Advice for building a PC for Still photography

[Joe]

I'm looking into building a PC for Still photography - Processing images
with PhotoMechanic & Photoshop CS2 - Both programs can address dual cores.

Answers to my previous post have cemented my switch to AMD - Here's my
planned purchase -

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD 4200 X2
Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card (dual head)
4gb PC3200 400MHZ CL2.5 DDR SDRAM

Some last minute worries-

I plan to get Win Media center - any reason not to over XP Pro ( does it
have the 5 PC limit of XP home)
I would love to set up a DVR (Tivo like) - Should I put it in m old PC with
Media center - and use XP Pro in my new machine?

I used to always want a mobo with multiple PCI slots -(NIC, SCSI, Video, i/o
Card etc.) theres just no reason for that concern anymore? Correct?

I need a large case - for multiple SATA Hard Drives in removeable enclosures

Thanks


Old Post -
My Needs -
medium speed Dual core Processor
Gigabit NIC
2 gb RAM would like to be able to go to 4gb - (can I go higher? would it
help?)
SATA Controller
Dual monitor (or triple if possible) Video card - I have no clue about this
Multiple USB 2.0
Firewire

Do you have any hardware recommendations?
- this was the barebone system I am looking at to start with.

Intel Pentium D 830 3.0GHzw/Asus P5WD2 Premium Barebone (DO you know a
comparable AMD chip & Motherboard)

 

[ian lincoln]

For 2d work matrox used to be the card company of choice. huge 3d game
rendering speeds are of no use to you. The dual head is easy enough most
have that.

I don't know the maximum amount of ram photoshop can successfully address.
I do know that the best way to improve speed on such a system is to have 3
drives. One for the main program and data, one for dedicated virtual memory
use and one for photoshops own 'scratch disk'. Though with 4 gigabytes it
may not be necessary. However i do know that most versions of windows do
use the virtual memory option regardless of there being spare capacity in
true ram. There were 3rd party utils that would solve this and i have seen
much discussion on overriding the settings of virtual memory from the
automatic setting. Also having 3 sets of read/write heads is faster than
simply partitioning a single large drive into 3 volumes. If you are going
this mad on hardware i would also suggest including professional colour
profiling of monitor scanner, graphics and printer. Even a humble sub $100
printer can be improved by this. You will also want custom profiles for
paper and inks. Continuous ink systems may be of interest as there are
minor variations between batches of paper and inks so buying ink by the pint
will save on constant recailibrations. Self calibration is simply buying a
screen spider installing the software and clicking calibrate.

As for the tivo option media centre is not particularly necessary. A
quality tuner card, decent house aerial and perhaps a digital receiver are
good options. Indoor aerials especially those supplied with the recivers
are insufficient. Bundled software will match that of standard windows
fare. There are probably recommended third party software programs to be
had.

 

[Zook]

Agree 100% w/Mr. Lincoln. Also check out
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html and loo
into a decent display and maybe a colorimeter.
BTW: Pshop will use multiple or dual core processors as well
Another good resource, daily free newsletter at timgrey.co

 

[Zook]

Oh, P.S
Regarding RAM: Windows XP will only see about 3GB max. Windows X
64bit will see probably more than your mobo can hold. Make sure a
your RAM matches
Apple's Mac will go to something like 8GB and works well with Psho
I'm told