Not really software but actually hardware

[ilanphoto]

In short, I am thinking about buying a new computer it should be good enough to run photoshop 7 and other such software.
First question
What would you suggest, not brand name but specification CPU RAM etc.
Second:
Is the AMD chip any good? it is much cheaper than Intel and I was wondering what you think. Which AMD CPU is recommended.
Any other information you think will help me chose the best system for me will be much appreciated
Thanks
Ilan

[decloedt]

I've had a 1.4 Ghz Athlon PC for a couple years now, and have been running Photoshop 7 and now CS (or version 8 ) with no problems. The main thing you can do to make Photoshop happy is to put as much memory in your computer as you can. I have 512 Mb, which is all my motherboard can handle. If you can add more than that, do it. Also, two or more hard drives will let you put Photoshop's scratch disk somewhere other than where Windows' swap file lives. That will help make it faster too.

[gurl]

Decloedt is right:
1) memory size
2) disk(s) size
3) if money is scarce then save on processor (look at Mhz/$ ratio!)

Other very important points are screen and video card:
- if you are mainly interested in printing, the right display helps a lot to save on paper and ink
- if you are mainly interested in viewing photos on screen then remember your camera is (problably) much better than your screen!

[digital_mike]

The AMD chip is as good as any...

RAM is the key to Photoshop. You should always try to work in 300 dpi… anything more is a waste of memory unless your creating a billboard for the freeway… And anything less kills you chance to create a billboard for the freeway. Now, Each pixel has 3 colors RGB. each of these colors are represented by a number that can be 3 digits.

So 255,255,255 would be on white pixel. If you take a monitor displaying 1024 x 768... That’s 786462 pixels time 3... well it a lot of Data...

Then add the fact that Photoshop is keeping your information about what you are doing to you image in RAM* Well, with the undo feature and layers, history and well, all other cool stuff the Photoshop does... It’s not hard to get up to a few hundred megs of Ram.

True Photoshop uses the Hard Disk as RAM in what Photoshop call the scratch disk. It can store data temporarily on your Hard Disk, so you need to make sure you always have at least 1 Gig of Free space on the disk Photoshop is using as the scratch disk. By default Photoshop will use whatever drive that is the computer startup disk. Your primary scratch disk should be your fastest hard disk, and should have plenty of defragmented space available.

For best performance, scratch disks should be on a different drive than any large files you are editing.

Scratch disks should be on a different drive than the one used for virtual memory.

Scratch disks should be on a local drive. That is, they should not be accessed over a network.

Scratch disks should be conventional (non-removable) media.

Raid disks/disk arrays are good choices for dedicated scratch disk volumes.

Drives with scratch disks should be defragmented regularly.


Ok….
Edit > Preferences > Plug-ins & Scratch disk.
To set the assignment of the scratch disk, you can assign up to 4 drives…(hopefully you have more than on HD in your computer)

[castledude]

Greatest way to start a flamewar ask about Intel vs AMD.

AMD makes a good chip (I have one of each) but Intels chips are the equil up until you get to the best Intel chip where the price goes out the window.

Once upon a time AMD made a faster (clock for clock) processor than the Intel. AMD decided to get away from processor clock speed and changed to a reference number based upon the speed of Intel processors.

Intel did not stand still and added two features hyperthreading and faster FSB clock speeds. So now an AMD is a little optimistic on their clock speeds . The Intel PIV (3.0GHz/800FSB) will perform better than the 3200+ AMD Athlon XP. So once you get off of the lastest and greatest the price is a lot closer than you think (Less than $60). Hyperthreading is used by Photoshop so you are getting a boost that the AMD will not give you. A lot of the cheaper systems are taking shortcuts with the chipset/memory to get a lower cost system. An AMD can be a great buy but make sure the other stuff in the computer is of a good quality.

(IMHO) The AMD 64 is interesting but should probably be avoided since it is ahead of the curve. No OS support and no Photoshop support in 2 years everything will catch up but why run slower now so that right before you replace your computer it will get a little faster.

You should always try to work in 300 dpi… anything more is a waste of memory unless your creating a billboard for the freeway…

300dpi is meaningless (it's an old typesetter term that does not really apply to modern computers) the main thing is what are you editing at what resolution. (And BTW freeway billboards are more like 25dpi with some having pixels the size of your thumb).

Look at your picture source information (camera, scanner, whatever) multiply it by 3 (standard digital camera) or 6 (Raw mode or high end scanner). Then multiply it by 6 for layers (they are like peanuts once you start you just keep going with them). Now take that answer and throw it away just budget for 1 GB min of RAM you will thank me later.

Get as big a monitor as you can, with a limited budget look at the old glass monitors they are actually cheaper and better for photoediting than the flat panels.

Hard drives are also cheap 200GB are now go on sale for $100 (USD). So go big.

---------------------------
Things to watch for:
If it is a bundled system make sure you are getting a real chip AMD vs Intel and not a lower FSB version of the chip. Make sure the RAM on the motherboard is as fast as possible (PC3200 at least) and that you can expand it to 1GB without having to throw away the other chips. Get a big hard disk (speed has pretty much caught up so all are generally equil), but budget for a second drive ASAP.

If at all possible keep away from on the motherboard video. This tends to share the on board memory and slows down the overall performance of the computer.

[ilanphoto]

Thank you all for your inputs
Two weeks ago I bought my new computer, Intel 2.8Mhz Hyper threading with 512 MB ram upgradeable to 1GB and 80GB hard disk with two extra slots for a future addition and a burner of course. I also invested a bit more in a 128MB graphics card.

The difference between this machine and my previous Pentium 2 128MB is like day and night it is a pleasure to work with it nearly no lag in PS quick loading and fun to use. So now I can really try and use PS with more power.

Having fun so you should have fun as well
Ilan

[kodack]

Consider RAM and HD speed to be more important than CPU.

In a nutshell you can get a 2.5ghz Athlon for less than $99

You should consider 1GB of ram to be a good number with 512MB as a dead minimum.

Get a 7200rpm hard drive.

Your CPU speed has a negligible impact on how quickly a filter is applied or an image is opened or processed. It has zero impact on most operations such as editing a photo, changing levels etc. Anything more than 1ghz is sufficient.

RAM is very important to how large a photo you can edit, your overall speed in moving, editing, and sharing photoshop with other programs running in the background. Without a lot of ram your system will have to swap to the hard disk a lot and this slows you down a lot even with a fast cpu.

HD speed will affect everything from how quickly a photo will open to how quickly you can save, undo, or move photos.

[waqas]

Well I guess you would've bought a PC by now, but I would like to mention that just being "7200 RPM" is no longer the fastest thing (well SCSI hard drives have been available in 10K RPMs but they've been expensive). In the last couple of years we've got drives with 8MB cache in the market (the usual hard disks that we have in our PC come with 2MB cache). Cache speed matters alot, especially when the hard drive size goes beyond 60-80GB. So buy a hard disk with 8MB cache.

There are new SATA drives in the market that are faster than the usual ATA drives that have been in the market for over a decade, but they require a SATA controller, many new boards come with SATA controller. Also, in SATA drives, they have 7200RPM as well as 10K RPM. 10K ones would be faster, but they'd also be more expensive.

[ukexpat]

Three things that cannot be overemphasised when building a system for digital image processing are:

1. Monitor quality. As far as I am concerned very few flat panel monitors are good enough for graphics work. I use a Sony 24" widescreen Trinitron. The image quality is excellent, dowside is that it is a beast and takes up a lot of desk space.

2. Monitor and printer calibration. You cannot perform accurate graphics processing without a calibrated monitor. It is nearly impossible to do by eye. I use a Colorvision Spyder and their OptiCAL sotware. Very easy to use and generates a custome ICM file for your monitor. For my Canon i9100 I use Colorvision's Printfix which is a Photoshop plug-in that generates a custom colour management file for the printer -- best to do one for each kind of paper you use.

3. RAM - the more you have, the happier PS will be. I have 1012 MB in my PS box. If I could fit more in, I would do.