roberto_leriquemo Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Many thanks to all who responded to my post of 9-29: pc vs. mac for photoshop cs. in thinking further on the subject, i am considering just upgrading my windows millenium to xp. cost is about $100 vs. approx. $800 to $1000 for new system with xp installed. in 3 1/2 years i have only filled 17 gb of my 40gb hard drive in the current system. system ram is 128 mb and processor is pent III 866 mghz. ALL OF this seems to work quite well for me so would an upgrade for $100 work just as well (no slower) or should i bite the proverbial bullet and spring for a new unit, would a notice a substantial difference in performance with ps cs and in overall operations? thanks in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mendel_leisk Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Windows XP runs fine on my PII with 256 ram, would be fine on yours. I'd suggest: Upgrade your hard drive to around 120~200gig. (You may also need IDE controller card to access, due to older mb not recognizing that big a drive. Those cards are around $30~60 Maxtor make one.). Upgrade your ram to 512. Keep the old hard drive in there, for back ups, or get another, newer drive for that purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joey Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 I would get a new computer (you don't need a monitor, it sounds like). You can get a new tower with 1 gig of ram, 2 GHz processor, DVD burner, massive hard drive AND Windows XP for $500-600 (again no monitor or other frills, but you should have that stuff already). 512 MB of RAM is really the bare minimum for Photoshop use... a gig is quite a bit nicer and not much more expensive. As for the processor, fast is nice, but if you don't have enough RAM to keep up with that processor speed, it will sit idle most of the time. I'd guess that with only 512MB of RAM, you won't notice a significant difference between processors faster than 1.5 GHz (that changes, of course, with more RAM). You might also think about adding a second hard drive to your computer, and partition it into two sections: one, for a Photoshop scratch disk, and the second for storing your files. Just an idea... Have fun! Don't forget to take some photos now and then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zapped Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Joey's advice is absolutely correct. I personally run Photoshop CS on my tired old office computers (PIII/800, 384MB RAM, 60GB HD) but the difference on my home machine (Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB RAM, 120+250GB HD) is like night & day. In addition to the idea of buying a bare-bones model, you could assemble an excellent machine for no more than $500 if you're willing to steal some of the parts from your old machine. If you can't use the old case & power supply, a new mini-tower & p.s. is only $50-75. Use your old floppy, CD reader, graphics card. Pick up a 2.4-2.8GHZ P4 or a 2400-2800 Athlon XP and an appropriate motherboard, 1GB DDR333-DDR400 RAM, a large HD, and a copy of WinXP Home, and you'll be a very happy camper. Later on get a DVD burner (< $75) for backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Roberto; you box just is a tad low on ram; for larger images. With 128megs; your bix will bog abit above about 20 to 30 meg file size images. One older 400Mhz box we use started life as a 64meg ram photoshop box; adding a 128meg stick bumped the ram to 192megs; and radically helped use with 20 to 30 meg images. Later we went to 256megs; the limit of this ancient box. This was 4 years ago. <BR><BR>Your box probably will hold somewhere around 768megs; our P3's here do; one goes to 1 gig. <BR><BR>With winMe; about 512megs is only what photoshop might use. Our win98se boxes show no improvements going from 512megs to 768; with photoshop. When Win2000 or Xp is used; photoshop does use above 512megs;; in our internal tests.<BR><BR>If there is no problems with our box; relax and do nothing. An upgrade to Xp might be a boondoggle; with no gain; but time loss. XP would allow usage of ram above 512megs by photoshop; but it would be easier to start with a new box.<BR><BR>With only 128megs of ram; XP probably would run slower; since more ram would be hogged; ie less for photoshop. BUT WinMe has no friends; so I would just add 256megs of ram; and avoid a possible XP driver hunt problem. If your cards are name brand; the xp driver hunt might be nothing; the OS will find them. If the cards are oddball OEM undocumented cards; the driver hunt can be longer; or sometimes a dead end. <BR><BR>I would add a bit more ram; than mess with an XP upgrade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Ram is very important in photoshop. What is declared as a "must have XXX megs of ram" is always a upwards moving target. When I first started with photostyler; alot of folks had only 1 or 2 megs of ram. I was Bob bitchen with 4 megs of ram. In a later box for Photoshop; I custom made my Pentium 90 for about 3 grand; with 17inch monitor. The monitor was 650 bucks; the 16megs of ram was 600. I bought photoshop 3.0 for about 600 later! My non photoshop friends said "you are crazy to get so much ram; 4 megs is all you will every need". <BR><BR>Divide you ram by 5; this is a crude first guess approximation of where photoshop starts to bog. Add a mess of layers; and you need more ram too. <BR><BR>Here I run alot more ram to CPU than alot of chaps.<BR><BR>The 90Mhz Pentium has 64megs; it will hold 128; but actually gets slower above 64 megs; due to an oddball caching ; way windows loads problem<BR><BR>The PentiumPro 200Mhz retouching boxes have 512megs ram. <BR><BR>One 333mhz P2 box has 1 gig of ram; the others have 512.<BR><BR>alot of my P3 boxes have 768 megs; low and high of 128 to 1 gig <BR><BR>The P4 box has 2.0 gigs; another has 1.0gig.<BR><BR>The several pure DOS boxes only have 32meg sticks. The dos program we use doesnt use above a meg or two of ram; by our tests. There are some dos programs that can use 64 megs; with some added hooks. ; by goofy controller buddy has some super weird programs that allow above 64megs; for his oddball stuff. Oddball P4 motherboards with 5 or 6 ISA slots; a couple of PCI too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward_h Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 An 866mhz box should be just fine to edit photos. What you need is a larger amount of ram (512mb minimum, I'd say). Now the thing here is this Windows problem. Spending 100$ for a piece of software that costs, at most, 1$ to press onto the CD media, sickens me to the stomach. This could perhaps be a good time to invest some time in getting a Linux box working. Linux has the Gimp, which is basically Photoshop for Linux. I use it daily to edit photos and haven't yet had any complaints from my customers. Try Knoppix (www.knoppix.org) since it doesn't need to be installed on the harddrive at first. Linux isn't as click-friendly as Windows, but I figure that it's so cheap and efficient that any user interface problems can be overlooked. Using Linux and Gimp saves you about 100$ + 1000$, which can then be invested in better hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manuel_garcia5 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 It's really up to you. My suggestion would be to add RAM, larger HD, and upgrade to XP, put that $500-$600 toward a good scanner (if you alrealy don't have one). Or just save the money for something else. I too have a PIII 800 running 384 Megs of ram and PS runs just fine (enough for me). I've never had any problems with slowness or long wait times while editing. Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manuel_garcia5 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Forgot to mention, that $500-$600 you'll spend will only buy you 2-5 seconds of faster load time compaired to your current PIII 800. Unless you never run disk clean or defrag your current systems then you'll see a huge jump in speed. However it will be a matter of time until the new systems starts to slow down too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_degroot Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 we upgraded a 1999 system with an amd 450 cpu ( really slow by todays standards) we found the MB would only accept 384 ram. and a 80 gig hard disk . we had already purchased a Maxtor 120g hd ant staples for $89.00 after a $30.00 rebate, Maxtor suggested a ultra ata/133 controller as the system could not SEE the drive. They said the Promise controller was the same card and had a 3 year warranty. they sent me to NEWEGG. the drive is a lot faster, win 98se and possibly ME may not be able to cope with a large partition It was finally partitioned as 3 - 40g partitions. EVEN with the newer fdisk for 98 and possibly ME. -------------- when it was 2-60g we could not scandisk or defrag . c:=60g was formatted as 25gig after fdisking at 60gig . all kinds of problems to expect. ( even with the promise(brand) ata 133 card) Not to sound like a guru, be i went thru it and was puzzled until i learned what to do. Maxtor was some help, but i had to figure a lot on my own. BTW maxtor is a decent brand to buy . try staples for a deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Using a new 80 gig hda's is what we use on older boxes; that use win98se. With our ancient 1996 200Mhz Pentium Pro's; the Maxtor max Blast install software fakes off the bios on ours; and allows the 80gig hda to work well. In this config; the motherboard's controller is a busmaster; before UDMA33. Here the 133UDMA HDA runs about a 12 megs/sec transfer; with the ancient controller the bottleneck. Some older boxes we added 133UDMA controllers; and they transfer at the media transfer rate of the HDA's' about 52 at the edge; 28 to 32 at the inner blocks. When I tried a Western Digital 80Gig 7200rpm drive; the WD software would not allow the drive to be formated above 8 gigs<BR><BR>In a 1999 vintage P3; you probably have a UDMA33 controller; or maybe a 66 class if lucky. We installed a 40gig 7200rpm Maxtor on a 400mhz celeron box; a p2 class udma33 mobo controller with no problems. Here the hda is slightly choked by the old controller abit; but still a decent useable box. <BR><BR>Since your box is a coppermine 866 Mhz P3; the L2 cache is a full speed of 866Mhz; the bus is 133mhz speed. This is a very usable CPU for photoshop work; here we have about 5 boxes in this class of unit. Ours are a UDMA66 controllers; which are decent with a typical UDMA133 class hda. Adding a dedicated controller adds little speed; only at the outer tracks/zones.<BR><BR>Your extra ram needs to be 133Mhz speed; or a real 133/100 module. <BR><BR> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 A UDMA66 controller should have a 80 wire cable; a UDMA33 controller only needs a 40 pin cable. A stock computer with a 80pin cable usually has a udma66 or higher controller inteface spec. Using a 80 pin cable on an older controller is ok. Using the old 40 pin cable on a udma66 or above controller is wrong; the controller will back down the transfer rate; for the poorer ; less shielded cable. <BR><BR> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Roberto; if your floppy cable looks like about the same as you hda cable; you have a 40 pin hard drive cable. If the HDA cable is about twice as fine in pitch of the wires; then you have a 80 pin cable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott_eaton Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 <I>Spending 100$ for a piece of software that costs, at most, 1$ to press onto the CD media, sickens me to the stomach. </i><P>I've paid $40,000 for a single CD containing UNIX licenses for corporate manufacturing systems - Any comments Mr. Marx? What I find more 'sickening' are armies of open source geeks living in their parents basement writing free code and essentially 'donating' it to equally greedy Microsoft competitors who then turn around and give the profits to their shareholders. Talk about ignorant. <P>GIMP blows - if it were actually worth anything, you'd be paying for it, which is what REAL developers get for their time and skills. The Windows port blows as well, and there's many >$100 software packages that work better than GIMP.<P>I'd also like to ask the guy how long it takes to load Photoshop on his P266? 5-minutes? When you have Photoshop open and you double click on My Computer, how long does it take to see your C-drive? How long does it take to load a capture card full of 6meg images on his P266? Three days? I've got dumb thin client stations with base NT 4 kernels that run at 600mhz.<P>128meg is absurdly low for Windows XP and digital imaging in general. XP is going to run like a drunk pig on a P3 considering we have no idea what type of machine it is, or if the surrounding hardware actually works well with XP. Some of the non Intel P3 chipsets I've encountered (VIA and SIS) have serious memory issues with XP and Win2K. The only P3 based systems I've found that work well with XP are exceptions like Dell Precisions running goofy RDRAM. Hey, it's your funeral though.<P>Get at least 512meg of RAM on that system at the least. 128meg isn't enough to run a screensaver on XP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott_eaton Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 Also, who cares what UDMA mode is running in a fossil like that? You can't sustain a read/write faster than 10-20meg on a P3 running XP anyways. Expect the same performance as my old 486 servers running EISA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodolfo_negrete Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 Roberto I honestly think that all you need to do is upgrade the system ASP and just buy some more ram.that all ram you got is very inexpensive you could do all your upgrades for less than 200dls then if you decide to upgrade to the latest you could still use your OS. having said that I know you could make your own machine for like 1200 dls vs 3000dls but whenver somthing goes wrong then is very stressful. You could aslo go to your nearest Costo and buy a E-machine for like 500dsl and anytime something goes wrong with it just returned no questions ask. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike dixon Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 About two years ago, I went from a 450MHz Pentium 3 clone with around 400MB of memory running Windows 98 to a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of memory running XP Home. The difference in performance of PhotoShop is like night and day. On the old system, I could go fix myself a sandwich and drink and finish half of it in the time it took to rotate a 50MB image file by a few degrees; on the new system, it takes less than two seconds. I guess the big question is how big are the files you have to deal with? I generally don't care about having the latest and greatest, but in your place, I'd bite the bullet and replace my system. A new Dell with 2.4 GHz P4 and 512 MB of RAM can be had for less than $650. If you want to build a box yourself and use your old monitor, it could be done for hundreds less than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew robertson Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 Scott, your ignorance is shining brighter than the sun right now. Explain why Apache, the #1 web server software in the ENTIRE WORLD can only be had for free? It's good enough for the majority of commercial we sites out there! Your attitude towards open source software is so delightfully medieval that I want to ask where your chain mail and battle axe are stowed! I would agree that the Gimp has a LONG way to go before it can compete with photoshop. But to suggest that all Free software sucks, otherwise it wouldn't be free, shows that you need to do some serious book learnin' and educate yourself on the matter. You might feel a little better to know that Microsoft lacked the knowledge and coders to implement TCP/IP into Windows, and had to include a Free TCP stack - the one from BSD. They still use a mass of Free software in the copy of Windows that you so happily bent over for. Why? Because it's designed to fulfill a purpose, not to cater to a created market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricM Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 4 meg of Ram? I remember those days too Kelly. I thought i was soooo cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stwrtertbsratbs5 Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 Hey, if it's expensive, it must be good! You can't get a good print from a film lab because the techs don't make a lot of money. Only a Leica can produce an acceptable photo. I see the attraction - this is a lot easier than thinking! Back on topic - you have another option. Dell Financial Services sells off-lease computers, with warranty, through their eBay store. I picked up a P3/600 from them a few years ago. I'll probably go that route again when I need to upgrade. You can save a lot of money if you will settle for two year old technology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ishik_tuna Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 get a dell go to fatwallet.com, forums, hot deals, search for Dell, you will find a fast machine with a large hard drive, and lots of memory for under $500.00 certainly, your computer will probably run faster (and be more stable) with xp, but you will notice a significant improvement in workflow if you increase the speed of your processor, and the amount of memory you have (memory is cheap). upgrading your operating system, adding memory, perhaps increasing your hard drive size..your half way towatrds a new computer anyhow.. you don't need to spend $1000 on a new computer..if you check out the site i listed, you should be able over the next month or so...to find a "special deal" on a dell for less than $500.00 another site to follow for computer deals is xpbargins.com hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vietnam photo Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 I paid $850.00 for an used Dell 530 workstation. Dual Xeon 2.2 GHz, 1 GByte ECC memory, and two 80 GB Ultra-100. This workstation costs $5K 4 years ago. Editing photos with PS CS on a dual fast CPU is a breeze because PS CS can take advantage of dual CPUs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 Here I have a zoo of computers ; which we understand. Alot of the battle is in configuring the first computer; for a retrofit. The second retrofit consumes little time at all. For somebody with just one old computer; you might waste too much time in an upgrade.<BR><BR> Just add some ram; and been done with any XP wishes.<BR><BR> Here our P2 and P3 units read/write at the full media transfer rates; when a modern PCI UDMA133 card was used; and modern drives. This is not for everybody; here I messed with several cards; and found one that my older boxes "likes"; and then bought 8 cards. Having worked in the disc drive industry for a decade or two; this is abit easier that the average joe's adventure.<BR><BR>In our buy a "new brand name P4" failure last year; our new 1000 dollar plus HP box with XP pro only had a read/write transfer rate of 5 megs/second; due to a bad on board controller. The famed new box had a read write rate slower than our Pentium Pros of circa 1996. After 1/2 year of fuzting; the motherboard was chucked; and a ASUS used to rebuild the box. <BR><BR>If all is well on a box; many times just adding ram is all one should do. An OS upgrade is a way less clean affair; than a straight install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 Photoshop 5.5; and 7.0 load up on our Win2000 200Mhz PentiumPros in less than 17 seconds; these boxes boot up ok; because they are dedicated boxes for scanning; have 512megs of ram; and ZERO crap programs loaded during start. Photoshop is located on the secondary HDA; that is on a modern UDMA133 controller; at the outer zones; with a higher transfer rate than the obsolete busmaster motherboard controller . These boxes will rotate a 90meg file 90 degrees in 9 seconds.<BR><BR>The boxe(s) mentioned above are for scanning; and connect to a scanner; with a 2.0 USB card; they scan just as quick as our 2.0ghz P4 boxes; with 2.0 gigs of ram; and a usb2.0 connection..<BR><BR>ALOT of the bog in an older box is the BS programs one adds; that hog resources.<BR><BR>If your "fonts" directory is bloaded with alot of fonts; the spool up time will be longer. <BR><BR>Sadly these older custom modified boxes spooled up Photoshop radically quicker than one of our XP pro p4 hp 2.5Ghz box; that took minutes to load photoshop; that had a bunk controller.<BR><BR> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markci Posted October 4, 2004 Share Posted October 4, 2004 <i>Spending 100$ for a piece of software that costs, at most, 1$ to press onto the CD media, sickens me to the stomach. </i> <p> Then we're to assume you charge no more than film and paper costs to your customers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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