Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited June 2003
do you do multitasking @ all? in that case, a dually would make an extremely substantial difference- an app. can be using 100% of 1 cpu and you still have another cpu free to do whatever...
multitasking is something I've stopped doing when I use Photoshop at the moment. At least, I have for powerhouse photoshop. When I do web work, I have photoshop, homesite, (talk about a mem leak.. sheesh), ftp, IE, and Flash going.
Quite simply a dual set up will give you the processing power to drive SMP programs like Photoshop. Note that a lot of programs aren't dual processor optimized but the big graphics programs are.
If I remember correctly you are doing a lot of digital inking work and the majority of it is 2D.
A big powerhouse video card will benefit you in games and 3D work such as 3D studio max or Softimage. But normally when messing about with PS and such...there isn't much benefit.
Dual monitors are definitely the way to go. Matrox is the best. The Parhelia may be a bit too much for what you need. I have just worked with Matrox's newest...the P750 which is between the Parhelia and G550. It supports dual digital flat panels if you wish or dual CRT...not something that any other card can do.
Raid will deliver faster access to programs but won't make PS run noticeably faster. As you are a graphic designer I would look at dual drives but have one drive as you program/OS and another drive where your data is kept. That way if the program/OS drive gets nuked for some odd reason...you data doesn't go with it.
A dual processor system is no harder to set up than a single. Dual gives you fast rendering especially in animations. A dual 2600+ would be great with a 2 channel or even 4 channel highpoint raid controller.
SCSI is beaucoup $$$$$ and I would only recommend that for video editing.
I agree that SCSI is very nice, but slightly overkill. While SCSI will mop the floor with EIDE in a server enviroment, with tons of multiple small file access and users, EIDE does a very good job of moving large continious files quickly (i.e. your 50M 100M images)
Basically, you've heard the opinions of some of the brightest minds in the business. While some of the views might differ, I think you should have a really solid idea to work off. Any of the recomendations would be sufficient to power your workstation comfortably. Going from a 500Mhz to ANY of the systems talked about is like going from a old pinto to a new ferrari. Now, you just have to set a budget and buy accordingly
For a good example, while running my linux workstation, there have been times I've loaded win 2k pro in a virtual container. Basically, running a entire computer inside of mine. In windows, I can easily have photoshop, PSP, dreamweaver and flash MX, IE, etc. all at once. I have to edit dreamweaver templates and flash templates sometimes, otherwise you'll never catch me dead in windows I use photoshop and/or PSP just because its there, but normally Im a gimp guy.
Then on my desktop, Ive have my mozilla browser, basic text editors, and usually MP3's playing.
This is probably somewhat simular to what you would experience, plus the power it takes to run multiple OS's at one time.
I monitor all of my system resources always. CPU load, disk activity, ram and swap usage, network traffic, etc. I'm running a dual 1600 with 786 of ram. First bottle neck I hit is HDD access, and the result is slower opening programs and files. I can watch it peg the HDD's and wait. Second is ram, and only usually takes effect when I have 3 or more OS's running at once doing software testing.
Any of the systems above are as powerfull or more so than what I'm running, and the first thing I run out of is HDD access. I'll *nudge* ya again to consider a raid array, but any of these options is going to be a rocket ship compaired to what your working with now.
In follow up to the dual vs. single question. Here is the question that you should answer for yourself.
1) Are you rendering 3D animations that are long (over 10 seconds) or complicated (ray tracing, lighting effects, etc)?
2) Are you mainly working in SMP aware programs. (programs that are written to take advantage of dual processors)?
If yes...you would benefit from dual processors. If you do decide to go dual processors then the MSI or ASUS boards work well. You will need a raid controller even if you don't need to raid drives. Why? Because you will run out of headers for such things like cd drives, burners, dvd etc. Only the Gigabyte dual board comes with a promise raid controller built in.
BIG power user video cards only benefit you for 1) gaming 2) real time or nearer to real time manipulation of a 3D model on screen. Rendering any effect in a 2D program such as Photoshop..or a 3D program such as Softimage...has nothing to do with the video card...
In otherwords...no need to overkill on your video card if you don't hardcore game 24/7. If you want real power for 3D apps such as autocad or Softimage then step up to ATI or NVIDIA's professional offering...again..big bux there. (Quadro or FireGL)
Will a lesser video card do you?...of course.
SCSI...as said before...nice but $$$$$$$$.
Get a removable EIDE drive bay...they are cheap...$20. Best way to have hdd archive. No need to get the fancy ones will LCD displays and all that...and there is no performance loss.
DVD burner...eventually...they are still pricey now but eventually it will be good for archiving big project folders.
RAID? Your call...I'd still stick with an OS/Program drive and your data on another drive.
In non smp programs the difference between dual and single processor is pretty negligable. Don't buy the top end of either processor series. Always step down 1 or 2 levels and save huge bucks. Top of the line processors...their premiere ones...are always for those who absolutely need that 1/2 frame per second more.
given the answer to Mediaman's two questions are 1) no and 2) only Photoshop, I think a single procesor should be fine. I don't do any 3D at this point.
I will be having a primary and secondary drive, (er.. and maybe tertiary). And while SCSI is expensive, I'm not sure I can go BACK to regular drives. *g* (I currently have 2 SCSI drives).
but I probably won't be buying drives new right now. I have a couple 40gig 7200 drives and other random drives to play with. There's always a few sitting in the house.
MediaMan > since I know you've had lots of matrox experience, would you say the P750 is better than a 9700 for a photoshop user/moderate gamer like myself? I like Matrox. It's just not so hot for gaming.
I'm waiting for DVD-RW to go down. it is in my future plan, however. it's just not necessary at the moment. So I'll be sticking with my old CD-RW for now.
If you wanted to go with a single-p4 system instead, I'd get:
Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG mid tower w/430w PS- $118.99
Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (first P4 board I've ever seen that I REALLY want)- $227
Retail Box 3.0GHz/800MHz P4- $417
6x Corsair 512MB PC3200 Value Select DDR RAM- $79 x6, $474
ATi (Built By ATi) Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb- $389
2x 120GB/8MB 7200RPM Maxtor IDE hard drives- $113 x2, $226
Thermalright SLK-900U heatsink- $46.99
5x Enermax Adjustable 80mm fans- $5.99 x5, $29.95
Enermax Adjustable 92mm fan (for SLK-900)- $6.45
4x Antec "Cobra Cable" A26 Rounded ATA-133 cables- $12.95 x2, $51.80
Antec "Cobra Cable" F16 rounded floppy cable- $8.99
Total- $1996.17
Or you could go with a single AMD system:
Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG mid tower w/430w PS- $118.99
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe motherboard: $127.99
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Retail CPU- $452
3x Corsair 512MB PC3200 Value Select DDR RAM- $79 x3- $237
ATi (Built By ATi) Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb- $389
2x 120GB/8MB 7200RPM Maxtor IDE hard drives- $113 x2, $226
Thermalright SLK-800A heatsink- $37.99
6x Enermax Adjustable 80mm fans- $5.99 x6, $35.94
2x Antec "Cobra Cable" A26 rounded ATA-133 cables- $12.95 x2, $25.90
Antec "Cobra Cable" F16 rounded floppy cable- $8.99
Total- $1659.80
The Dual AMD system will be easily faster than either of the single cpu systems, probably by a factor of 1.5 or more... however, that Gigabyte board (especially the Ultra version) is soooooo nice... IDE RAID, SATA, U320 SCSI 6-phase power regulation, 6 DDR slots... ooh, I want one... that board is enough to make me really want a p4... :wow:
The Athlon 3200 system would be about as fast as the P4, and it's $300 cheaper... but any of those would be outstanding systems for just about everything- DV, photoshop, games, whatever... oh, by the way... you won't need that SB Live if you get the A7N8X-Deluxe... the onboard audio on it is better than the SB's audio...
Remember those prices just above my head here are in USD and I believe you are in Canuckland just like me. Do the conversion.
Now the answer to your video card question is based on, you guessed it, answering a question for yourself
1) Does a moderate gamer mean that you play a game every blue moon but when you do...you like to frag at high frame rates...or at least really decent.
YES: don't go P750 or even Parhelia.
2) Are you planning for two DIGITAL flat panel screens...not DFP with the regular SVGA connection...but the digital cable connection.
YES?: Go P750 and forget about gaming.
3) As you know...when graphic and designers LOVE to have really really good and expensive monitors. If I were designing a mid priced graphic workstation it would be with the P750 and a pair of CRT monitors. (CRT is still better than DFP for resolution at this moment during fine detail graphic work).
But you want a little bit of gaming horsepower. ATI 9000PRO is in a great price range and I beleive it will support independent resolutions for dual CRT or the standard of 1 Digitial plus one CRT.
If getting a single processor system...AMD and I just love the ZENITH CHAINTECH 7NJS board as it is very stable and comes with a LOT of goodies.
Be advised that the NFORCE series of any manufacturer's boards are a little quirky for sound. But NFORCE gives you the dual channel memory option.
Remember to match memory with the processor. A 2600+ 333 Front side bus AMD processor should be matched with two 512 MB sticks of DDR333. You may even want to step up one processor level if the budget can afford it.
I decided to downgrade... trying to be reasoable where I don't *really* need a ubercomp. (but I want it kinda...)
updated config:
CHANGES
- Pentium 4 2.4B GHz
- ASUS P4PE Intel 845PE w/ IEEE, Serial ATA, RAID, Gigabit LAN
- PSU : Vantec, Enermax and if you can get it Zalman. (going to see)
- Combo cd/dvd to just a cd/dvd reader - no recording. I'll get a DVD-CD combo write drive later.
SAME
- Radeon 9800 Pro
- 2xPC3200 512 RAM (the kingston is fine)
It's a seksi board. but I'm kinda sad that I'm down grading to no hyperthreading.
It should have a 3:2 ratio in the BIOS. But thats pretty much wasted CPU. Its waiting for data from the RAM.
It does HT support tho.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited June 2003
Don't go with the P4PE, you'll kick yourself for it later. The only two decent chipsets for the Pentium 4 are the Canterwood/i875 and the i865. The 845 is a single-channel DDR chipset, so you're cutting the P4's memory bandwidth in half, and by doing that, you'll essentially be castrating it. The P4's performance is entirely dependent on it's memory bandwidth, and it's demands can only be met with RDRAM or dual-channel DDR. At least get an 865 based motherboard....
Your approach sounds rational. The video card is one other place to look. I have seen some real good prices on GF4 4200 cards. Yes they are old school, but they still work great.
JLunar, you can still get a fine performing i865 board for a good price. Gameve.com has the Abit IS7E for 96.75 delivered. Here is a link to Abit's spec page on that board and this board is no stripper. Also, don't buy the 533 fsb P4, the 800 fsb 2.4 is only about $20 more than the 533 fsb version.
Comments
If I remember correctly you are doing a lot of digital inking work and the majority of it is 2D.
A big powerhouse video card will benefit you in games and 3D work such as 3D studio max or Softimage. But normally when messing about with PS and such...there isn't much benefit.
Dual monitors are definitely the way to go. Matrox is the best. The Parhelia may be a bit too much for what you need. I have just worked with Matrox's newest...the P750 which is between the Parhelia and G550. It supports dual digital flat panels if you wish or dual CRT...not something that any other card can do.
Raid will deliver faster access to programs but won't make PS run noticeably faster. As you are a graphic designer I would look at dual drives but have one drive as you program/OS and another drive where your data is kept. That way if the program/OS drive gets nuked for some odd reason...you data doesn't go with it.
A dual processor system is no harder to set up than a single. Dual gives you fast rendering especially in animations. A dual 2600+ would be great with a 2 channel or even 4 channel highpoint raid controller.
SCSI is beaucoup $$$$$ and I would only recommend that for video editing.
Basically, you've heard the opinions of some of the brightest minds in the business. While some of the views might differ, I think you should have a really solid idea to work off. Any of the recomendations would be sufficient to power your workstation comfortably. Going from a 500Mhz to ANY of the systems talked about is like going from a old pinto to a new ferrari. Now, you just have to set a budget and buy accordingly
Then on my desktop, Ive have my mozilla browser, basic text editors, and usually MP3's playing.
This is probably somewhat simular to what you would experience, plus the power it takes to run multiple OS's at one time.
I monitor all of my system resources always. CPU load, disk activity, ram and swap usage, network traffic, etc. I'm running a dual 1600 with 786 of ram. First bottle neck I hit is HDD access, and the result is slower opening programs and files. I can watch it peg the HDD's and wait. Second is ram, and only usually takes effect when I have 3 or more OS's running at once doing software testing.
Any of the systems above are as powerfull or more so than what I'm running, and the first thing I run out of is HDD access. I'll *nudge* ya again to consider a raid array, but any of these options is going to be a rocket ship compaired to what your working with now.
1) Are you rendering 3D animations that are long (over 10 seconds) or complicated (ray tracing, lighting effects, etc)?
2) Are you mainly working in SMP aware programs. (programs that are written to take advantage of dual processors)?
If yes...you would benefit from dual processors. If you do decide to go dual processors then the MSI or ASUS boards work well. You will need a raid controller even if you don't need to raid drives. Why? Because you will run out of headers for such things like cd drives, burners, dvd etc. Only the Gigabyte dual board comes with a promise raid controller built in.
BIG power user video cards only benefit you for 1) gaming 2) real time or nearer to real time manipulation of a 3D model on screen. Rendering any effect in a 2D program such as Photoshop..or a 3D program such as Softimage...has nothing to do with the video card...
In otherwords...no need to overkill on your video card if you don't hardcore game 24/7. If you want real power for 3D apps such as autocad or Softimage then step up to ATI or NVIDIA's professional offering...again..big bux there. (Quadro or FireGL)
Will a lesser video card do you?...of course.
SCSI...as said before...nice but $$$$$$$$.
Get a removable EIDE drive bay...they are cheap...$20. Best way to have hdd archive. No need to get the fancy ones will LCD displays and all that...and there is no performance loss.
DVD burner...eventually...they are still pricey now but eventually it will be good for archiving big project folders.
RAID? Your call...I'd still stick with an OS/Program drive and your data on another drive.
In non smp programs the difference between dual and single processor is pretty negligable. Don't buy the top end of either processor series. Always step down 1 or 2 levels and save huge bucks. Top of the line processors...their premiere ones...are always for those who absolutely need that 1/2 frame per second more.
Again...hope this helps.
I will be having a primary and secondary drive, (er.. and maybe tertiary). And while SCSI is expensive, I'm not sure I can go BACK to regular drives. *g* (I currently have 2 SCSI drives).
but I probably won't be buying drives new right now. I have a couple 40gig 7200 drives and other random drives to play with. There's always a few sitting in the house.
MediaMan > since I know you've had lots of matrox experience, would you say the P750 is better than a 9700 for a photoshop user/moderate gamer like myself? I like Matrox. It's just not so hot for gaming.
I'm waiting for DVD-RW to go down. it is in my future plan, however. it's just not necessary at the moment.
Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG mid tower w/430w PS- $118.99
MSI K7D Master-L Dual AMD CPU motherboard: $195
2 AMD Athlon MP 2400+ CPUs- $158 x2, $316
4x Kingston 512MB PC2100 ECC Reg. DDR- $99 x4, $396
ATi (Built By ATi) Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb- $389
2x 120GB/8MB 7200RPM Maxtor IDE hard drives- $113 x2, $226
2x Thermalright SLK-800A heatsinks- $37.99 x2, $75.98
7x Enermax Adjustable 80mm fans- $5.99 x7, $41.93
2x Antec "Cobra Cable" A26 rounded ATA-133 cables- $12.95 x2, $25.90
Antec "Cobra Cable" F16 rounded floppy cable- $8.99
Total- $1793.77
If you wanted to go with a single-p4 system instead, I'd get:
Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG mid tower w/430w PS- $118.99
Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (first P4 board I've ever seen that I REALLY want)- $227
Retail Box 3.0GHz/800MHz P4- $417
6x Corsair 512MB PC3200 Value Select DDR RAM- $79 x6, $474
ATi (Built By ATi) Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb- $389
2x 120GB/8MB 7200RPM Maxtor IDE hard drives- $113 x2, $226
Thermalright SLK-900U heatsink- $46.99
5x Enermax Adjustable 80mm fans- $5.99 x5, $29.95
Enermax Adjustable 92mm fan (for SLK-900)- $6.45
4x Antec "Cobra Cable" A26 Rounded ATA-133 cables- $12.95 x2, $51.80
Antec "Cobra Cable" F16 rounded floppy cable- $8.99
Total- $1996.17
Or you could go with a single AMD system:
Antec Performance Plus 1080AMG mid tower w/430w PS- $118.99
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe motherboard: $127.99
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Retail CPU- $452
3x Corsair 512MB PC3200 Value Select DDR RAM- $79 x3- $237
ATi (Built By ATi) Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb- $389
2x 120GB/8MB 7200RPM Maxtor IDE hard drives- $113 x2, $226
Thermalright SLK-800A heatsink- $37.99
6x Enermax Adjustable 80mm fans- $5.99 x6, $35.94
2x Antec "Cobra Cable" A26 rounded ATA-133 cables- $12.95 x2, $25.90
Antec "Cobra Cable" F16 rounded floppy cable- $8.99
Total- $1659.80
The Dual AMD system will be easily faster than either of the single cpu systems, probably by a factor of 1.5 or more... however, that Gigabyte board (especially the Ultra version) is soooooo nice... IDE RAID, SATA, U320 SCSI 6-phase power regulation, 6 DDR slots... ooh, I want one... that board is enough to make me really want a p4... :wow:
The Athlon 3200 system would be about as fast as the P4, and it's $300 cheaper... but any of those would be outstanding systems for just about everything- DV, photoshop, games, whatever... oh, by the way... you won't need that SB Live if you get the A7N8X-Deluxe... the onboard audio on it is better than the SB's audio...
Now the answer to your video card question is based on, you guessed it, answering a question for yourself
1) Does a moderate gamer mean that you play a game every blue moon but when you do...you like to frag at high frame rates...or at least really decent.
YES: don't go P750 or even Parhelia.
2) Are you planning for two DIGITAL flat panel screens...not DFP with the regular SVGA connection...but the digital cable connection.
YES?: Go P750 and forget about gaming.
3) As you know...when graphic and designers LOVE to have really really good and expensive monitors. If I were designing a mid priced graphic workstation it would be with the P750 and a pair of CRT monitors. (CRT is still better than DFP for resolution at this moment during fine detail graphic work).
But you want a little bit of gaming horsepower. ATI 9000PRO is in a great price range and I beleive it will support independent resolutions for dual CRT or the standard of 1 Digitial plus one CRT.
If getting a single processor system...AMD and I just love the ZENITH CHAINTECH 7NJS board as it is very stable and comes with a LOT of goodies.
Be advised that the NFORCE series of any manufacturer's boards are a little quirky for sound. But NFORCE gives you the dual channel memory option.
Remember to match memory with the processor. A 2600+ 333 Front side bus AMD processor should be matched with two 512 MB sticks of DDR333. You may even want to step up one processor level if the budget can afford it.
Hope this helps even more.
Am I the only one that finds it funny that u can buy 2 2600s for less than the price of 1 3200? :wow:
updated config:
CHANGES
- Pentium 4 2.4B GHz
- ASUS P4PE Intel 845PE w/ IEEE, Serial ATA, RAID, Gigabit LAN
- PSU : Vantec, Enermax and if you can get it Zalman. (going to see)
- Combo cd/dvd to just a cd/dvd reader - no recording. I'll get a DVD-CD combo write drive later.
SAME
- Radeon 9800 Pro
- 2xPC3200 512 RAM (the kingston is fine)
It's a seksi board. but I'm kinda sad that I'm down grading to no hyperthreading.
RAM bandwidth - 3.2gb/s
CPU bandwidth - 4.2bg/s
It should have a 3:2 ratio in the BIOS. But thats pretty much wasted CPU. Its waiting for data from the RAM.
It does HT support tho.
*goes to check the i865
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1831
Your approach sounds rational. The video card is one other place to look. I have seen some real good prices on GF4 4200 cards. Yes they are old school, but they still work great.