Premium Desktop Publishing/Graphic Design system (PC)?

[mdlestat]

I have a small publishing company, and do a great deal of work on Adobe Indesign Photoshop, and Illustrator (the whole CS2 suite, really).

Right now, I use my laptop (Lenovo/IBM T-60p Centrino Duo T2500 w/2Gig DDR2 and ATI FireGL 5200) as my primary layout/design workstation. This, as you might expect, isn't exactly an ideal solution for the kind of work I'm having to do--

I need to invest in a robust dedicated publishing workstation that will allow me to do this kind of work fast and easily-- this means a LOT of memory, and optimized CPU and graphics hardware--I also need a professional-grade rig to show my clients I have the tools they expect people in my field to have-- .

Where do I start? I mean, I did a search on desktop publishing/workstation/DTP system, etc... here and Google, and get nothing.

I am not interested in going to the Mac platform. Yes, I know it's "ideal" in some respects, but everything else I use is PC and I need to stay consistent.

Is there a forum out there with this community in mind? Where can I learn about what's prevalent in this area of computing?

Should I look at multi-processor systems, Like Opteron or Xeon? Are they the best-suited for this, or is a single-CPUsolution better? My business ig growing, and I'm suffering by having to work so slowly on this current ill-suited computer.

I am a rabid AMD fan for my home PC needs, but have no bias in the workstation fight--needing the best irrespective of the brand--Intel or AMD.

Any direction is greatly appreciated!

 

[engiNURD]

Most powerful workstations will be dual cpu systems (opteron or xeon). While I think you could get away with a single CPU (dual-core, core2duo), it seems like you want a heavy duty system that wont give you any problems. I'd suggest goin with a dual Xeon (Woodcrest) setup with a Quadro card and 4GB of ram. If you want maximum stability, go with a Dell, so you can b*tch to them if something isn't working right (get gold support so you don't deal with bs and experience the least downtime). If you'd rather build it yourself, give us a budget and we can recommend some parts.

That laptop should be fast, but I'm guessing that mobile FireGL is holding you back? I'm not sure.

 

[mdlestat]

I'm not sure what the specific bottleneck is, but it's taking forever to do anything when I have Photoshop, ID, and the Bridge running at once. This is a good gfx card, but you can tell it's a mobile solution... I haven't gamed on it at all.

I love this laptop-- don't get me wrong-- but for this, it's definitely not meeting our needs. If I have to stop and wait 20 seconds for my explorer to call up a file for me to use, I'm interrupting my creative flow once a minute--meaning I'm only 2/3 as productive as I should be. (as an example--but you know what I mean)

When I have a hundred pages to create/layout in a one week timespan, I can't live with the sluggishness.

One thing that might be killing the speed that I forgot to mention is the 5200 RPM 80GB drive.

Either way, you are correct-- I want long-term performance and dependability. Is 4GB the most memory I can use? I thought the multi-processors could handle more than that...

Another facet of this that I could use some more advise on is the GPU solution. I had already looked at the various Quadro cards, but don't know how hot I should go on the Nvidia scale to ensure smooth operation with the programs I currently use (not to mention potention video creation/editing work in the future) without going way overkill. Price isn't a prohibiting factor so much, but I'm not one to piss away operating funds I am not going to see a real time/$ benefit from either, you know? If I should re-post this part in the G-card question, let me know

**EDIT-- I've read up on the graphics card question, and see that my software evidently isn't really all that graphics-card intensive-- it's mostly CPU-based calculation. Some people recommend going for a strong consumer-oriented card instead of the Quadro. I could then save the thousand dollars difference in price.

Thoughts?
Thanks for the help so far!

 

[engiNURD]

Heh, when I read your line about explorer taking forever to load up just so you could get a file, it hit me... I totally forgot about the hdd cuz on my most recent laptop, i replaced it with a 7200rpm model. That hdd must be your bottleneck, but i'm not sure how much of a bottleneck it is. I'd still suggest upgrading it, since it'll at least speed up pagefile access and general file access, hehe.

Yes, in fact my uncle uses high end gaming cards instead of professional grade cards. He's a contractor, so he likes to save money where he can. Also, the FireGL cards are actually the same hardware as their Radeon counterparts... they only differ by drivers.

While most workstation dual-cpu boards can handle more ram, windows xp pro can only utilize 4gb max. If you wan to run xp64 or server2k3, then yes, you can get more ram.

I'd also suggest either a raptor hdd or a raid array (sata or sas). Here's more info on raid: http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/raid/_education/RAID_level_compar_wp.htm