Best PC Configuration for Photoshop CS4 and Vista

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

12/10/2008 09:09:14 AM · #1

Hi,

It has been a headache to edit (at my present computer) an image coming from a 21MP camera (5D Mk2). So, I just decided to go for a new PC but I need some advise. I'll be working mainly with Photoshop CS4 and I have in mind to edit video too (Quicktime 1080p H.264; 38.6 Mbits/sec) with Premiere CS4. Can you suggest me a good configuration for the CPU and Graphic Card considering a good price vs excellent performance. Well, if there are more things I should consider, please advise me.

Thanks in advance

Message edited by author 2008-12-10 17:45:57.

Dr.Confuser

Nikon D800

12/10/2008 12:35:11 PM · #2

Bump

Maybe give Adobe a call. They won't tell you a brand but they might help you size processors, memory, primary and scratch drives. Probably get different recommendations on a Mac than a PC.

Simms

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III

12/10/2008 12:47:39 PM · #3

Originally posted by De Sousa:

Hi,

It has been a headache to edit (at my present computer) an image coming from a 21MP camera. So, I just decided to go for a new PC but I need some help from the hardware gurus. I'll be working mainly with Photoshop CS4 and I have in mind to edit video too with Premiere CS4. Can you suggest me a good configuration for the CPU and Graphic Card considering a good price vs excellent performance. Well, if there are more things I should consider, please advise me.

Thanks in advance

Remember that CS4 can use a GPU to add features such as smooth images at all zoom level, flick panning, grid at pixel level editing.. BUT, if you do go for a higher end GPU look at something in the ATI 4000 series. They have just released a huge update to their drivers that implements Stream processing, basically taking the load of the CPU and transferring a lot of the work to the 900 or so parallel processing stream units. I know CS4 will be supporting this feature soon.. CHeck the link for more info..
ATI Stream

ralph

Nikon Z9

12/10/2008 02:04:16 PM · #4

is Premiere CS4 64 bit ?
you would be best off using a 64bit os (i really find vista annoying but it does handle a wack 'o ram
can't speak about Premiere but pscs4 is quite good on a quad core / with 8 gig o'ram

Yo_Spiff

Olympus 12-100mm f/4.0 M.Zuiko ED IS PRO

12/10/2008 02:25:30 PM · #5

I'm also in the process of putting together a new PC, but I don't intend on doing heavy video editing. My main video concern in making sure the graphics heavy Vista interface operates snappily. I'll probably be using an ATI Radeon 4650 or 4670 based card. You may want something with a little more horsepower for the video editing, though this Radeaon is probably up to the task. There is a good (and current) article on Tom's Hardware right now about best video cards for the money.

Intel Quad cores seem to be the most highly recommended CPU lately, with AMD playing catch-up. If you are like me, however, and stay a little behind the cutting edge, looking for bang for the buck instead, AMD is still a very good buy. I may go with a quad core Phenom, though it bears a little more research still.

Maximum PC magazine has a special out this month with some good reviews and advice for system builders. Probably worth a tenner to hear what they have to say.

Memory is cheap. 4 Gb of DDR2 ram for sure. Definitely a SATA hard drive. Big ones are cheap now. One of my own requirements was case with an ESATA port up front. I bought one of these the other day.

Message edited by author 2008-12-10 19:32:02.

zool

Canon EOS-7D Mark II

12/10/2008 02:55:21 PM · #6

Hi.

I got a good deal on an acer with P4 quad Q6600. I usually build my own but for the price of the acer I could not build one the same spec. I am running Vista home premium with 3 Gig of ram. For photography I run CS4 and Lightroom 2.1. Performance in each program is great but I am only working with RebelXT raw files that are not as large as yours. If you are thinking of going the 64bit route you want at least 8 gigs of ram. Thing to remember is 64 bit address use more ram by default then 32 bit so you will not see any large gains until you get over 6 gigs. I would suggest something with a quad and over 6 gigs of ram. Take a look at this one link it has a little info from Adobe about cs4 //kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404901&sliceId=1

De Sousa

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

12/11/2008 12:22:19 PM · #7

Thanks a lot for the information. I think I've already made up my mind:
- Intel CORE 2 QUAD Q9550 2.83 GHz
- Radeon HD 4870 - 1GB
- 4 Gb RAM (maybe I'll go up till 8 if needed)
- SATA II hard drive (250GB for OS + 500GB 32MB for Data and scratch)

Do you think I should go for another HD 250GB only scratch?

Message edited by author 2008-12-11 17:30:43.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70 f2.8 L IS

12/11/2008 12:29:14 PM · #8

Depending on what whether your intended uses for the machine include gaming or not, your choice of graphics card may change. Consider that if you are not going to use the machine for gaming, a "workstation" graphics card may save you a *lot* of power consumption (e.g. heat, and operational cost over the lifetime of the system as well as decreased noise and cooling requirements). The nVidia Quadro FX series are great cards with low power consumption. I chose the 570, which works fabulously with CS4 and consumes only 38 watts, compared to hundreds of watts for some mainstream cards.

Spork99

Canon EOS R8

Canon RF 16mm F2.8 STM

12/11/2008 12:37:59 PM · #9

Let me be the first to say it:

Mac

12/11/2008 12:45:01 PM · #10

I ain't no dang Mac, I'm a Peterbilt!

Agree with Kirbic.

I would definitely spring for the 8gb of RAM if it doesn't break the bank. Note that a 64-bit OS is necessary to take full advantage of RAM over 3gb. Make sure you get Vista 64-bit edition.

Also, if you're buying from a computer builder (Dell, HP, otherwise) perhaps adding RAM and harddrive would be cheaper aftermarket (check Newegg.com). Aftermarket RAM may be finicky for compatibility, HD should not. ETA: a good seagate 1tb hard drive can be had for $109.

Cheers,
-Jeff

Message edited by author 2008-12-11 17:47:39.

De Sousa

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

12/11/2008 02:15:07 PM · #11

Originally posted by kirbic:

I really don't care about games. I'll have mainly Photoshop CS4, Premire and After Effects CS4. A card giving advantages to these applications is what I'm looking for. Editing HD video is a pain and a card dealing great with that work would be a must. Are the nVidia Quadro FX series optimized for video editing?

Originally posted by Spazmo99:

Let me be the first to say it:

Mac

Yeh, sure, but I'll need to double the budget to have the same performance.

Originally posted by smurfguy:

Make sure you get Vista 64-bit edition.
-Jeff

Sure, thanks

dd1989

Fujifilm x100

12/11/2008 02:42:54 PM · #12

There is no 64 bit edition as such - Adobe installers recognise your processor/OS upon installation - At least that's how it works for Lightroom.

Anyway, best advice, get the best you can afford, even if you think the spec is outrageous and "too much" - it won't be in 6 months.

Message edited by author 2008-12-11 19:43:22.

kirbic

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-70 f2.8 L IS

12/11/2008 04:20:09 PM · #13

Originally posted by De Sousa:

re the nVidia Quadro FX series optimized for video editing?

I'd be a liar if I told you I knew how they compare to mainstream cards for that task... you'd have to do some research in that area. Perhaps the Adobe forums (if you are going to use Premiere)?

Dirt_Diver

Nikon D3s

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

12/11/2008 05:01:33 PM · #14

the 2.83GHz can handle it but I would go higher if your wallet can afford it.
Also you could drop the 250GB 7200RPM drive for a 150GB 10,000RPM drive. OR get the 250gb and use it as a scratch drive and use the 150GB for your root drive. That would give you fast retrieval times and motion times. Even better you could get 2 smaller drives at 10,000rpm or 15,000rpm SATA drives and run them as a RAID set up. That way it would be really fast.

4 Gigs of memory would be enough BTW

Message edited by author 2008-12-11 22:08:35.

Bernard_Marx

Canon EOS-40D

12/12/2008 03:11:04 AM · #15

HD. Yea, at your budget you certainly don't want any 7200 drives in the machine. 10-15k internals and then you can use slow giant external drives for storage.

12/12/2008 04:37:40 AM · #16

Just for kicks, I put together a mega beefy machine on Newegg:

Two quad-core 3.0GHz CPUs (server motherboard)
16GB Buffered DDR2 800 RAM (4x Kingston 4GB)
RAID Array consisting of four 10k RPM 300gb drives
Quadro FX5500 graphics card
Tower case with 3 120mm fans, 850W power supply

It all came to $5850. =D But there's little doubt it's be crazy fast.

Admittedly, I'm not up on high-end video cards - it seems some can encode H.264 natively, while ATI and NVidia have their own versions of parallel processing units.

ETA: As a price comp, the highest-end Mac Pro on the macstore.com website is $4399. It has the same dual quad-core CPUs, but one 7200 rpm drive, a cute little 2gb of RAM, and a consumer-level graphics card. But it's so cute!

Message edited by author 2008-12-12 09:43:32.

Dr.Confuser

Nikon D800

12/12/2008 06:05:22 AM · #17

Originally posted by smurfguy:

Adobe told me Photoshop would not use the second quad processor, so you might save some money by buying just one ... if Photoshop Performance is your only concern.

Dirt_Diver

Nikon D3s

12/12/2008 06:08:26 AM · #18

Originally posted by smurfguy:

HOLY CRAP BALLS BATMAN... Are you a gamer? Do you do a lot of 3d stuff???

With an 850w power supply you better turn that sucker off at night or pay the extra $100 every month for your power bill.

Message edited by author 2008-12-12 11:17:30.

12/12/2008 06:27:57 AM · #19

The dual quad cores will still help because the OS runs many applications at once. CS4 can saturate one while your background services, browsers, email, and anything else churns happily on the other.

I didn't buy this machine, nor do I intend to - I was just spec'ing and pricing it out. It's not intended for games. The specialty points, IMO, are:
- quad 10k RPM drive array should allow crazy insane fast file IO (like for video, large PSD files, etc)
- dual processors and plenty of RAM for your apps to live along side each other happily
- workstation-class video card with lots of hardware acceleration (this is what I know least about, though)

And I'm pretty sure with two quad-core processors and four drives, it'll eat power like a clothes dryer. Hence the 850W power supply. The drives don't list a power spec, but the CPU's are 120W each.

Now, I've read that there are dedicated HD video-editing machines upwards of $50k, but the idea here was more of a realistic, powerful desktop server/workstation.

neophyte

Nikon D810

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

12/12/2008 06:34:14 AM · #20

I know nothing of technical stuff but I'm running CS4 on Vista on a Dell Studio with 6GB ram and 750GB of hard drive. I've got 2 dual cores. it is crazy fast and has all card readers built in...Also, PS does invite you to thier site to upgrade... hope this helps. Oh yeah... edit to add that it was only $800 US

Message edited by author 2008-12-12 14:09:41.

Patrick_R

Canon EOS-60D

12/12/2008 07:29:26 AM · #21

Budget?

I build pcs all the time its not very hard. My current PC is this

AMD 3.2GHZ dual core processor
4G of ram
ASUS SLI WIRELESS MOBO
EVGA nVIDIA 8800gts 512mb Graphics card
Antec 900 case
700 watt PSU
500G hard drive
22 inch monitor

The total cost of all that was 1200 in Febuary
I run CS4 and Vista just fine
Since that was in febuary you can get even better now Im sure
My PC is on all day and my electric bill is 30 bucks a month

one2one

Olympus E-5

Olympus 7-14mm f/4.0 Zuiko Digital Zoom

12/12/2008 08:19:46 AM · #22

Intel i7 CPUs were released not too long ago, ask for more info where you're shopping at.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

12/12/2008 12:12:39 PM · #23

Yes, it's cheaper to just get a powerful CPU in a standard desktop. But much like marketing touts MegaPixels in cameras, you can't only look at the GigaHertz and GigaBytes. There are many different specs and potential bottlenecks all over the machine. If you want the best performance, you'd do well to pay attention to them all and balance your budget across them. Here's a partial list off the top of my head:

- bus speeds and throughput
- - front-side bus
- - video card bus
- - disk bus
- size and speed of RAM
- size, speed, and reliability of disk (or disk array)
- number and speed of processor cores
- CPU cache, disk cache
- video card (bus, RAM, hardware acceleration, video encoding, etc)

Of course, identifying bottlenecks for any given application (or combination of applications) is the difficult part. Second to making sure all the drivers and OS play nicely.

This is one of the reasons I passed on the 5D Mark II. Editing HD video and such large RAW files requires some horsepower, and I'd probably have needed an upgrade or spent a lot of time waiting.

zeuszen

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II

12/12/2008 01:10:12 PM · #24

Originally posted by De Sousa:

I can't comment on video-editing, but I frequently edit 17 MP images RAW (the resulting TIFFs may be up to 500MB) in CS 3 and Aperture 2.1.2 on an iMac 2.4GHz running Leopard with 4GB RAM, available from $ 1199. I'd describe the performance as lightning fast for 95% of processes. The remaining 5% (lens correction filters) may take 5 to 10 seconds to complete and render, on average. To me, that's still quite snappy.

Artifacts