Which configuration would you recommend

E

extremefire

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Feb 22, 2005
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The title basicly says it all.

Building a new rig for work and not sure which would better suit me, the total for either configuration is within $20 of each other.

Athlon X2 3800+
4GB ram

or

Athlon X2 4400+
2GB ram

I work at a sign shop and we are getting fairly heavy into vehicle wraps where the files easily cross into the 250MB plus mark in Photoshop. I know right now I peg out my 1GB ram so easily right now so just having 2GB will be an improvement. I often have Photoshop, Illustrator, AutoCAD, and the usual other office apps running at the same time. For reference I am presently running dual XP 2400+'s on a GA-7A8DW+.

I am also considering running XP64 on the new computer as well.
 
I would go for the

Athlon X2 3800+
4GB ram

You can never have too much ram when doing larger photoshop works. The extra processor speed won't help you that much especially if you don't frequently run lots of filters but the extra ram will prevent the slow swapping of image data to the hdd.
 
most definately run xp64 if you are going to go with the 4gb RAM configuration.

4gb RAM plus a page file... you will want xp64 to be able to properly address that much memory space.
 
X2 3800+ and 4 GB. I've always found that more RAM helps more than a little faster CPU in Photoshop and CAD.
 
extremefire said:
The title basicly says it all.

Building a new rig for work and not sure which would better suit me, the total for either configuration is within $20 of each other.

Athlon X2 3800+
4GB ram

or

Athlon X2 4400+
2GB ram

I work at a sign shop and we are getting fairly heavy into vehicle wraps where the files easily cross into the 250MB plus mark in Photoshop. I know right now I peg out my 1GB ram so easily right now so just having 2GB will be an improvement. I often have Photoshop, Illustrator, AutoCAD, and the usual other office apps running at the same time. For reference I am presently running dual XP 2400+'s on a GA-7A8DW+.

I am also considering running XP64 on the new computer as well.
Click to expand...


Assuming you have a motherboard that will not give you a problem running 4gb ram (read the finer details on some... it's a possibility) I'd go for the 4gb ram / x2 3800+ option

What problems running 4gig you ask?

1) 4 Sticks of ram sometimes don't run at full speed
2) 4 GB ram is sometimes not properly identified by bios, and shows signifigantly less than 4gb as total ram.

This all depends on the hardware you've got. - Yes, I know the memory controller is inside the cpu itself, but that does not change the fact that there are some funky things happening when you get to that high of a number.

You don't say what motherboard you are looking towards, I would read said motherboard manufacturers website-support-forums (and google some others yourself) to find out if there are any known issues with 4 sticks of memory or 4 gigs of memory, even in spite of the fact that the cpu is supposed to handle the issue completely.
 
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