Upgrading computer

[karenoliver]

Thanks Keith. Lots to think about and the apple imac is a consideration. I know they are supposed to provide better graphics etc.. At the moment this computer is doing alright except for the router issues so it will be after Christmas anyway now before I think about the upgrade.

Thanks for your help :-)

Karen

[AndyStevens]

Something else to consider Karen... I've been doing some tests with clients. They are all using Mac Pros with file sizes up to 8Gb (yes, that's not a typo - video and multi-layer PSD's with Hasselblad/Leaf images). They upped the RAM to 12GB in one machine and saw no real difference. Upped RAM to 32Gb in another - again, no real improvement. Adding a second drive to be used as a scratch disk - the files now process much quicker. This is using the new Solid State Mac drives but they've tested with 7200rpm 2nd drives too and this scratch disk made a much bigger improvement than loads of RAM.

And iMacs are great - just be wary of the inconsistent screen quailty that seems to be out there at the moment - some odd colour casts across the screen that are nothing to do with the images displayed.

Cheers
Andy

[karenoliver]

To be able to work with Hasselblad images would be a dream :-) I know there is an option in PS for a scratch disk but I've never really looked into it. I know what you mean about the mac having colour casts, as I had to use them in college and a few people had that issue or with overbright images.

8Gb file size must be very scary! :-)

Karen

[Eyeayen]

The mac problem was limited to the smaller screen version the bigger one was okay, from what I've heard...

[J A Mortram]

Karen, our PC blew up the other day and I was looking at set up's like this...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-Quad-Core-...10714999321797

...and add 4gb and a 1tb external and maybe a better graphics card... and eat noodles for a couple of months to pay for it!

[pburness]

Originally Posted by J A Mortram

Karen, our PC blew up the other day and I was looking at set up's like this...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-Quad-Core-...10714999321797

...and add 4gb and a 1tb external and maybe a better graphics card... and eat noodles for a couple of months to pay for it!

Beware of adding external drives - particularly USB - they are not particularly quick, and if you are working on images from them then it can give intermittent 'jerky or delayed' feedback to adjustments (ESPECIALLY with Lightroom). OK for backups / archiving though.

Phil

[pburness]

Originally Posted by pburness

Beware of adding external drives - particularly USB - they are not particularly quick, and if you are working on images from them then it can give intermittent 'jerky or delayed' feedback to adjustments (ESPECIALLY with Lightroom). OK for backups / archiving though.

Phil

One other thing - just looked at the specs - it has an 'on-board' graphics chip. This means the RAM you think you have is shared (so a 4GB ram machine, with 1GB dedicated to graphics = 3GB available to Win 7 and applications)

Better to upgrade the graphics adapter to a ATI Radeon Sapphire 1GB (about £40) if you buy one, relatively cheap and plenty good enough for static graphic work.

Phil

[J A Mortram]

Thanks Phil... I'm way out of my comfort zone with choosing PC's... The external was just for archives... and I was going to add a Nvidia graphics card to aid with the RAM issue... asides from that... is it good for the price?...

We use the PC for SO much... music production, photography... just found out the monitor is dead (I think) too so have to hunt for one of those as well... bu**er!

[MattUK]

There's no point in getting an expensive graphics card with lots of RAM - they're specifically designed for 3D gaming, and will make little to no difference for 2D desktop work. Any old ATI or nVidia will do the job as long as you're not looking for a games machine.

As for storage: http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=135

These are awesome. Two drives that automatically mirror, low power consumption. It just appears as a single network drive that you work from, and everything it automatically replicated across the two drives by RAID. It's also always on, so you can use any device to read from it - tablet, phone, laptop, desktop etc.

As for your question - is it any good? The answer is: It's ok. It's got a lot of fancy phrases in the name, but at the end of the day it's a fairly low budget pre-built system, and it's AMD - which has slipped behind Intel (unfortunately).

[Markulous]

Just a quick one on your router probs: worth replacing the filter on the phone socket as that could easily be causing the grief, especially as there's a dofference between up/downstairs