# System Specs for Photoshop



## wmendoza87 (Nov 17, 2005)

I am putting together a PC to run photoshop and other graphics applications. What hardware would be needed to run these applications with the least amout of lag time. The user will be very knowlegable in the software and will know how to use all facets of the software.


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## -=ZeroHour=- (Aug 22, 2005)

You will want to get 4GB of ram (max limit on Windows XP with a config switch) and get raptor HDs (maybe in striped RAID too) for the swap area for PS to use. This should also be separate from the drive used for Windows install (which probably also should be a raptor). Or you could use SCSI with 10k or 15k rpm drives instead of raptors but that's even more expensive.

I don't know if Mac has the same limitation on RAM. On windows, only the enterprise versions support more than 4GB of RAM.


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## wmendoza87 (Nov 17, 2005)

Excellent. thank you very much. I wasn't sure if 4 Gigs was too much also the dual hard drives was another issues I was debating on.


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## wmendoza87 (Nov 17, 2005)

Will we need a quadro video card or and ATI version with the similar specs


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## -=ZeroHour=- (Aug 22, 2005)

I use an old ati 9600xt that I had for gaming and it works fine. I don't think you need to go highend for 2D output. But the monitor should be large and handle high res.. and if they really are picky, you should research the high-end monitors for photography. I hear they make a big difference. Many photo buffs perfer CRT over LCD. I don't have a preference, but the only thing that keeps using CRT is the cost of large LCDs. Oh, and they will also say to get a monitor calibrator. I haven't used one so I don't know. I just use my eye and it works for me so far.

Make sure you read up on the 3GB switch to use the 4GB of RAM. I don't remember all the details.


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## buck52 (Mar 9, 2001)

Howdy



> and they will also say to get a monitor calibrator.


Not an option if you are serious about graphics and want to print what you are looking at...it's manditory... along with profiling to your printer


> I just use my eye and it works for me so far.


 your eye has nothing to do with it...if your monitor/software and printer are not on the same page you might as well close your eyes 

assuming you're serious...

One more thought... Forget about 2 of the gigs of ram and spend it on a dual monitor for the tools...

buck


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## -=ZeroHour=- (Aug 22, 2005)

i guess i got lucky then  I haven't had any problems between the monitor and the printer output. 

Why do you say forget about 2GB? I would think it would help performance..


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

You need a good backup system with striped RAID. You double your failure probability because if either drive craps out you lose all of the data. If you have fast HDs I don&#8217;t think striped RAID gives that much more performance unless you are working with enormous files and reverting to virtual memory &#8211; which is not very common with 4 Gigs of RAM. But you do better with dual HDs because you want the scratch disk on a separate physical drive as already mentioned.

Most people do fine with 2 Gigs of RAM. Working with 8Mp images you seldom exceed that. Be sure to up the RAM available to Photoshop. The default is way too low for large amounts of RAM. With 2 Gigs of RAM you can assign 90% to Photoshop and still have enough left for a scan or other process. The 90% isn&#8217;t the total RAM but the available RAM when you open Photoshop. So everything else is already covered. If price is no object go with 4 Gigs. I get by fine with 2 Gigs though.

The two biggest performance enhancers are plenty of RAM and a fast processor. Photoshop is optimized for dual processors and it is your best bet in PC. I haven&#8217;t seen any recent tests, but dual processor Macs in the past always edged out the PC in speed for most Photoshop processes. But you pay an excessive price premium for only a slight (if any) improvement in speed. I think a Mac still holds an edge for video but not for Photoshop to any appreciable degree. And you have to pay for all of your software with a Mac &#8211; there are some great free programs for PC.

The only caveat there is that most graphics pros still use Macs. If the user will be working with professionals a Mac might fit in better.

Consider dual monitors. The second monitor doesn&#8217;t have to be first class as it will just hold tools etc. But you can have the full screen of the main monitor available for just the image. Photoshop is one of the few programs set up for dual screens in that when you open it the tools are still over on the secondary screen and you don&#8217;t have to move them each time. You can also display more history and have a a larger layers box etc. It saves a lot of scrolling.


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## -=ZeroHour=- (Aug 22, 2005)

the dual monitor is a great idea.. i do tend to play the hide/unhide game with the tools a lot on my single monitor.


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## linskyjack (Aug 28, 2004)

I agree with slipe--I work with 2gigs and its pretty snappy. And yes, drives are not critical---its memory and processor.


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## [email protected] (Nov 11, 2005)

I've worked in the business for 10 years. I will tell you flat out what I've used and what works the best. I built my own for gaming, It's no slacker in multimedia though. I've used every powerhouse that's been out for the past 6 years. The Dual Processor Powermac G5s are way beyond awesome in multimedia and graphics. They say the new ones are up to 4 times as fast. I'll give em maybe 2 in real life. I've used every Apple Powermac since 1996 and The Maxed out new ones are for real the best. Heres the catch they also cost like $3800 nicely configured without a monitor. I have a prescot with a lot of L2 cache. Cache size on the processor(s) is one of the most important things when makeing a monster graphic powerhouse. So get as much as you can afford. L3 is the best. Front Side Bus speed is another biggie. 1066 or better in that area. Don't even bother with anything less than 2 GBs of RAM get 4 if you can afford it. Hard drives are not that big of a deal seriously a normal SATA 150 will do what you need You're not going to bottle neck there.Storage is the key. Either get yourself a nice 200GB + SATA drive in your rig or get one out of your rig for storage. You need a fast DVD burner and good burning software for regular backups. You don't need any RAID unless you want to get cute. If you are planning on editing some video then RAID may be somthing to look at. Then Stripe your operating system drives and add a seperate drive for storage. A solid Graphics card is a must in graphic design. Try to get a card that is 256 BIT not 256 MB. Bit is more important to graphics than MB. MBs help but Bits are better. If you don't plan on hitting the hardcore 3D games a 256 Bit, 128 MB will do the trick. If you're not going to play any games at all then 64 MB is fine. That's the important stuff all the others is bling bling. Remember Fast RAM, large Cache on the CPU L3 prefered with a 1066 or higher front side bus speed or FSB, 1 Drive for OS, 1 large drive for storage, Fast DVD burner to backup. Motherboard that is 1066 FSB or faster and has expansion slots out the ying yang. 256 BIT thats BIT Graphics card and that's a killer graphics powerhouse. Good luck. 

Don't you dare buy a iMac or some Dell! You will curse yourself until you can sell those hunks of garbage. It's either build the ultimate or buy the ultimate. If you're buying it's the Apple G5 Quad loaded with 2 GB of RAM and a 250 GB drive. I gave you the specs to build something near it.


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## wmendoza87 (Nov 17, 2005)

Thank you all for the information. I don't have much choice but to get a dell workstation. I will spec out the best from what they offer. This is what I have so far.
Dual-Core Intel® Xeon&#8482; Processor 2.80GHz, 2x2MB L2 cache 
3GB, DDR2 SDRAM Memory, 400MHz, ECC
2 80GB SATA, 10K RPM Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache(storeage is not an issue because it will be on a seperate server)
16XDVD AND 16XDVD+/-RW w/Sonic software, CyberLink PowerDVD
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3450, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA 
Dual 19 inch. LCD Monitors
Dell 19 inch UltraSharp&#8482; 1905FP Flat Panel, adjustable stand, VGA/DVI 

How does that system sound?


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## Greiffel (Jan 1, 2005)

I'm a graphic designer working for a growing company that does large print work as well as other work for companies such a HP, Microsoft etc... 
My pc here at work is an absolute joke - it's a 1.8ghz and only has 512mb RAM. We sometimes deal with files that are over 200MB in size, and the thing lags unbelievably. It's really frustrating and we beg for more RAM constantly, but the truth of the matter is that we do 'get by'. I think if I had 2mb ram on this thing I would be HEAVEN!!!

Wmendoza87... whoever it is that's going to be working for/with you will be MORE than satisfied with the pc that you've put together for him. 

I'm also running dual monitors and it's awesome. 

Anyone got any advice for me taking into acount the specs I mentioned earlier? How do I up the RAM available to Photoshop?


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

Greiffel said:


> Anyone got any advice for me taking into acount the specs I mentioned earlier? How do I up the RAM available to Photoshop?


Things are a little different with smaller amounts of RAM. The first thing you want to do is to shut down all running processes on the computer you dont absolutely need before opening Photoshop. This helps: http://www.docsdownloads.com/Tier1/enditall.htm

Then open Photoshop. With CS, Edit > Preferences > Memory and Image Cache. Seems I remember you started with File instead of Edit with much older versions. You will see how much of your 512Mb is actually available to Photoshop and you select a percentage of that. If you regularly scan images or do other things that require RAM you cant raise the number too much. I think it defaults to Photoshop taking 60% of your available RAM. You could just raise that until other things slow down.

Perhaps you could approach your boss with numbers. Working on a 200Mb file with 512Mb of RAM costs a LOT of time writing to and from virtual memory. With 1 Ghz computers you dont likely have very fast HDs either. Unless you are a volunteer organization he would pay for his RAM in a week in productivity improvements.


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## [email protected] (Nov 11, 2005)

That Dell will kick some butt for sure. Xeons are blazing fast.


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## southernlady (May 6, 2004)

What if you don't have the physical space for dual monitors but are upgrading? What monitor would you recommend? We are also upgrading the amount of memory and my graphics card to a 256 BIT card. (Which one is still a bit up in the air yet but I'm looking). 

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
AMD Athlon 64, 2000 MHz (10 x 200) 3200+
1 Gig memory now
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (256 MB) 
Maxtor 40 GB
Hitachi 250 GB

Liz


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## Greiffel (Jan 1, 2005)

slipe said:


> Then open Photoshop. With CS, Edit > Preferences > Memory and Image Cache. Seems I remember you started with File instead of Edit with much older versions. You will see how much of your 512Mb is actually available to Photoshop and you select a percentage of that. If you regularly scan images or do other things that require RAM you cant raise the number too much. I think it defaults to Photoshop taking 60% of your available RAM. You could just raise that until other things slow down.
> 
> Perhaps you could approach your boss with numbers. Working on a 200Mb file with 512Mb of RAM costs a LOT of time writing to and from virtual memory. With 1 Ghz computers you dont likely have very fast HDs either. Unless you are a volunteer organization he would pay for his RAM in a week in productivity improvements.


I've done this in Photoshop, but didn't notice a huge difference. It was on 55% so I bumped it up to 65%. I guess it could go higher, but if I'm using Outlook all day, and use Dreamweaver & Flash a lot of the time also, then surely it will slow those programs down?

Like you said, I should just approach the boss and explain this all to him.

thanks for the help and advice. Much appreciated.


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