Best Graphics Workstation??

In article <QLlHc.45607$%>, "alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote:

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer way too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill my machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia MX products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on magazine ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.
Any suggestions?

lol. u dont ask for much.

sounds like you need 2 computers one for web work and one just for your printing thats the way i work .

"alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote in message

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer

way

too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill

my

machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia

MX

products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on

magazine

ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.
Any suggestions?

That was true 5 years ago… but with the increasingly fast IDE drives and the Serial ATA drives out today – the performance is pretty close to SCSI… It’s also possible nowadays to RAID with IDE drives…

n8

If you can afford it, buy an SCSI harddrive. They are much faster then IDE. A fast harddrive will significantly reduce the time needed to read/write files and especially swapping times. ( there are many things you can do to improve the harddrive performance even further, like using raid, or at least having two harddrives where Photoshop swapping is done from the drive not used by the OS – usually the second drive )

Your-Nice wrote:

sounds like you need 2 computers one for web work and one just for your printing thats the way i work .

"alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote in message

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer way too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill my machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia MX products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on magazine ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.

Any suggestions?

If I understand correctly your main gripes are while printing ? I’d say buy a new machine for the work you do and set up the current oldie as a dedicated print server. For a new machine, go for fast disks, processor and a lot of RAM. 1Gb is nothing special these days. SCSI is a good choice, but expensive, I’d suggest for a home pc go for IDE and RAID. SCSI is much more reliable by the way, but with raid1 you can lose an entire disk without data loss. That said, my experiences with SATA disks aren’t all that great yet, be prepared for some initial reading before you start using that. Or ask someone with experience to help you.

If you can’t/won’t buy a new machine after all, you might want to check your system’s settings for its role, you can set the machine to give priority to background jobs such as printing or fron apps. Personally I have hardly noticed any extra delay in mu machine while printing. But then, I already have a 3.2 GHz/1GB ram machine here and a relatively new USB printer.

Good Luck!
Pjotr

alan smithey wrote:

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I buy a new computer for making graphics every few years. Before I decide what to buy I read hardware reviews and compare the features, trade offs, prices etc. A few good review sites:

http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://www.storagereview.com/
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/index/0,00.asp

The most important is to buy a system with as fast harddrive (with a large cache) as possible. Harddrive is the biggest bottleneck in a system. If you can afford it, buy an SCSI harddrive. They are much faster then IDE. A fast harddrive will significantly reduce the time needed to read/write files and especially swapping times. ( there are many things you can do to improve the harddrive performance even further, like using raid, or at least having two harddrives where Photoshop swapping is done from the drive not used by the OS – usually the second drive )

Next buy as much fast RAM as you can afford. Motherboard and the chipset used is important too. I can recommend AMD Athlon based systems as they cost less and run just as fast as Intel Pentium systems. Read the review summaries and look at the graphs to get an idea on what you want. A few days of research will save you cash and later pains with cheap/limited hardware often used in mass production computers.

Once you know what to buy, find a company that assembles computers based on the parts you want. There are many such companies, check the link below and look under computers.

http://www.pricewatch.com/

That’s how I bought my last three computers and have been very satisfied by following such procedure. You can buy a very fast PC for under $1000.

—
Dawid Michalczyk – Art and Illustration
http://www.art.eonworks.com

In article <40eecde8$0$62985$>, x33159
@westerterp.com says…

Your-Nice wrote:

sounds like you need 2 computers one for web work and one just for your printing thats the way i work .

"alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote in message

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer way too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill my machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia MX products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on magazine ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.

Any suggestions?

If I understand correctly your main gripes are while printing ? I’d say buy a new machine for the work you do and set up the current oldie as a dedicated print server. For a new machine, go for fast disks, processor and a lot of RAM. 1Gb is nothing special these days. SCSI is a good choice, but expensive, I’d suggest for a home pc go for IDE and RAID. SCSI is much more reliable by the way, but with raid1 you can lose an entire disk without data loss. That said, my experiences with SATA disks aren’t all that great yet, be prepared for some initial reading before you start using that. Or ask someone with experience to help you.

If you can’t/won’t buy a new machine after all, you might want to check your system’s settings for its role, you can set the machine to give priority to background jobs such as printing or fron apps. Personally I have hardly noticed any extra delay in mu machine while printing. But then, I already have a 3.2 GHz/1GB ram machine here and a relatively new USB printer.
Good Luck!
Pjotr

I think that your "two machine" setup is the best. A Giga-bit network can be setup between them for about what 10/100 cost a year ago and the transfer rate is fantastic. Depending on the OS(s) of the machines, it should only take a few driver installs for the Giga-bit cards, some Cat-5e/6 cables and a Giga -bit switch. My last setup like this cost less than $US220.

Hunt

alan smithey wrote:

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer way too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill my machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia MX products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on magazine ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.
Any suggestions?

Get a Mac… but keep your PC… Network, network, network… PC->Mac->Printer… you’ll love it.

Seriously, Mac doesn’t suffer the same slowdowns as PCs with photohop
[and I’m assuming the other creative suite tools]. My 550MHz Mac
outperforms my 800MHz PC handily where photoshop is concerned. I cannot draw smooth curves with a graphics tablet on the PC — the Mac is as smooth as real life [72 dpi web work usually 900×500 or larger].

Some of this might not really be fair — I have the Mac ramped for graphics — 1G Ram vs 256M — adobe products eat ram like candy. I have 200M as a RAM disk on the Mac, as a scratch disk for photoshop. With that setup, my 233MHz G3 Mac outperforms the 800MHz PC.

The UI on Macs is much more to my liking as well — I can’t stand the MDI setup of PS on the PC — it’s annoying.

Thanks
Links are particularly helpful

"Dawid Michalczyk" wrote in message

alan smithey wrote:

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I buy a new computer for making graphics every few years. Before I decide what to buy I read hardware reviews and compare the features, trade offs, prices etc. A few good review sites:

http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://www.storagereview.com/
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/index/0,00.asp

The most important is to buy a system with as fast harddrive (with a large cache) as possible. Harddrive is the biggest bottleneck in a system. If you can afford it, buy an SCSI harddrive. They are much faster then IDE. A fast harddrive will significantly reduce the time needed to read/write files and especially swapping times. ( there are many things you can do to improve the harddrive performance even further, like using raid, or at least having two harddrives where Photoshop swapping is done from the drive not used by the OS – usually the second drive )

Next buy as much fast RAM as you can afford. Motherboard and the chipset used is important too. I can recommend AMD Athlon based systems as they cost less and run just as fast as Intel Pentium systems. Read the review summaries and look at the graphs to get an idea on what you want. A few days of research will save you cash and later pains with cheap/limited hardware often used in mass production computers.

Once you know what to buy, find a company that assembles computers based on the parts you want. There are many such companies, check the link below and look under computers.

http://www.pricewatch.com/

That’s how I bought my last three computers and have been very satisfied by following such procedure. You can buy a very fast PC for under $1000.
—
Dawid Michalczyk – Art and Illustration
http://www.art.eonworks.com

I didn’t mean I have trouble printing, rather I meant that I do desktop publishing for print in magazines. I don’t do 3D stuff though or animation much.

Anyhow…any opinions on Alienware desktops or the Dell Precision 670? This is for my company and I know they will feel more comfortable with a brand name.

"alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote in message

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer

way

too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill

my

machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia

MX

products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on

magazine

ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.
Any suggestions?

On Fri, 09 Jul 2004 17:55:01 -0500, Fox wrote:

alan smithey wrote:

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer way too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really kill my machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia MX products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on magazine ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want off the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m thinking under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.
Any suggestions?

Get a Mac… but keep your PC… Network, network, network… PC->Mac->Printer… you’ll love it.

Seriously, Mac doesn’t suffer the same slowdowns as PCs with photohop
[and I’m assuming the other creative suite tools].

And what did you say your position was at Apple Corp. ?

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hunt wrote:

In article <40eecde8$0$62985$>,
x33159 @westerterp.com says…

If I understand correctly your main gripes are while printing ? I’d say buy a new machine for the work you do and set up the current oldie as a dedicated print server. For a new machine, go for fast disks, processor and a lot of RAM. 1Gb is nothing special these days. SCSI is a good choice, but expensive, I’d suggest for a home pc go for IDE and RAID. SCSI is much more reliable by the way, but with raid1 you can lose an entire disk without data loss. That said, my experiences with SATA disks aren’t all that great yet, be prepared for some initial reading before you start using that. Or ask someone with experience to help you.

If you can’t/won’t buy a new machine after all, you might want to check your system’s settings for its role, you can set the machine to give priority to background jobs such as printing or fron apps. Personally I have hardly noticed any extra delay in mu machine while printing. But then, I already have a 3.2 GHz/1GB ram machine here and a relatively new USB printer.

Good Luck!
Pjotr

I think that your "two machine" setup is the best. A Giga-bit network can be setup between them for about what 10/100 cost a year ago and the transfer rate is fantastic. Depending on the OS(s) of the machines, it should only take a few driver installs for the Giga-bit cards, some Cat-5e/6 cables and a Giga -bit switch. My last setup like this cost less than $US220.

Hmm good point, I may have to look for an upgrade myself too. I’m still on 10 mbit only because my hub doesn’t go higher. I should at least be at 100 now, prices have dropped immensely. My backup process barely makes it in time these days. Bloody big files these camera’s produce, not to mention my photoshop ones….
Pjotr

I have had an Alienware for 3 years now. I’ve got 5 hard drives on it ( one with Linux only ). It cruises along without a hiccup. I’d recommend them, yes. Their tech support is truly great. Best I’d say.

I have seen Dell Workstations selling with Photoshop CS included and they look like a nice setup as well.

My problem is that I have a nice PC setup and a Mac G5 dual 2ghz with a 23" Cinema Display ( get this…I won it in a Corbis contest ). The problem? I want one of them to be an exclusive PS only box and can’t decide which one! I will say this though. PS flies on the Mac compared to my PC.

—
Vector Newman

**It may be great to be king, but you’re never safe on the throne. Just ask Elvis.

"alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote in message

I didn’t mean I have trouble printing, rather I meant that I do desktop publishing for print in magazines. I don’t do 3D stuff though or animation much.

Anyhow…any opinions on Alienware desktops or the Dell Precision 670?

This

is for my company and I know they will feel more comfortable with a brand name.

"alan smithey" <(nospam)> wrote in message

I want to purchase a new workstation.

I do a lot of web work, but also print ads which are slowing my computer

way

too much and occasionally posters around 40"X60" 200dpi which really

kill

my

machine.

I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite products and all of the Macromedia

MX

products mostly.

I want to work on a poster while updating a website and working on

magazine

ad without seeing my computer’s performance adversely affected. I want

off

the shelf. I don’t have time etc to build it. As for budget, I’m

thinking

under $3000 (preferably closer to $2000). minus monitor etc.
Any suggestions?

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