A good image editing computer would be...

Sorry for the misleading title, this isn't a APPLE or AMD/INTEL flame thread.

I currently have the system in the sig (4400+ X2, A8n32-SLi-Deluxe mobo 939, 2gb ram, raptor, etc) and I am feeling the limits of it's photo processing power. Whenever I batch convert with Bibble, it's slow like molasses. Photoshop is also slow, but it is only CS2. I'm guessing all that converting is CPU loaded, so my CPU is being the neck of the bottle here.

I did some quick research and number crunching, I can sell my CPU, Mobo, and ram for around ~$300. $80 for mobo, $100 for ram, and hopefully somewhere around $100 for my CPU + Zalman CNPS9500 HSF. I also put in a 8600gt to power 3840x2400, which inturn will put me to sell my 8800GTS 640mb on ebay for ~250, I'm hoping (anyone here interested in a well taken care of, non abused video card??).

So, My question is: with that kind of budget ($300), what do you recommend I get for a mobo + cpu & hsf + ram?

I mainly do processing with Bibble, Bridge/Lightroom (still trying to pick), Silkypix for conversion, and photoshop for editing and archiving, and I want to be able to do it faster than my 2.60 ghz amd and more efficiently. I am willing to consider AMD or Intel, or Mac(?), although the ladder would be more than just a $300 difference.

Please note that I am a student and will be willing to swing upwards of about $50-$100 if you offer is out of the price range. So my max budget is $400 for a mobo, ram, and cpu + hs. Any good suggestions anyone?

Thanks in advance.

Core 2 Duo, whatever mobo will support 4GB of RAM or more, and 4GB of RAM or more.

Easily doable with a $300 budget these days. The C2D will be more powerful than the processor you have right now, and the RAM is always more important for photo/image editing than CPU power by and large. Sure you can have a lot of horsepower under the hood (CPU), but without enough RAM to actually make use of it (the transmission, so to speak), you can't use it. Sorta. Kinda.

So you're referring to the x64 arch then? Any specific proc + mobo recommendations? I'm not trying to be lazy...but nothing beats hands down advice.

You have a budget so that puts considerable constraints on what you're going to be able to do. I don't like to recommend specific mobos/processors anymore, or even RAM. Stuff tends to work these days so I just say find something that you're happy with (based on advice you might get from forums like this or friends that you know personally that can help), and have fun with it.

But RAM is the key for image editing because when they're in RAM they take up a big chunk of that: the more the merrier.

64 bit is fine these days. Ignore the ignorant folks that say otherwise. At some point Photoshop and most of the other big-name big stuff image editing software will come out with a proper 64 bit edition - why stay behind the curve and try to catch up after the fact if you can simply build a system that is ready when that software appears?

Would Photoshop or silkypix, bibble or other CPU intensive software benefit from quad cores? Or is quad cores only appeal is gaming?

Either Duo or quad, I'm assuming I want one with a big cache?

If you're asking me to recommend a quad, I'd do it just because I think it's a better purchase, period. I think having 4 cores will benefit a user in ways that aren't just gaming, and aren't just application specific - with 4 cores you'll have a machine that simply works better because the OS is properly multithreaded and things will just run smoother overall, period.

I believe Photoshop is considered to be properly multithreaded and will make use of all the available cores it can. There are some benchmarks at *cough*Tom's Hardware*cough* that specifically show a Photoshop test between an E6600 Core 2 Duo and a Q6600 Core 2 Quad - the Quad smacks down the Duo on that test because of the additional two cores and getting a huge boost in the performance of running the filter used in the test. The comparisons across 2 cores vs 4 cores almost always without fail show the 4 win out in the long run.

If I were building a machine today and I could afford it, I'd have a Q6600 over any other processor on the market right now save for the best possible quad I could buy if money wasn't the limiting factor. But for the price to the performance, I'd take the Q6600 over anything else out there.

YMMV, however. Just don't use gaming or gaming benchmarks as a proper tool or source of info to judge a processor on. Games are a test of many aspects of hardware, not just the CPU and RAM, but everything involved. Too bad there really is no respectable all around hardware test these days that can be used to judge overall performance. The benches tend to be comparing specific applications to each other on different hardware platforms, but definitely don't use a gaming benchmark as the one single way to say "yes this is better than that because this game proves it." That's just silly.

For photo work, image editing, etc, a Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM will make all the difference in the world. A quad? Even better...

There is nothing about your current hardware that would make it too slow for image editing, unless you work on gargantuan images, or spend all your day applying gaussian blurs.

As for batch converting, it's surprisingly often limited by hard drive throughput.

I tend to agree with Black Morty and the others also. If you are working with images under 5 to 10MB in size you should be okay with your processor. I think your bottleneck just might be disk speed and ram. I work with massive images over 2GB in size so yes the box in my sig is great for that but would be extreme overkill for most. Regardless a newer core 2 duo or quad would be great but to go that route you just about need an entire new system. One thing I did that helped greatly with Photoshop was to go the route of a software driver based Ramdrive - (don't knock it till you see how it really works) from qSoft I have 16GB of ram in the box but 12 of it looks to the operating system like a 12GB hard drive that happens to be incredibly fast. I have the Photoshop scratch disk pointed at that drive first. Aside from that though - a new Intel dual or quad core processor can and will also make a big difference as well as going to a faster hard drive scenario. I guess with your budget I'd say you need to determine what is truly the bottleneck in what you are doing and look at what you can do to improve speed starting there.

Tagging on to what was just said above, I've built boxes for some service bureaus before (photo editing/processing services) and used RAMdisks for the purposes of Photoshop scratchdisks. Believe me, if you think having a ton of RAM automagically makes Photoshop fast, you're way off base. But, if you know that having a ton of RAM configured correctly with a RAMdisk can help, then you're actually getting somewhere.

I had a machine last year with 8GB of RAM in it and I told the owner to tack on the cost of a RAMdisk utility from SuperSpeed.com and he refused thinking the 8GB would be more than adequate. A few weeks after I completed my work for him he called and said he was disappointed in the performance and "thought it should be faster." I ran out, took my trusty Acronis True Image CD with me, made a backup of his entire system drive to an image file on an external 500GB drive, installed a trial edition of SuperSpeed's RAMDiskPlus software, reconfigured it for 2GB of working RAM for the system and a 6GB RAMdisk, then reconfigured his Photoshop CS3 so it was using that 6GB RAMdisk as the scratchdisk. Operations completed much faster, and even huge multi-hundred megabyte images literally snapped onscreen to his great joy.

Boy was he flat out speechless, and within 60 seconds he was handing me the corporate credit card to order the full retail license for 3 machines, all configured the same. He could have saved himself the time and trouble if he'd just listened to me in the first place.

Worked out nicely since he's happy, I made another $450 for my time, SuperSpeed sold more software, and now this guy is humming right along.

You might think having gobs of RAM in a machine will make it fast, and with Vista (gotta mention it), it will help considerably, but in the long run there is nothing that can top the performance of a properly configured machine with gobs of RAM and a RAMdisk set up and being utilized the correct way depending on the usage of the machine itself.

Highly recommended, regardless of the amount of RAM.

Black Morty Rackham said:

There is nothing about your current hardware that would make it too slow for image editing, unless you work on gargantuan images, or spend all your day applying gaussian blurs.

As for batch converting, it's surprisingly often limited by hard drive throughput.

Click to expand...

He's right on. I did a double check myself to see if you were talking about video editing. If you're on a budget, there are probably other things you could spend the money on that will be more rewarding (I know not really in the [H] spirit). As it is, format and do a fresh install of windows for the performance you're looking for.

Also, if you can, upgrade to PS CS3. It's got a smaller memory footprint and the startup time has been greatly reduced.

One note about Photoshop and multiple cores. It will only be multi-threaded when applying and working with filters. Image editing is single thread only.

Ive modified my system as its quoted in my sig. I should have everything up and running tomorrow and I hope to see a big difference.

Going from

1. P5N-E SLI to a GA-P35-DS4
2. Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit to Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit
3. Two 8600 GTS's in SLI to a Single 8600 GTS

Sean said:

Ive modified my system as its quoted in my sig. I should have everything up and running tomorrow and I hope to see a big difference.

Going from

1. P5N-E SLI to a GA-P35-DS4
2. Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit to Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit
3. Two 8600 GTS's in SLI to a Single 8600 GTS

Click to expand...

Needs more RAM hehehe Just kidding. But it can't hurt, right? I'm sure the new box will run circles around the old one... have fun with it.

Thanks everyone for the prompt and thorough replies.

I, however, wish I was dealing with images that are 5-10 mbs in size. The raw files on my Fuji S5 are ~25 mbs in size. I understand that "image editing" is single threaded, but what if I'm batch convering ~4 gigs of 25mb raw files to 80~100mb TIFFs a day, would I see a great increase in speed and efficency? My work in the field is portraiture and wedding/event photography. I spend most of my day in the school when I'm not in the field. If there's anything to gain from a cpu-mobo-ram upgrade, then I think it's well worth it for me. Especially if it doesn't break the bank. i.e. ~$400 or less.

I will take a look at the RAMdisk when I get back to my room tonight. I'm almost finished here with a shoot.

bbz_Ghost said:

Needs more RAM hehehe Just kidding. But it can't hurt, right? I'm sure the new box will run circles around the old one... have fun with it.

Click to expand...

Except that 8GB of RAM makes NO difference with the speed of Photoshop vs. 4GB! (Unless you are using some for scratching). There is a "review/post" on it some where, but I am too lazy to find it right now

ynih said:

Thanks everyone for the prompt and thorough replies.

I, however, wish I was dealing with images that are 5-10 mbs in size. The raw files on my Fuji S5 are ~25 mbs in size. I understand that "image editing" is single threaded, but what if I'm batch convering ~4 gigs of 25mb raw files to 80~100mb TIFFs a day, would I see a great increase in speed and efficency? My work in the field is portraiture and wedding/event photography. I spend most of my day in the school when I'm not in the field. If there's anything to gain from a cpu-mobo-ram upgrade, then I think it's well worth it for me. Especially if it doesn't break the bank. i.e. ~$400 or less.

I will take a look at the RAMdisk when I get back to my room tonight. I'm almost finished here with a shoot.

Click to expand...

What do you use for RAW processing? Most are multi-threaded. Quad Core is sexy cheap right now. Get it anyway.

Sean said:

What do you use for RAW processing? Most are multi-threaded. Quad Core is sexy cheap right now. Get it anyway.

Click to expand...

I am trying a variety of programs right now (The Fuji S5 is only a month old, I just sold my old D200 which was processed by Capture NX), and only 1 of them seem to make my life semi-livable. Silkypix. It's actually able to read the r-pixel info, and that's a necessity. As the groom is usually dressed in black and bride in white. It's a horrible combination, and ACR 4.1 is able to read the fuji raw files but can't fully read the Whole DR unless I do layer blending from same raw file (and 1500+ shots per wedding is a lot) to obtain the entire info from both s and r-photosites. Fuji's own hyper utility is the biggest waste of $100. The interface is slow as molasses and has only 1 stop highlight recovery. I can easily coax out 2+ in silkypix.

So is everyone here leaning towards quad? Quad q6600 is ~260 cheapest, and that is over half of my budget. I still need a board and 4 gigs of ram. Anywhere sell $40 mobo? I might have to wait for another 2~3 months, as I am still a very poor college student. *sigh*

Abit makes a decent board for $75ish, IP-35E, I'm running that + Q6600 + 2GB of memory. If you're making money from your photography, spend the extra $100 and get the right tools for the job.

I also want to upgrade since doing batches in CS3 takes awhile.
I have been using my HTPC to batch images (contact sheets, web gallery, image resize) since I can just start it and let it go and still use my main PC. I use UltraVNC to control it from the main machine.

I did a test with the radial blur set to 100 and best quality on an image and it took my machine 1m 4seconds while a quad core did it in 8 seconds.
I really want to upgrade my PC but I am building a motor for my car.

Wow this is an informative thread for me! Especially the RAM Drive info!

I'm in the process of putting together my first PC (yes, this should be interesting!) partly to be used for photo editing. I can see already the addition of a RAM drive sounds like a wise addition to my planned system. Below are the components I have for the build...

TT Kandalf LCS (liquid cooling system) case w/ optional 25cm side fan
Asus Maximus Formula SE MB
QX9650 Processor (Plan to OC to 4ghz)
4GB (4 x 1 GB) Dominator DDR2 PC8500 RAM (OC'ed to whatever I can reliably get out of it)
8800 Ultra GPU
150GB Raptor HDD for OS and programs
500GB SATA HDD for data storage
DVD/CD drives x 2
USB 2.0 card reader
850W PSU
Visa 64 Ultimate OS
*Add RAM drive. Configure to a 2 GB x 2 GB memory/drive system?

Please let me know if you guys see anything that might not be a good idea (or un optimized) for use with my CS3 and Capture NX software.

TIA!