Minimum processor speed for running PS with a G4?

[grant_langlois]

Hello I am an amatuer photographer. I am using a canon digital rebel

and editing with photoshop 7. I am using a pc right now but i want

to go mac. I was looking at g4's at www.powermax.com and was

wondering which one to choose. I know that i can upgrade ram so now

its processor speed. Please keep the cost as low as possible

 

Grant

[ellis_vener_photography]

Well I'm using a 3 year old single processor 733mhz Quicksilver model w/ 1.1Gb RAM and

except for some of the really large iamges I've been shooting these days (16 and 22mp

images which start at

96mb and go up to about 500mb and that is before I start editing the images in

Photoshop) it runs pretty well. I would much prefer a faster machine but that come later

this year when I upgrade to a G5.

[myo]

I am using a 1 year old, 867Mhz 12" powerbook with 640MB of RAM. It is a little slow at

times but more than tolerable for what I need to do. Batch processing seems to drag but I

imagine that is that whole "watched pot" syndrome.

 

Which one to buy depends on your needs, really. If you want to add hardware (video cards,

internal drives) or go pump it full of an incredible amount of RAM those cheap little

notebooks (or e/iMacs) may not work and you're staring down the barrel of a Powermac

G4/5 and a monitor (or re-use your Windows box's monitor?). If portability is a concern,

you'll definately want a laptop.

 

My advice is always this: figure out what you your top constraints are and figure out what

your budget is. Once you know both of those, purchase as much processing power and

RAM in the form-factor you've picked. Sure spending less money is good right now but

how much sooner will you want/need to upgrade for the couple hundred dollars you save?

 

I can be more specific if you can...but I hope that helps.

[robert_moon4]

For what it's worth I'm running an old G4 400 MHZ with PS 5.5 for batch processing 35mm slides and negs while I do my PS CS edit work on a one Gig dual Quick Silver. The reason I kept the 400 is that my film scanner is SCSI that I could never quite get running on the dual machine. The old 400 does have 1 1/2 gigs of memory and still does a great job. I'm using an Epson 4870 on firewire for the MF stuff directly into the newer machine but using both a firewire hub and a USB hub I can pass stuff back and forth between the computers and use the same keyboard and mouse for each. I hope this helps. Bob Moon

[justin_w]

I just sold my dual 1 GHZ G4. At the design studio where I work we still use 400 Mhz G4s and they are fine. I am amazed at how cheap G4s are now. They are great, RELIABLE (in OS X), and last longer than it seems at that price.

For $700 you can get a great machine, perfectly fine if you are not doing video and don't mind taking an extra sip of coffee during rendering times (the speed is most visible when using Photoshop filters). Buy a used G4 with memory and software.

[carl smith]

We have a number of G4 400mhz systems with OS X (10.2.8 or 10.3, i forget) and Photoshop CS. They've all got 768mb or RAM and they are not that fast. I can't tell you what you'll want because your expectations may vary from mine, I personally find any (single or dual) G4 to be a bit on the sluggish side compared to a good system running either 1 or 2 G5s or comparable equipment on the Windows side.

 

A question to ask is, what is your current system speed, and what type of processor? If you can tell us that then I can say what on the Apple side will be similar in performance. The G4s are acceptable solutions for the moment, however I wouldn't consider them if I had the expectation of running this system as primarily a graphics workstation with heavy workflow for more than the next year and a half or 2.

 

In the end, get the fastest you can afford, and I'd recommend not going under 1Ghz if at all possible.

[Dennis Peek]

I am running PhotoShop CS on a 3 1/2 year old PowerMac Dual Processor 500 mhz with 2

GB RAM. It runs fine. Also does fine with 1 GB RAM. Also have a dual 450 at the office that

is four years old. These machines are available used for about $600 - $700. Both run

current system software OS 10.3.4. They can run SCSI with a card but Firewire is built-in

and much better. I have a $12.00 USB 2.0 PCI card with 4 ports to run the Nikon scanner.

 

I use a Nikon LS5000 scanner (USB 2.0), and external Pioneer DVR-107 burner (Firewire).

The original DVD-RAM internal drive works fine even if a little slow. I upgraded with a

Sonnet Tempo ATA-133 card and 160 GB and 200 GB hard drives. You need a new ATA

card to see these larger drives and to maximize performance. A pair of 60 or 80 GB drives

on the original ATA bus would also work for you and they are relatively cheap. I also

upgraded the video card.

 

You can easily get started with one of the older basic dual processor models and get 2 or

3 years out of it. OS X takes full advantage of the dual processors. The Apple hardware

tends to be much better quality than your average PC and lasts longer. Apple has

committed to supporting their machines for 5 years.

 

BTW, In an office of 30 PC's, no machines at this age will function with newer software.

Only the newest will run apps like PS CS. We retire (scrap) PCs after 3 years unless they are

dedicated to word processing only.

[cooper8168]

I run PS on a Dual 533 and I am completely happy. I also run it at home on a single 500

AGP and it drags a little, but it doesn't bother me at all. All machines run current OS X.

[john_shriver]

The current continued increases in processor speed are hardly relevant to applications like Photoshop, except perhaps for some extraordinarily computationally intensive plug-ins.

 

They really only improve things like Audio and Video CODECs. Unless you're doing video editing, or transcoding DVDs into DIVX, any CPU available today is pretty suitable for anything. (Although Intel does a pretty effective job at crippling their Celerons.)

 

Similarly, high-end graphics cards are only of benefit to gamers, not Photoshop. The gamers also need the CPU speed.

 

It's been a long time since Photoshop was the sort of applicating driving the market for additional processor performance.

[greg_campbell1]

Your Drebel is not going to produce monster files. FWIW, I've wrangled 5 MP pics very nicely with an old AMD 800 PC with 512MB of memory.

 

I'm not great mac fan, so am not at all 'up' on the various models' features. I'd think that a ~500MHZ G3/4 with 256+ meg of RAM would be reasonably responsive. If you're into heavy layers, or viewing several images concurrently, bump the ram to 512 or 768 (make sure the motherboard can accomodate it) until you avoid disk swapping.

 

If you can unearth the tech specs from Apple's site, look for models featuring faster memory and CPU bus speeds. When dealing with large images files, internal bandwidth is at least as important as CPU speed. Also look for drive throughput (generaly proportional to RPM). Will the mac in question accept a modern 7200 RPM SCSI or IDE drive?

 

(Of course you can still build a very competent, much faster, PC for the same price as midrange used macs.) ;)

 

-Greg

[roger krueger]

Spend your money on lots of RAM and a big hard drive. The actual processor speed is less

important--every processor seems slow when it's waiting to swap stuff to a scratch file!

 

I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I was doing events with 250+ 4mp images on a

g3 233mhz until a few months ago. You just think batch processing--have it open 60 files

and do batch corrections on them and leave them open, come back, review and manually

correct as needed, then batch save the lot of them.

 

The only G4s I'd avoid are the early 400/450 mhz machines. Some of the 400s are hard to

upgrade at all, and another (big) chunk of early 400s and 450s can't take dual processor

upgrades.

 

If you want to save some money, compare prices between powermax and ebay. A G4 533,

which I'd call a pretty good cheap machine, is $750 at Powermax, $450 (+$50 to add

equivalent memory to the Powermax machine) on ebay from a seller with high feedback.

 

Note that the 533 is digital audio--like all of the digital audio generation of G4s there is

NO analog audio input--think about whether this matters to you.

 

Ebay really can be pretty safe--I bought my wife's 733 on ebay and it was perfect. Just

stick to sellers who have feedback over 50 or so (100 or 200 is even better) and you

should be fine. Someone with 3 feedback and a price $100 lower than everyone else is

probably a thief.

[jack_carlton]

"Someone with 3 feedback and a price $100 lower than everyone else is probably a thief."

 

... or someone who simply wants to dump old hardware and is new to eBay.

[cooper8168]

<i>...... or someone who simply wants to dump old hardware and is new to eBay.</i>

 

<p>Exactly. The level of mistrust from some of those around here is astounding

sometimes.

[scott_eaton]

<I>BTW, In an office of 30 PC's, no machines at this age will function with newer software</i><P>I have Win2K server running on half a dozen Pentium Pro 200s with 368 meg of RAM as backup domain controllers and also as lightweight terminal server boxes. The are pretty useless for Photoshop, but they'll sling Office apps around pretty easily with 2-3 users connected, and it's beyond recent memory when I've had to reboot them. By chance do you have any 200mhz Mac's in your office running OSX and multiple user sessions while performing directory services?<P>I'll be the first to agree that the PC industry is full of a lot junk, but I also have over a dozen 486's on the plant floor well over 10+ years old running in conditions that would offend a sewer rat, and they'll likely continue to run for 10+ years. I can also replace them with hardware costing less than $500 that would run for another 10 years. Conclusion: if you are incapable of making hardware choices, and need the manufacturer to make them for you, then you are correct. I'm otherwise with Carl on this one and find the whole issue one of performance tolerance vs actual capability.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here several of my "dedicated retouching boxes" use a 200Mhz PentiumPro; with 512megs of ram; with Win98SE; or Win2000 and are LAN connected to dedicated scan boxes; and faster computers. The PentiumPro actually was designed for NT; and works better with an NT OS versus Win98SE; at least for R/W operations to the hard drives. Windows 2000 allows dual processors; and a dual settup helps some; but it is never a 2x increase; by any means. Uping the processor on our PentiumPros to a 333Mhz PII quickens a file rototion in photoshop; but does nothing to the discdrive R/W bog; due to a older controller and slow HDA. Using a PCI-IDE 133 card and modern 7200rpm 133UDMA drive cures the bottleneck. Many folks focus only on the processor speed; and one the real bottle necks. Our 200MHZ 512meg PentiumPros will rotate a 90meg file in 9 seconds; using win98se. With a typical customers scan; a 10 to 30 20meg file; our older boxes are just as quick as our P3's and P4's; for simple retouching jobs. They also boot up like quick; since they have no pther software but photoshop.<BR><BR>I goofed around and dropped the PPros spped down to 120Mhz; here the file rotation is longer.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here for batch conversions; I use a P4 with 2 gigs of ram. <BR><BR>Most folks run with too little ram; and have older HDA's and hard drive controllers; with are the bottlenecks in PS performance

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I started out with a 386 for PS; and have even used a 286 once. The minimum speed is more today; as folks load up their computers with alot of programs; that grab resources. Our HP P4 2.5Ghz computer we bought last year with XP pro was quick once a file was opened off the hard drive; but was SLOWER in opening up files than our old PentiumPros with a modern 7200 drive and modern 133 PCI controller. The stock HP box came with a slow 5400rpm drive; and a sickly controller; and a bloaded XP; with crap programs hogging resources.

[._._z]

RAM is as important as processor speed. I've used Photoshop on a number of

different G4 systems, ranging from 14" iBooks to dual-processor Powermacs. Get at

least 784MB RAM and don't load up on more than a half dozen apps being open or

you'll slow down with swap pages. I've got a DP G4/800 that runs Photoshop quite

nicely.

 

Listen to what Ellis says: he's a pro who actually uses his Mac for his photography, as

opposed to a number or poseurs around here, many who don't know or use or

understand Macs, or who just use them sporadically at school.

[carl smith]

If you had to do a tradeoff of processor speed and RAM, drop the CPU a bit and bump the RAM up. It's better to lose a couple hundred Mhz and get the gig of RAM than it is to have a blazingly fast CPU and run out of RAM, because when you go to hard drive it's all over, your performance drops precipitously.

[cooper8168]

However, also keep in mind that OS X currently only allows a maximum of 2GB of RAM per

application. While that probably doesn't apply to you, it's something to consider if you

plan to buy the latest G5 and have designs on popping anything more than about 4GB of

RAM in it. Some software designers actually recommend <i>against</i> loading up a G5

with max RAM.

[testingname]

Whatever the answer, you have something to look forward to: snappier OS feel (and tests

prove it) with each major OS revision. Beta --> 10.0 --> 10.1 --> 10.2 --> 10.3... each

has improved on the speed of the last.

 

BTW, G5 single 1.6s and 1.8 as refurbs are flirting with the $1300-1500 range right now.

Great value.

[testingname]

AND DON'T GET CHEAP RAM. Sorry for shouting, but it's something that should be

shouted, especially for the G5s.

 

Crucial brand, Kingston brand... but not the generic stuff... unless you enjoy solving kernal

panic problems.

[testingname]

Refurbished PowerMac G5/1.6GHz for $1,299 8:52 am

The factory-refurbished PowerMac G5/1.6GHz with 256MB RAM, 80GB hard drive, and

SuperDrive again costs $1,299 at The Apple Store. It's still the lowest price we've seen for

a G5 system. Shipping is free, although sales tax is added where applicable. A one-year

Apple warranty applies.