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Graphics Design PC...

-zax-

-zax-

2[H]4U
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Jul 21, 2004
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2,197
Ok.. not sure if this is the correct section.. but here it goes...

My sister is a graphics design major... and wants to get a new PC. She will be using this PC solely for graphics design. (Photoshop, Indesign, Pagemaker, Illustrator... etc) But wants it to perform in the Adobe products like a Mac Dual G5.

Going with nothing but AMD on this. Not sure if I should go Opteron or Athlon64. Budget is negotiable... but want it to be no more than a Mac Dual G5. Probably will throw 2 - 4 gigs of ram into it as well.

What would be the best system for this kind of demand?

Keep in mind this is not a gaming rig. I want the performance where it counts... The Adobe Suite.. and possibly other graphics design software like Quark Xpress... maybe even some Maya or 3dStudioMax....
 
Good lord, u really r going all the way if you want an Opteron. As far as graphics go, u are definitly going to need a GOOD graphics accelerater to run 3Ds Max. Go with dual Opterons.
 
The big question is... will dual opterons give me much more of a performance advantage over a single? Or even over an AthlonXP?

Not coming out of my wallet either :D
 
Some software allows u to split the procssing power between the two chips and since dual cores are coming out, new software will have to be optamized for it.
 
OOhh.. duh.. I forgot alllll about dual core. I might just wait till that hits too.

I also believe the Adobe CS was programmed with hyperthreading/dual processors in mind as well. Not completely positive on this.. but if it were would be a big help.
 
I beleive that it is optomized for HT. As far as as new machine goes, tell the buyer that its going to cost a nice 2-3K for a good system.
 
She's pretty aware of the price as she was eyeing out a Mac Dual G5 with loads of ram, and a 23" apple cinema display :rolleyes:

As far as hard drives go.. I'll probably go with raid 1 or 10... the only thing I dont like with raid 1 is the write time which doesn't exactly play well when working with 250+ MB images. So I'd like to go raid 10 for the fact that she would get data integrity as well as speed. Also might do a raid 0 primary with a raid 1 backup . Who knows.. Haven't gotten that far yet.
 
Alot of the top end CPu's are plenty powerful. Sure dually is great! Spend Ye kaasch on as much ram as possible and the fastest HD's you can get combined with a real good VC.
Oh and some H20 cooling to keep things silent, who knows if your lucky she just might let you frag on her box :D
 
She has used my PC with adobe photoshop CS a little bit...

AMD Athlon64 3200+, Swiftec MCX6400-V, ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
1GB (2 x 512MB) Corsair XMS Matched PC3200XL Pro DDR (2-2-2-5)
BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC
Promise FastTrak SX4000 Raid Controller w/256MB Ram Buffer
2x Western Digital Raptor 740s raid 0, 2x Western Digital 200GB SEs raid 1
LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-812S, LITE-ON LTR-52327S

She said that she feels that the mac is still a bit quicker when it comes to working with her graphics design software. Being a 3200+ with 1MB L2... I figured a FX-55 or something like that would be quicker but not considerably as far as graphics design. Maybe I'm wrong.. who knows. I was thinking that a dual processor PC or even dual core would fill the void where she thought performance was lacking.

If she were to do any CAD based stuff in 3dStudioMax or similar programs.. I doubt that it would be even 1% of what she does with graphics design. Over 99% of it would reside in Adobe products, so I don't feel that a massive CAD card would be necessary.
 
I beleive that the Opteron will crush that Mac, if u overclock it, good lord that thing will fly.
 
I just had a similar issue with my son. Go here for some PC vs Mac input:Dumb Ass Dad He needed a laptop that would do Adobe cs, cad and the like.
Got him the HP 7000 series, 3.2 cpu, 1 gig ram and the rest. He wanted a Mac system
but this thing is fast, as fast as any thing that mac has when runnin the software. The problem comes in when it becomes time to render the image. That's where you can't have enough Ram or fast HD's. I'm not sure a g5 would be faster then even your setup if it had the max amount of ram it could handle...be a neat test though!!!
 
OPUS1 said:
The problem comes in when it becomes time to render the image. That's where you can't have enough Ram or fast HD's. I'm not sure a g5 would be faster then even your setup if it had the max amount of ram it could handle...be a neat test though!!!
Click to expand...

So true . . . One of my co-workers renders animations on his G5. I let him use 4 of my old Proliant Quad 500MHz Xeons with SCSI RAID drives to render. The quad Xeon 500's render almost exactly the same number of frames as his single processor Mac G5. So, for every quad 500 I put on (4 so far) it's just like adding one more single G5 to the rendering process.

As far as Adobe is concerned, I think the Intel processors are just a little faster than AMD's. I run a FX-55 at home and a 2.8 Northwood Intel at work. The Intel is faster at loading Acrobat 6 (bloat) for sure in IE but not so if you load it straight into Acrobat not using IE. The rest of the software like Photoshop I don't notice much difference between the two.
 
So.. dual opterons, 4 gigs of ram or more, and a nice raid 0 array would do the trick eh?
 
But make them HD's 10000 rpm or more

send me the kaasch and I'll build it for you :D
 
Wonder if it would be worth the price jump to run 15k SCSI drives... over 74Gig Raptors....
 
l337zax said:
Wonder if it would be worth the price jump to run 15k SCSI drives... over 74Gig Raptors....
Click to expand...
Probably not. 15K RPM drives are VERY expensive.

l337zax, You'll want a good 2GB, if not more, of memory and the dual processor idea is spot-on. If she's rendering some stuff and wants to go do something else the system will not get sluggish. clockworks' list is pretty good although I question the need for dual DVD burners and disagree with his taste in case style -- ask your sister and see what she likes though! I would also lean towards an NVIDIA-based (as opposed to VIA) motherboard if you can find any.

It's probably a bad idea to put more than 3GB of memory in there, btw. 32-bit Windows XP doesn't handle that very well from what I hear.
 
l337zax said:
Wonder if it would be worth the price jump to run 15k SCSI drives... over 74Gig Raptors....
Click to expand...

I'd probably go with some SATA II/NCQ over SCSI - simply a cost issue and also because you get the new SATA II RAID controllers in the new boards. Also, to do this and get full benefit, you won't want to put your controller in a regular PCI slot, but either a PCI-X board or the newer PCI Express boards. I have 2 18.2 15K SCSI Ultra160's hooked to an Adaptec 29160N in my Neo2 Platinum along with my IDE drive and boot 4 operating systems. I run servers so had them sitting on the shelf. They do make my system run real sweet.
 
rolo said:
Probably not. 15K RPM drives are VERY expensive.

l337zax, You'll want a good 2GB, if not more, of memory and the dual processor idea is spot-on. If she's rendering some stuff and wants to go do something else the system will not get sluggish. clockworks' list is pretty good although I question the need for dual DVD burners and disagree with his taste in case style -- ask your sister and see what she likes though! I would also lean towards an NVIDIA-based (as opposed to VIA) motherboard if you can find any.

It's probably a bad idea to put more than 3GB of memory in there, btw. 32-bit Windows XP doesn't handle that very well from what I hear.
Click to expand...


I beleive that having two dvd burners are a great idea because if one fails u have another for backup (in case u really need it) plus they are only 60 bucks more, its not going to dinge his budget. As far as the case goes, I have a Thermaltake Tsunami and its an amazing case, I heard that this was the step up from the Tsunami so that's y I suggested the given case.
 
Though I'm also a graphics design major, I have absolutely no problem using my gaming rig (see sig). Good luck, and I'd love to see her stuff =0)
 
Thx all for the replies.

Gonna do a little pricing around...

Will probably do a storage solution somewhat simiar to mine.

Run dual raptor 740s raid 0 for access time and write speeds for primary rendering and image work. And then run a raid 1 array of possible hitachi 400GB drives for backup purposes and data redundancy.

As far as CPU goes... I think I will probably go dual opteron or if she decides to buy it later, possibly dual core when it comes out.

Ram... I think a minimum of 2 gigs of PC3200 ECC Registered DDR. Would probably go 3-4 Gigs.

Case.. not sure. I'd like to go H20 cooling for PC silence, but then again, she's not a PC guru, and will probably never check water levels or anything on that order. :rolleyes:

Video.. I cant really see putting anything more than an X800Pro or a 6800GT in it when she primarily works with photoshop, indesign, illustrator, and acrobat. She can live with a little big of rendering lag in 3dStudioMax for how little she uses it.

Not sure.. but might throw on a big-ol apple cinema display since she likes em so much.

Not sure about the power supply, maybe a PC&P 510 Deluxe or maybe an Antec Neopower. Want something rock solid for this.
 
Buy a Dual-CPU G5 mac. They're the best when it comes to graphical editing, simple as that :)

I'd swap my computer for a G5 and day of the week, especially if i did graphical editing.
 
FunkStar said:
Buy a Dual-CPU G5 mac. They're the best when it comes to graphical editing, simple as that :)
Click to expand...

Thats what she wanted to do first. But then she didn't like the thought that I wouldn't work on it if something busted. I do not like Macs and their OS... don't like the feel of it and I will NOT work on them. So thats why she thinks PC now. :rolleyes:
 
l337zax said:
But then she didn't like the thought that I wouldn't work on it if something busted.
Click to expand...

.......Its a G5, they don't break :p. Even if they do, G5's have mega tech-support. For what shes doing, trust me, its a far better option than a PC. I don't even own a mac, but have used them quite alot and i know from experience that the G5 is a friggin beast compared to anything else. Also, Apple make a watercooled version of the G5 :)

But if your absolutely, 100% set on a PC then the one you've outlined it a very nice system for doing what you need it to. For the PSU i'd go with PCP&C too btw.
 
l337zax said:
Thats what she wanted to do first. But then she didn't like the thought that I wouldn't work on it if something busted. I do not like Macs and their OS... don't like the feel of it and I will NOT work on them. So thats why she thinks PC now. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Stick to your guns man :D
 
I think you're going overboard on your system there. Having 2 gigs of ram would be more than enough for the programs she is using. Now if she was doing animations and what not where you are rendering thousands and thousands of frames then I could see getting 4 gig. But for what your sister wants to do, the ram is not going to play that much of a role. 1gig of ram is plenty honestly unless she has tons of money to play with.

As a graphics design professional myself (4year degree from Purdue University acquired) I'd rather have the latest Pentium 4 for the HyperThreading capabilities over an AMD, because rarely do I have just one program that I'm working with. I have Photoshop open, plus Illustrator, and Email, plus mp3's playing.. etc... I'd spend most of the money on a real nice monitor as that is the single most important thing for a graphic artist. So like a 20"+ LCD would be perfect. CRT's technically would be better but they are a pain on the eyes so I'd much rather work on an LCD

So anyways, I'd just be a little more realistic with the specs on the computer. Unless of course your sister is loaded with the money then hey do whatever. But, realistically speaking 4 gig of ram is extreme for graphics design.

  • CPU: P4 3.4gig+
  • Ram: 1gig (minimum), 2gig (plenty), 4gig (extreme probably won't use it to it's full potential)
  • Video Card: Excellent at 2d and if she's doing 3d it needs to be able to handle that also.
  • Hard Drive: Raid is probably overkill if you have plenty of ram to work with. But a Raid-0 SATA would be acceptable, SCSI is overkill and wouldn't be a good investment given what she would be using it for)
  • Monitor: LCD 20"+ (CRT technically better but tough on the eyes so I don't recommend that)

Getting a PCP&C is ideal but pretty costly too. If she has a budget I think something like an Antec NeoPower would be just fine. I feel that it's important for her to get what will make her happy and get the job done without spending all her money on unneccessary quantities of items.

Apple computers do handle certain graphic design situations better then PC's but I don't know by how much. I know Apple's are typically associated with design. I've never used one though personally.
 
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