sticks that would add up to 4G. One stick had to be 1G, so $500+ for one of the sticks.
For the time being, staying at 400MHz or less, I can afford 2G, a bit of a step up from my 1G, but not by much.
Backing up with PS6 seems more and more attractive.
Photo Help – you need to stop trolling for x86 and look at some real performance numbers.
The G5 is still the fastest for Photoshop, by a long shot. And it is fastest for most performance sensitive applications. OIf course, there are always some poorly written applications that won’t run well on anything non x86. But do you really measure performance in MS Word?
But do you really measure performance in MS Word?
Clippy IS the benchmark, after all! 🙂
Looks like the Intel boards with a P4 and two sets of a 1 G matched pair is the most economical way to go. That way, you get 2 G for $360 from Kingston. Going the AMD route, yes you save on the board/processor costs, but since there is ony three memory slots, one has to be a 1G stick to get 2G total. And 1G is $570+.
Or, get a G5 and forget it!
Chris, I saw the graphs Apple produced using PS as the app. It definitely shows the superiority of the G5, but it is a little misleading. The numbers are in percentages, and the best the G5 can do is not quite twice the speed of the base line computer. If it’s taking 10 minutes for me to run a CS run, the G5 would drop to a little over 5. I want the system to run faster than that, so any computer which offers me a large Ram capability will be the winner. Now, if we compare the low end G5 with 4G ram, is it really any faster than the Intel 865perl board with the same ram?. I make this comparison because they are close in base price.
January’s MacWorld conference in San Fransisco might offer up some surprises.
The World Wide Developer’s Conference later in the yeardefinitely will.
Lawrence,
So, if I am going to improve, 3 to 4G is indicated.
More than 2gig will help but only so that Photoshop has 2gig to itself; the OS and other apps get the rest. Photoshop can only address 2GB of physical ram (Mac and PC).
"Photoshop can only address 2GB"
interesting monkey wrench
Address or save, Ian? I have seen my files go beyond 2G. Anyway, stopping at 3 seems to be a good place. Still cheaper going with a 4 slot board.
I upgraded to AMD 64 3200+, 1gb ddr, I’m very happy with it. But then again, I had Win98 with 720mb ram. My partner upgraded to P4 3.2, 1gb ddr, from a WIN ME with 512 ram and she is also happy with the upgrade. I’m satisfied with the computer upgrade and also to CS. I know there is always something bigger and better but for now this works for me.
Marion
I could upgrade to a 486 with windows 3.1 from windows me and be happy with it! 😉
larry, Photoshop can only use 2g of RAM.
It can use the scratch disk to work on bigger scrath files, and PSCS can go over the 2G photoshop(.psd) file limit using the .psb format
Larry,
ADDRESS! You can buy and install as much as your MB can handle and PS will still only use a maximum of 2GB. The OS can handle more. I think 2K and XP is 4 or 8 GB but I can’t recall the exact number.
File size limit is a different issue altogether! The normal Photoshop file format is PSD and it can save up to 2GB. Tiff can be used to save up to 4GB and the new format called PSB can deal with files as large as (300,000 pixels in any dimension) I’ve recently saved files as big as 12GB.
and PSCS can go over the 2G photoshop(.psd) file limit using the .psb format
and TIFFs to 4 gig!
I’ve recently saved files as big as 12GB.
WOW!
Ian: Those numbers for WIN2K is for the server version, XP pro can use 4GB and the server can use, I think, 16GB
So, if I save as .psb, then the full 4G ram(if available) can be used?
No, Larry, the file format has nothing to do with the limit of useable memory by PS. And the maximum file size has nothing to do with the operating system, or the amount of installed memory.
So, if I save as .psb, then the full 4G ram(if available) can be used?
NO!
The physical RAM used by the application is NOT the same as file size. Some RAM is used by the application itself (the exe, dll, etc files). Some RAM is used for the files (images) and related items.
Photoshop does NOT use (i.e. address) any more than 2GB of physical RAM no matter how big the file or the format you choose to save it in.
But the combination of Ram and scratch can exceed 2G, I surmise, as I have had over 2G in use.
Indeed larry, but the file size limit inherent to the file format is when the file is saved and compressed.
The scratch file’s size (that includes the ram, as ram is just the cache) can be way bigger than 2 gigas, like if you work in 16 bits, have a lot of history steps an huge image size, or a lot of loaded presets…
They are 2 different animals, confusing because the same amount was limiting them, but they are not interrelated (they = maximum RAM useable by Ps and MAX .psd size)
I saw that, Pierre, while reading through the manual and Help pursuing this question. I fell into that trap!
Gotta read carefully!
Thanks!
So, this alters my thinking on hardware update. For the Intel board, a pair of 1G kits @$180/kit, and a much smaller kit to be sure that I have the OS covered and PS can use the entire 2G. This keeps the system balanced.
Forget the 8G machine! (Whew!)
….for now…
Chris (Cox) was saying that all that they needed was a stable OS to test it… maybe with windows XP 64 for Athlon 64… or a next 64bits iteration of OSX…
What with the memory addressing limitations of a 32-bit OS like Windows XP PRO and an a 32-bit application like PS CS, the emphasis should not be on stuffing gigabytes of ram in your new machine. Probably 2 gig would be sufficient, as long as you aren’t planning on crunching noise filters and other memory intensive programs in parallel with PS.
No, the emphasis should be on speedy scratch, researching hard-drives, investigating motherboards that support integrated on-board RAID controllers, and such. Even with multiple gigs of ram, you’ll end up setting memory preference in PS to less than 80% and with any real-world sized 16-bit image, gobbling up scratch just opening a file and adding your first layer. There after, the bottleneck is scratch. I bet that (I’m sitting at a bar right now and have been drinking) that a lousy single processor P4 3.2G machine with two 4-channel RAID combined with 10,000 RPM SATA disks (one channel for OS, the other dedicated to PS scratch, for 8 drives total) out does a G5 with 8 gigs ram working on good sized files.
The Intel D865perl does indeed allow Raid to be configured, and is why I am seriously considering it.
I do much of my work in B&W and rarely exceed 2 g.
Color is another matter.
Has anyone been successful using 4GB RAM with the 875 Mobo?
Won’t work with PS. All 4 G, that is.
4G ram is $570×4.
Go with the AMD64 bit CPU. It’s a better 32 bitCPU anyway. I mean currently it will be working in 32 bit mode so I don’t see why everyone is talking about driver issues. When the 64 bit OS comes out and all the drivers are available then you can upgrade the OS and get a boost in performance.
If you get a 32 bit CPU then there is not much of an upgrade path IMHO 🙂
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http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-3200.h tml>
Yet, the bench tests show the Intel P4’s to do a better job in PS….
Gentlemen:
I teach Photoshop (cs version now) at a university lab with brand new machines, dual platform (WindowsXP and Panther). Machines are Intel Pentium4 (3.2) and dual G5. The Macs cost us about $2,700 each, the Intel machines were custom built for about $1,800 each. 2 gig ram on everything. Everything is running very fast these days. Superb machines. However, both myself and my students, and the other instructors, have observed that Photoshop cs is more robust on the Windows XP machines. Better performance, whether 10mb or 100mb files.
I have no ax to grind here. Just the facts.
