CS5 for Windows System Requirments

<p>OK, I have wasted an hour poking around the internet including Adobe's website. I give up. I am going to upgrade from CS 2 to CS 5 as well as purchase a new desktop after the 1st of the year. Can anyone please give me straight answers on my hardware needs (CPU, Ram Graphics card, etc) for running CS 5 efficiently? I only do two demensional images and I shoot a Nikon D700 uncompressed RAW 14 bit and I usually end up with 6 or 7 layers when I am finally done with an image.<br>

We don't need to talk budget.<br>

Thanks</p>

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<p>We don't need to talk budget.</p>

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<p>You need two seats, a trunk, and it doesn't matter if it's a tercel or a Ferrari?</p>

<p>Are you buying from a box store and going with HP junk or can you buy quality parts from newegg and have a competent tech put it together? I do the latter. Are you comfortable with RAID systems and over clocking? Do you want a $1500 two year computer or a $3000 five year computer?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I have had my last two computers made locally, but I am not opposed to purchasing one already made if it will do the job and I can get it repaired locally. You have already lost me with RAID and over clocking. Don't know what that is. Just want to run my CS 5 efficiently. Unless I have been completely left in the dust with computer technology I think , CPU, RAM and type of graphics card is really all I need. The rest Ican figure out. I would even be happy with the answer to CPU and RAM at this point.</p>

<p>I'm all for making them locally. You end up with a superior box that costs less than a Dell etc.<br>

RAID is the practice of hooking up more than one hard drive. There's various RAID settings that you could look into for saftey and speed or saftey and speed, but most of us use RAID O and is when two or more drives are hooked up as a single large drive. It's a huge increase in speed in both seek and read/write times. For instance, you can buy two Western Digital 640 hdd's and it will out perform any other single hdd. It will total 1.2 terabytes of storage. It's easy to set up in bios settings and is well worth the cost of $150.</p>

<p>I'd wait a couple months until Sandy Bridge is out and on the market. We're on the cusp of a change again and feel it's best to buy at the beginning of a new architecture change as opposed to today, at the end of an old one</p>

<p>I have a 2010 desktop i7 win7 64 bit system with 8GB ram, 1T drive and nvidia GT220 (1GB, Cuda); and an XP laptop circa 2007 with 2GB ram and built-in 64MB graphics: CS5 works fine on both, and I do not feel that the laptop is slow. Perhaps you do not need to upgrade at all. Re: graphics, see <a href="../digital-darkroom-forum/00XbSr">here</a> </p>

<p>Thanks Jack. I do, however, need to get both a new desktop and laptop. They have gotten very granky. I am not going to purchase new computers just because I am upgarding to CS5. The two I have are definately on their last legs. Just wanted to make sure I was covered for CS5 on the two new ones. CS2 still runs great on my desktop, but its become almost useless on my old Gateway laptop..and no more room for RAM on the laptop.</p>

<p>It all depends of course how speedy you want it to run. Hard drive speed (including RAID0,5 or an SSD) probably affects things the most. Otherwise any modern dual-core and up processor will be fine. And more RAM (4,8,12GB) speeds things up nicely when using lots of layers on large images.</p>

<p>Mac Pro, 6 core, 16G ram, 4 1 or 2 TB drives, NEC 27-30 monitor. You'll not need to upgrade for many years.</p>

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<p>Mac Pro, 6 core, 16G ram, 4 1 or 2 TB drives, NEC 27-30 monitor. You'll not need to upgrade for many years.</p>

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<p>But if you bought the same hardware in PC, for half the cost, it wouldn't last many years?</p>

<p>Its simple really...Serious pro's use:<br>

iMac, 1 Terabyte HDD, 8-10 Gb of RAM.<br>

No viruses, multitaking OS, infinite Applecare so long as you keep paying, runs CS5 really well. (It should, it was developed on a Mac platform). No Windows headaches trying to make a whole bunch of third party componenets work together. <br>

End of story. If its good enough for a publishing house, its good enough for you.</p>

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<p>End of story. If its good enough for a publishing house, its good enough for you.</p>

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<p>Hmm. I never really understood these arguments. If it's so wonderful, how come they only have 3% desktop market share, and shrinking? You'd think people would jump at the chance to spend 30% more $ and rid themselves of the windows problems you claim?</p>

 

<p>I have recently upgraded from CS2 to CS5 but I am still running a Core 2 Duo E8400 and a normal system built around it. I am quite satisfied with it.</p>

<p>However, if I have no need to budget, I would go for:<br>

Core i7 cpu<br>

D3 triple channel ram<br>

SSD (solid state drive) for C: drive<br>

2TB HDD for data<br>

motherboard with USB 3.0<br>

a good casing and power supply<br>

2 good large Dell monitors</p>

<p>These are the basics I would like to have.</p>

<p>Page down <a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-benchmark-mainstream_7.html#sect0">here</a> to see how many modern processors handle a CS5 script. They didn't test an i7, which of course would be faster.</p>

<p>I'm running an overclocked i7 quad core processor, 12 G RAM, 2-one Terabite Hard Drives in RAID 0 configuration, and 2-1G NVidia 295 graphics cards. Just about the only time I wait is when I stitch together 12-18 shots off my 5Dii for a panorama. One word about graphics cards, make sure they will allow GPU acceleration for smooth zooming and rotation.</p>

<p>Nice set up, Dominick. Are the "2-one Terabite Hard Drives in RAID 0 configuration" WD or Seagate?</p>

<p>Garrison, they are Seagate 7200 rpm drives. The last component of my PC is the 30" monitor running 2560 dpi :-) I have no excuses for equipment. If my photos are not exciting, it's my fault.</p>

<p>In the media and graphics industries it something like 60%<br>

In the laptop and notebook market its about 20%.<br>

They are actually cheaper out here in Australia against W7 boxes if you spec them up to the same degree.</p>

<p>But thats not the point. Get the box that :<br>

1. Is well supported if something breaks.<br>

2. Handles huge graphics files easily and quickly.<br>

3. Is fun to use.<br>

4. And the biggie...That multitasks. (in running 100mb files through CS5, you still want to be doing your email, surfing the web, printing off something else etc, without the whole box stopping and you sitting there waiting for its CS5 task to finish.)</p>

 

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<p>4. And the biggie...That multitasks. (in running 100mb files through CS5, you<br /> still want to be doing your email, surfing the web, printing off something else<br /> etc, without the whole box stopping and you sitting there waiting for its CS5<br /> task to finish.)</p>

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<p>Really? That is a biggie. You mean, I can have more than one thing open at once when I'm using an Apple computer? Like, listen to music while doing my editing? Wow. I'm switching tomorrow. Thanks so much for the tip!</p>

<p>Apple is always a generation, sometimes two, behind PC. If you're all warm and fuzzy inside about multi-tasking on your Mac, you could have been doing it sooner and cheaper on a different platform. If you want to gamble and hope that your expensive software is still compatible in a few years down the road, go with Apple. If you want to gamble and hope that your hardware is compatible with future releases of an OS, go with Apple. If you want to be the last to get updates, plugins, or beta test, or go 64-bit Photoshop, go with Apple.</p>

<p>I write this on a $1000 PC I built two years ago that is still faster than todays $2500 iMac. A PC that can take at least 8 different Windows OS's and will run the last 5 generations of Photoshop and it's plugin's. A PC that has upgrade options. I can spend $800 today and in an afternoon swap out just the motherboard, cpu and ram and have a computer that is on par with a $3500 Mac Pro. And do it without filling the landfills up with e-waste. The Windows 7 OS I bought can be installed on computers that date back 10 years of more. Amazing really for an OS to be compatible with so much hardware from so many third party, and third rate, vendors. Even the free Ubuntu does this. But the Mac OS? They can't even release a simple Unix update without a hitch.</p>

<p>I don't know how this descended into a PC vs. Mac thread; the OP was asking about PC hardware.</p>

<p>Outside of one being more proprietary and in some cases more expensive, it really just boils down to preference.</p>

<p>Thats true, but an investment in the superior platform (for imaging and graphics) is also a consideration.<br>

And I don't want to be labelled an Apple bigot. We have a mixture of Apple and Windows platforms in our business. I also worked for Sun, Compaq, HP and IBM in my IT career so I have an open mind.<br>

The hard facts are that the iMac is no more expensive than a Windows platform, specially if you factor in a 27" monitor.<br>

<a href="http://store.apple.com/au/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTcyMTgwNTQ">http://store.apple.com/au/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTcyMTgwNTQ</a></p>

<p>But to be fair, we have had one of our iMacs die twice from a cooked graphics card. It was fixed overnight under Applecare...no quibble there. And on the Windows side we always seem to be rebooting the windows platforms, and in running an aggressive anti virus program, they are just not as fast. We also have a mixture of XP, Vista and W7, which is a pain, because there are lots of apps that are not compatible across these three versions of Windows. Whereas with the iMac, you just download the new OS and reboot...and away you go. The trick to making iMac's fly is to load them up with heaps of ram. This is crucial to them being able to multitask as well as manage large files.</p>

<p>I was a total sceptic until I was forced to use an iMac when one of our staff was sick. Now I'm sold. On the matter of what server you use?...it will always be windows in that space.</p>

<p>If you already have a platform and the choice is immaterial, make sure to have at least 8Gb of ram and also make sure the verion of Photoshop is in sync with the version of windows you are running.</p>

<p>I was kind of surprised to read this -<br /> NEC PA271w or many others do not dispay 10bit in MAC\SNOW LEOPARD....</p>

<p>http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=48886.0</p>

You're right Brad. My apologies. I shouldn't have bought into the troll post.

<p>Paul,<br>

I just upgraded from CS2 to CS5 as well and had to purchase a new computer. Got a Dell Studio XPS 8100 with an I7 processor, upgraded a couple of notches on the video card (probably a waste of money), 6 GB ram, with a new monitor for about $1200. Windows 7 64 bit OS. I shoot a Canon 7D in RAW, processed in 16 bit, and the computer smokes thru them when I batch process with no problem. It's far faster than my old PC when I shot 20D processed in 14 bit. I also scan film, and this computer manipulates 125 MG TIFF files like the old one did 6k Excel. Real world this is all you need.</p>

<p>George</p>

<p>Just a note about ram which will, no doubt, cause a flame war. On a PC, unless you are using a 64 bit operating system, the machine will not see or use more than about 3.5GB of ram. You need to go to a 64 bit operating system to use more. You can install as much as you like but if you are not using a 64 bit OS it is simply worthless. </p>

<p>Don't guess. Here is what microsoft says:</p>

<p><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx</a></p>

<p>I have a quad core Q9505 processor, 16 GB of ram, SSD with CS5 installed and a Raedon 4830 video card. CS5 runs like the wind. Use the SSD for your workspace and your hard drive for storage and you will never go back. With the SSD my computer boots in 25 seconds and shuts down in 10. CS5 opens in about 3 seconds. I think an SSD is the best performance enhancement available. </p>

<p>Mac Snow Leopard now offers full 64 bit operation. </p>

<p> <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/">http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/</a></p>

<p> </p>

<p>Lee, Which SSD did you choose? And how did you configure your workspace vs storage discs? I'm about ready to move in that direction too.</p>