Eric Athroll Posted March 30, 2004 Report Share Posted March 30, 2004 HiI am about to replace my PC and can have any specification I wish but do not want to waste money on non essentials. My current PC (Pentium III, 800 MHz) is proving too slow to cope with encoding and burning DVDs.My interests are confined to digital photography using Photoshop and recently, creating PTE shows to burn to DVD for my family. I am not into games and the like, nor video editing.I am thinking that I need a fast processor with plenty of RAM and fast HDD access but no state of the art graphics card or sound.Any suggestions as to what main hardware items might be worth considering would be helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted March 30, 2004 Report Share Posted March 30, 2004 Hi, Eric,I just upgraded to a new pc and would highly recommend the following as a minimum, especially if you are considering the "clone" route, with customized hardware and software (I'm sure those more technically up to date than I will have other suggestions) :- ASUS P4P800 motherboard, equipped for "fire-wire" port. I didn't go for the firewire port as I have one in my laptop.- Intel P4 processor, 2.8 GHz (going any higher than this is a waste of money as the small increase in real processing capability per dollar is not worth it).- video card with two VGA output ports- two monitors, at least 19" (if you haven't two already, you will wonder how you ever worked in Photoshop without them!). Win XP is set up to handle a dual-monitor arrangement. Don't know about Win 2000.- 120 Ghz hard drive. If you can, go for a "SATA" drive with "RAID" capability - they are very fast.- 1 Gb of fast RAM. One of the biggest causes of systems crashing and/or slowing down is insufficient RAM.- Win XP (or Win 2000) - some programs now require either one or the other.The ASUS motherboard comes with a fairly good sound module on board, as well as an ethernet connection and lots of USB ports.Good luck! You will be surprised how little all of this costs nowdays, compared to a couple of years ago! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Athroll Posted April 1, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 1, 2004 Hi AlThanks for the advice. I had already thought in terms of a Pentium IV 3.0GHz, 800 fsb, 1 GB DDR RAM (might go to 2 GB). and Windows XP.I am cosidering two HDD, but not RAID; I prefer to have a second large HDD that I can partition as needs dictate, but don't know how much advatage in real terms the Serial ATA might have. I believe they are faster (150 Mb/sec over the 133 Mbs/sec of IED) and there may be advatages in having two HDDs from two SATA ports instead of being "daisy chained" from one IED port as a master and slave.I don't have the room for two monitors, unfortunately, but have never had any problem using Photoshop with just one. I don't manipulate my images that much (I am a traditional photographer with traditional tastes) and usually work without any palettes on the screen and can quickly bring up those I need (which I dock) or by using the workspace facility under "Window".I don't use a firewire port as all my current hardware is USB 1.1 and I'm not intending to change any of that but I shall have the facility, though, in case my needs change in the future.I shall have to give serious thought to the HDD setup, I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted April 1, 2004 Report Share Posted April 1, 2004 Eric,Sounds like you've got everything under control! Best of luck! You'll find your PTE shows run "like stink"! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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