Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: ljenno on December 05, 2005, 05:10:02 pm
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When I process my raw files and save them in tiff format the files typically get very large. They can get to 150meg and up. If I want to do any size corrections or image tweaking to suit a special need my 3 year old HP comes to a stand still. I want to buy a new system and prefer a portable one but am not fixed on that choice. My outputs are usually sent to an Epson 4800 or a 2200 or a HP 5500. So most of my prints are very large in the square inch range also.
If this new machine were to be dedicated to just my photo work, do any of my forum friends have recommedations for internal specs (processor, bus speeds, memory, storage and graphics cards, ect)?
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A lot of memory is your friend.
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A lot of memory is your friend.
What he said.
1 GB minimum, aim for 2 GB or more. RAM is at its cheapest ever. Buy extra RAM rather than that extra 0.2 or 0.5 GHz of processor speed.
A dual-CPU (or dual-core CPU) setup will give some performance advantage over a single-CPU system, but most of the time, that extra RAM will be better.
Motherboard: get something that supports the CPU you want to buy and as high an amount of RAM as you can afford. Having a PCIe 16x-based board gives you good expansion options for the near future, a dual-16x board may be better, but it also may not (hard to say). Buy from a reliable manufacturer, such as Asus.
A graphics card with a decent amount of memory (128 MB or more) also helps, but 3D performance should be unimportant for now*.
As for hard disks, go for something nice and reliable.
If you can afford to, consider getting a device like the Gigabyte I-RAM (Google for it), fill it and your motherboard with RAM chips, and use the I-RAM for Photoshop scratch space and maybe system swap.
Or, if you have got that money, spend it on an Apple PowerMac G5 quad. >:->
* There is no evidence that Photoshop or other such applications will take advantage of the GPU on a graphics card for extra processing power any time soon. Apple's Aperture doesn't use it as such, but the user interface does.
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2 GB RAM; at least two very large, very fast hard drives; graphics card that supports dual monitors. Predictions are that DVD will become more significant for PCs when Microsoft's new OS becomes available so a R/W DVD drive would make sense.
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Hi Ljenno,
In terms of graphic card, many photoshop artists like the Matrox cards that appear to deliver the best 2D image quality, especially when working with more than one screen. Their 3D performance is however ridiculous compared to the latest models from NVidia and ATI. It all depends on the usage you will be making of your PC. It is a PS machine only, or will you also use it as a general usage PC?
The next generation of Windows called Vista to be released in 06 will propose more and more 3D interfaces, and a 2D only graphic card might not be the best bet considering this. It all depends how long you intend to keep this PC.
Today, it would appear that the pentium D series (the Pentium D820 for instance) offers the best bank for the buck thanks to its double core. The AMD CPUs are faster, but the high end models have become extremely expensive.
Regards,
Bernard
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Dual core shootout ...
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-63890...l?tag=cnetfd.wk (http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html?tag=cnetfd.wk)
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Video Card:
Adobe systems have stated several times that Photoshop does not utilize the video card. (search for the documents on tweaking PS for performance) The video card only matters in its ability to run the monitor resolution you need to run at a decent refresh rate (75Hz or more). Refresh rates do not apply to LCDs.
In terms of graphic card, many photoshop artists like the Matrox cards that appear to deliver the best 2D image quality, especially when working with more than one screen. Their 3D performance is however ridiculous compared to the latest models from NVidia and ATI. It all depends on the usage you will be making of your PC. It is a PS machine only, or will you also use it as a general usage PC?
The next generation of Windows called Vista to be released in 06 will propose more and more 3D interfaces, and a 2D only graphic card might not be the best bet considering this. It all depends how long you intend to keep this PC.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=52873\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The Matrox cards are beneficial over others only if you are using CRT monitors and the usefulness only really applies to the legibility of text onscreen. Matrox cards are know for producing the sharpest image possible for analog CRTs. If you are using LCDs this does not matter as the signal is digital.
One video card will not help you photoshop better over another video card.
Windows Vista will be mostly Vector based (mathematically rendered and not with bitmap images) and hardware accelerated if your system can handle it. Much like the Macs are today but more-so.
Buying a fast video card that is "Vista Ready" is only important if you a) later upgrade to Vista (which may or may not turnout to be a valuable thing to do) and b ) want to have the pretty interface special effects that Vista will be capable of.
If neither of these items matter to you than don't worry about the video card too much. Any of the old 128MB Nvidia or ATI cards will do you well and only cost you about $30. If you only use one display, many of the motherboards out there with built-in video will do the trick.
A fast video card is not a requirement for upgrading to Vista.
Ram:
Max out the ram. Buy Windows XP Professional as that allows for 3GB of Ram and Windows XP Home limits you to 2GB. XP Pro 64-bit will allow up to 16GB of ram but driver and software support for it is minimal meaning your experience could be rather problematic.
CPU:
Defiantly get dual-core system at a minimum. Honestly, PS is optimized to take advantage of multiple cores and it shows (YMMV of course). I have several clients with single-core 3.2Ghz P4s that are easily only 1/5th the overall performance of my Dual 2.3Ghz Mac (and that was before I upgraded it from 1.5GB of RAM to 3.5GB). It drives me nuts because I have to use the confounded things regularly.
It should be noted that a dual-core system won't always be faster than a single core system per-se. It all depends on the actions you're doing. It will make things run more smoothly overall and that is just as important. Sheer speed doesn't mean squat if the system comes to a halt if you try to browse a folder in Bridge while PS is batch processing in the background (just one example).
Dealing with large files, a dual-core system with as much ram as you can squeeze into it will make the difference between tapping your fingers waiting for crap to happen and getting things done. I would not recommend skimping on your computer, especially if you deal with large files. You'll only end up with a frustrating experience. A more powerful system may cost a bit more but it'll last you longer and make you happier.
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ljenno hasn't provided us with his processing software, but it's fair to assume pixel editing is being done in Photoshop.
Interestingly, I found in some PC/Imaging testing that I did midyear that Phase One's Capture One Pro (v3.7) is 100% processor intensive when converting raw files, right up until it rights the converted file to the hard drive. At this point in time (dec05) C1pro benfits from as much CPU as you can throw at it.
I have however read on the net that Phase One intend to release C1pro v4 in the first quarter of 2006 with a major system usage software re-write (e.g. C1pro will start to utilize additional system resources like RAM and scratch disk space).
DarkPenguin's link to the dual core shoot out is a step in the right direction, but just keep in mind the fact that all expenditure gets out of hand when performance increases become only slight.
Everything 61Dynamic has to say is on the money.
64bit XP is impressive (compare System #6 & System #11 in the attached Performance test PDF), but many applications are not yet supported. Most notibley, monitor calibration and profiling software. 64bit XP is hugely promising for existing highend hardware performance.
If you'd like to see what increases in RAM do for Photoshop usage, compare systems #1 (2gb RAM), #14 (1gb RAM) and #13 (512mb RAM) in the attached performance PDF. Systems #1, #14 and #13 are all based on Pentium 3.0gHz HT processors.
Das Bosun
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On of the reasons that the Matrox cards are favoured for graphic use is that some of their models have separate LUT's for each monitor.
This is a requirement in order to profile both monitors.
The nvidia and ATI cards generally only have a single LUT, which means that only one monitor can be profiled as the profile is "shared" between the monitors.
Andrew
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I'll pile on to the consensus that you should get as much RAM as you can afford. 2GB is certainly not excessive; if you ever want to do stitched panoramas, 8-16GB would not be wasted. I've run into memory shortage problems stitching 7 1Ds images together when they're 48-bit RGB (16-bit per channel) with 2GB, although that is sufficient for most single-capture image editing.
If you batch process, multiple or dual-core CPUs will provide significant benefit. RAW conversion in Photoshop, as well as many Photoshop filters, are designed to take advantage of multiple CPUs, and multiple processors go far to making your system snappier and more responsive even when under a heavy CPU load. You can browse the internet or read email with 95% CPU utilization and not even notice the difference.
Regarding the multi-LUT issue, I prefer to use a separate video card for each monitor. This guarantees that each monitor has its own LUT and can be individually profiled.
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I was playing around the other day and this is what I came up with - I priced at just under $2,000 CDN (before tax)
It's predicated on my presumption that the eventual successor to the 1DSII will be about 22 mpx, so with the occasional stitched pano, I would guess (any thoughts?) that even with 4 gig ram you'll still back into a scratch disk (I would also guess that the next version of PS will increase the limit on RAM up to 4 gig). In any event that's why I have the pair of WD SATA Raptors at Raid 0, I think that's probably the fastest scratch disk I could get.
I only have one monitor, so I'm assuming that the on board video would be sufficient (thoughts?) - I could always add a card later...
===============================================
Case: IN-WIN Z583T Micro ATX (Black) 20/24pins with True 350Watt Power Supply 14" high
Hard Drives: Western digital Raptor SATA 75gb x 2 raid 0 + seagate 160
Raid Controller: on MB?
CPU: Intel Pentium D 830, 3.0GHz, EM64T XD Dual Core, 2X1MB, Socket LGA775
Memory: 1GB (1024MB) PC4200 DDR2 533MHz 240-pin Unbuffered DIMM x4
Mother Board: Intel Desktop Board D945GTPLR Socket 775 Intel 945G Chipset Dual-Core CPU
Video: included on motherboard?
DVD RW: NEC ND-3550 (Black) 16x DVD+/-R 8x DVD+RW 6x DVD-RW Writer 4x DVD-R/8x DVD+R Double Layer
windows xp pro 64bit
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Tim, you should do some research on actual RAID 0 performance for a desktop PC. Every test report that I've read found no significant performance increase. This topic has been discussed on this forum in the past.
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Tim, you should do some research on actual RAID 0 performance for a desktop PC. Every test report that I've read found no significant performance increase. This topic has been discussed on this forum in the past.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53326\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
maybe we lost it in the transition to a new server, but I couldn't find any posts indicating Raid 0 was ineffective in increasing the performance of a Photoshop scratch disk - which is the application I have in mind. In fact a quick review of the links resulting from a google of Raid 0 Photoshop were very consistent in saying that Photoshop temporary files were a sweet spot for a Raid 0 configuration. I know that raid 0 won't give a boost to normal disk io, but the scratch disk is a special application. Please let me know of any links that claim the opposite - thanks.
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IMO the main advantage of RAID isn't performance boost, it's redundancy--the ability to survive a disk failure without losing data. For that reason, I never use RAID 0 or 1, as RAID 0 squares the probability of catastrophic data loss over a single drive, and RAID 1 is unacceptably inefficient and offers zero performance advantage over a single drive. I prefer a RAID 5 array in a 4-8 drive configuration, which offers some performance advantage over a single drive (how much depends greatly on the controller) and data protection unless you have 2 simultaneous drive failures.
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Thanks to all of your replies and there were many. I'm looking into all the suggestion and hopefully will be able to configure a machine that will allow me to focus on my graphics and not the system. I really believe that most of the frustrating hang-ups come from the Windows OS and its use of the hardware rather than the hardware its self.
One suggestion was to go with a high end Mac. I don't mind the cost but am apprehensive about the change over. Are there any testimonials from folks who have made the change? Especially made the change after starting out on PCs and using them for thirty years (my first machine was a Commodore before they had hard drives).
Once again, thank you all for your replies. They were very useful.
L
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Tomshardware has recently published test results showing that configuring 2 SATA I-Ram in Raid 0 did have a very significant advantage in terms of I/O and maximum throughput.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/05/hyp...lock/page6.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/05/hyperos_dram_hard_drive_on_the_block/page6.html) (and next page)
It would be interesting to see how much PS would benefit from having its scratch stored on 2 4GB I-RAM configured in RAID0.
Regards,
Bernard
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Tim, I haven't looked into RAID 0 for quite some time. If I recall correctly, none of the test reports that I read included a test for Photoshop scratch disk performance. It's possible that RAID 0 would benefit Photoshop scratch disk, but the explanation of RAID 0 in the test reports makes it appear unlikely that RAID 0 would be a significant improvement for Photoshop scratch disk. If you set up a such a system, please post your experience. I'd add a RAID 0 if I thought it would speed up Photoshop for me.
Here are links to two of the test reports I referenced.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2004...40625TCQ_1.html (http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html)
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1 (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1)
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Thanks to all of your replies and there were many. I'm looking into all the suggestion and hopefully will be able to configure a machine that will allow me to focus on my graphics and not the system. I really believe that most of the frustrating hang-ups come from the Windows OS and its use of the hardware rather than the hardware its self.
One suggestion was to go with a high end Mac. I don't mind the cost but am apprehensive about the change over. Are there any testimonials from folks who have made the change? Especially made the change after starting out on PCs and using them for thirty years (my first machine was a Commodore before they had hard drives).
Once again, thank you all for your replies. They were very useful.
L
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53378\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I made the change myself. After 12 years of WinPCs I switched to a dual 2.3 PowerMac. I have to say it's hand's-down the best system I've had the pleasure of using. It is nice using a system that works with you rather than against you.
Making the transition wasn't difficult at all. Getting really used to the OS X GUI took only a couple of hours of fiddling around. The most difficult thing about the switch has been the keyboard layout (re-learning 12 years of muscle memory).
My biggest apprehensions on switching was that of performance and how I would launch applications. Yes, that last one sounds silly but with no start menu I really had no idea! I found an app called QuickSilver that has made life very easy in that regard (and others) as it lets me launch apps with a few keystrokes. Otherwise, any Finder window has a link directly to all of the installed apps.
Performance has been far better than I had expected. It may not have as much raw grunt as a new dual-core Athalon (what does?) but it excels in other areas. I've been able to multi-task on this mac more quickly and smoothly than any current PC system is capable of. I'm sure that might start a flame-war but most people here have not had the chance to compare the two...
I've had my Mac for three months now and have had only one issue with it and that has since been resolved with the latest software update. A rock-solid system.
Feel free to ask me any questions regarding my transition. I'd be glad to share.
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Daniel,
OK, I'll start.
How about the many applications that you were using on your PC:
- Adobe products -> did you have to buy new licenses,
- ...
Didn't you find that many applications available for PC are not for the Mac?
That lack of application, and the portential cost of migrating licenses are the main reasons why I don't see myself seriously considering that tempting quad core G5 with 8 GB RAM...
Besides:
- are there still SCSI cards available for the G5? Would I be able to connect my Imacon scanner?
- is my Samsung LCD screen usable?
Thank you in advance for your feedback.
Regards,
Bernard
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Tim, I haven't looked into RAID 0 for quite some time. If I recall correctly, none of the test reports that I read included a test for Photoshop scratch disk performance. It's possible that RAID 0 would benefit Photoshop scratch disk, but the explanation of RAID 0 in the test reports makes it appear unlikely that RAID 0 would be a significant improvement for Photoshop scratch disk. If you set up a such a system, please post your experience. I'd add a RAID 0 if I thought it would speed up Photoshop for me.
Here are links to two of the test reports I referenced.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2004...40625TCQ_1.html (http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html)
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1 (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53390\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Just skimming quickly, here's what I think is a relevant quote from your first link:
"...Without requests backed up and waiting, an increased actuator count simply can not make itself felt. Under such light loads, the simplest design, Promise's S150 TX4, delivers the best performance regardless of the number of drives in the array...."
The point is that backing into the scratch disk is, in fact, a heavy load and there's clearly a significant IO que.
The results from the second link show a Raptor w/o raid 0 having a 752 IO score and the same disk with raid 0 having 901 - roughly a 20% increase.
I won't be upgrading until the next 1DS comes out... and I'm not sure that my level of technical competence is sufficient to switch the Raid off and on to see the difference - isolating the improvement kick I'll get from the increased ram, faster processer and dual core.
My question, which I'll likely repost later when the camera actually comes out, is assuming a system with 4 gig, is backing into the scratch disk frequent or not, given 22mb, 16bit files? I would agree, that if backing into the scratch disk is "infrequent" raid is probably not a worthwhile investment.
On a related issue - I have separate processes in place to deal with backup and redundancy.
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Tim, here is what I consider to be the most relevant quote from the first article.
"The enthusiasm of the power user community combined with the marketing apparatus of firms catering to such crowds has led to an extraordinarily erroneous belief that striping data across two or more drives yields significant performance benefits for the majority of non-server uses. This could not be farther from the truth! Non-server use, even in heavy multitasking situations, generates lower-depth, highly-localized access patterns where read-ahead and write-back strategies dominate. Theory has told those willing to listen that striping does not yield significant performance benefits. Some time ago, a controlled, empirical test backed what theory suggested. Doubts still lingered- irrationally, many believed that results would somehow be different if the array was based off of an SATA or SCSI interface. As shown above, the results are the same. Save your time, money and data- leave RAID for the servers!"
Here is what I consider to be the most relevant quote from the second article.
"If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. ... Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth."
Tim, you seem to have your heart set on RAID 0, and I hope it does deliver a significant performance increase for you. I'm not ready to jump onto the RAID 0 bandwagon, yet. I'll wait until I see a competent, unbiased test that shows a significant performance increase when used for Photoshop scratch disk.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that CS2 could only use 2 gig of RAM?
I have a p4 1.6 with 2 gig ram and a fast couple of HD's with the program on one and the caches/pics on another.
Running batch actions on 240 RAW files (open, PTLens, auto contrast, shadow/highlights, smart sharpen, save) took over 4 hours with nothing else running. The annoying thing is that short of a major system upgrade, i.e. dual processors, etc, it ain't going to get that much better. A wedding can easily be 300 files that need batching.
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...
Running batch actions on 240 RAW files (open, PTLens, auto contrast, shadow/highlights, smart sharpen, save) took over 4 hours with nothing else running.
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I'd be curious to know whether the limiting step was disk IO or RAM (page file usage). Is that something you could deteremine, say by using the Task Manager to monitor an example batch of, say, 10 files? Also, do you have a dedicated partition for the page file? If not, I think that would surely help, though I don't know how much.
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Even if PS doesn't use the extra memory windows will use it for disk cache (or just as memory for other apps) which should help.
But to do that many RAW files you'll want more more memory, more CPU and probably a faster disk.
All of that should be relatively cheap to do at least until you add in your 19,000% VAT or what ever it is you pay.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that CS2 could only use 2 gig of RAM?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53482\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I believe that's true (actually 1.7 gig is closer, if I recall correctly) I would suspect that the next version would support closer to 4 - given the fact that Vista should be widespread by then... and the mpx wars are continuing.
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I've been wanting to go for a laptop since I'm opening a studio and would prefer that to having two desktops networked, finding a laptop that takes even 2 gig ram is hard enough, haven't even seen any that take over, at least not in a normal price range, sigh...
Dark Penguin, it just keeps adding up doesn't it, all my ram slots are filled so it would mean trashing one stick to upgrade, the motherboard doesn't support 64bit (I assume, it's two years old) and so a new processor, new motherboard and say 4 gig ram would set me back a new lens.
Who ever said that digital was cheap?
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RAID0 is VERY useful in power gaming desktops. It lowers my winxp boot time, cut the install time in 1/2, cuts the install time of large games and more importantly, cuts the load time dramatically. Photoshop...doesn't do a thing, it's too small, so are images.
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Tim, you should do some research on actual RAID 0 performance for a desktop PC. Every test report that I've read found no significant performance increase. This topic has been discussed on this forum in the past.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=53326\")
You are OBVIOUSLY not a gamer with top level hardware, or you wouldn't make such incorrect statements. See this article for the straight poop: [a href=\"http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=392&P=5]http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageI...ticleID=392&P=5[/url]
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RAID0 is VERY useful in power gaming desktops. It lowers my winxp boot time, cut the install time in 1/2, cuts the install time of large games and more importantly, cuts the load time dramatically. Photoshop...doesn't do a thing, it's too small, so are images.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53525\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You just proved the very point you seem to be attempting to refute--that RAID 0 offers limited performance benefit to Photoshop users & digital photographers.
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Read more carefully. He tried to say it was only useful in servers, not ANY desktops, which is 100% false.
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If I'm maxed out on as much ram as PS can effectively make use of; and I'm regularly hitting efficiency levels of between 10 and 90% (eg large 16 bit stitched panos) would I be unreasonable in expecting a non-trivial improvement from a raid 0 configuration?
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Read more carefully. He tried to say it was only useful in servers, not ANY desktops, which is 100% false.
The context of discussion here is Photoshop and other applications of interest to digital photographers. By your own admission, and the results obtained from others' tests, RAID 0 offers little benefit to the digital photographer. The issue of whether it is useful to servers or gamers is entirely separate, and irrelevant here. Or do you have any real-world testing that demonstrated RAID 0 having benefit to Photoshop users?
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Nope, as I said - RAID0 is not for PS. The context here that I am addressing is clearly stated in the other posts...the other poster claimed there was no benefit to a 'desktop' pc vs. a server. Many people use thier desktops for much more than JUST PS, and raid0 is a great benefit to other areas of that use. He didn't say Photoshop, he said desktop.
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...the other poster claimed there was no benefit to a 'desktop' pc vs. a server.
And for the great majority of "desktop" users, that statement is correct. About the only thing other than high-end gaming where RAID 0 would offer significant benefit is video editing, and neither of those are of much importance to most "desktop" users. You're beating a strawman and a dead horse.
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First, let me apologize if the following quotes do not display correctly. This is my first attempt to use the quote feature.
Kaelaria, please read what I wrote more carefully. You have repeatedly attributed statements to me that I did not make. One slip would not be so bad, but repeated incorrect statements about what I wrote is not appreciated.
QUOTE(dmerger @ Dec 12 2005, 04:30 PM)
Tim, you should do some research on actual RAID 0 performance for a desktop PC. Every test report that I've read found no significant performance increase. This topic has been discussed on this forum in the past.
*
You are OBVIOUSLY not a gamer with top level hardware, or you wouldn't make such incorrect statements.
Just what about my statement that you quoted is incorrect, Kaelaria?
[/QUOTE]He tried to say it was only useful in servers, not ANY desktops, which is 100% false.
I did no such thing. If you have a beef, it's with the people at AanandTech and Storage Review.
..the other poster claimed there was no benefit to a 'desktop' pc vs. a server. Many people use thier desktops for much more than JUST PS, and raid0 is a great benefit to other areas of that use. He didn't say Photoshop, he said desktop.
Another blatantly false statement.
Kaelaria, before you accuse me of making incorrect or false statements, you should read what I wrote, and not put words into my mouth. I don't appreciate it.
I never said RAID 0 would not be beneficial. I was merely trying to help Tim by pointing him to some independent, in-depth test reports. He seems to have opted to ignore the conclusions and whole point of the reports by lifting out a couple of lines out of context. That's entirely fine with me. He's free to ignore the test reports. Maybe the reports are wrong. Maybe Tim knows more than the testers at Storage Review and AanandTech. Maybe you do too, Kaelaria, and I have no problem with you stating your disagreement with the test reports. But, please, don't attribute statements to me that I did not make.
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If I'm maxed out on as much ram as PS can effectively make use of; and I'm regularly hitting efficiency levels of between 10 and 90% (eg large 16 bit stitched panos) would I be unreasonable in expecting a non-trivial improvement from a raid 0 configuration?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=53539\")
I would disagree very much with the other posters and say that (for the scratch disk) you would benefit from Raid 0 configured drives.
All the information that has been posted so far has been for applications launched from Raid 0 drives and in the test scenarios quoted average file sizes around 60-100kbytes (for the first article) and not stated for the second. There was no information given for a photoshop configuration where the Raid 0 drive was used specifically as a scratch disk.
Now, reading back into the two articles that refuted the benefits of Raid 0 I do have some problems with the way that the tests were conducted. The most important aspect to bare in mind is that windows buffers IO transfers in memory and, depending on the configuration of the application, can read ahead data in chuncks of 16Kbytes up to Mbytes. Also, modern day disks also include cache memory of 8-16Mbytes. Now, given that the files sizes used in the tests could be quite small it is entirely possible that files were written to disk, but subsequently read back from the cache. One would expect in this situation for a non Raid and Raid system to be close in terms of performance. Even if there was a cache miss, there is possibility to give acceptable speeds for non raid drives provided the file can be read into the buffer in perhaps one or two chunks.
So, to summarise the issue here, the tests quoted against Raid-0 focus on tests which may or may not be using relatively small file sizes, may or may not be benefitting from large read/write buffers and caching on disk, and don't use a separate Raid-0 purely for photoshop scratch disk. I would conclude, therefore, that the articles are irrelevent to the discussion in hand and that for file sizes of 250Mbytes+ then Raid-0 will quite probably give a performance advantage over non raid configurations (I believe that the game demonstration with large amounts of cached data is more credible than the sterile business mark tests).
I too am looking for a new PC and the following is broadly in line with the spec I am planning to go with (though an 8-way due core opteron = 16-cores, would also be quite nice ;-))
[a href=\"http://www.armari.co.uk/system.asp?SysID=362]Armari Workstations[/url] - if you want serious grunt then check out the servers ;-)
ciao ciao
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Has anyone conducted RAID 0 vs single drive tests using Photoshop doing a batch RAW conversion and save-to-disk? We seem to be arguing over a few anecdotal impressions and tests that may not have any relevance to a digital photographer with say 400-2000 RAWs to batch process for a web gallery or whatever.
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Here is what I consider to be the most relevant quote from the second article.
"If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. ... Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth."
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53449\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Don't play the blame game. You posted this. Don't say ' oh, I didn't write it, so I didn't say it'. Yeah, ya did. You CLEARLY said you agree with it. And you are dead wrong. I'm not putting any words in your mouth.
You can read and quote test reports till the cows come home. You've admitted you DON'T EVEN HAVE OR HAVE TRIED A RAID0 ARRAY, so obviously you are talking out your corn hole. I on the other hand, have been using RAID0 arrays in my personal and professional systems for over 4 years, and have one as I type, beside me. I also have single drives in this system, and have seen first hand, OBVIOUS results between the two drive systems. I'm not simply pasting text from the internet without fully understanding it. Don't pretend to be a computer guy just because you read articles. It helps to actually have the equipment being discussed.
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I would disagree very much with the other posters and say that (for the scratch disk) you would benefit from Raid 0 configured drives.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53553\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I thought so too until I actually tried it. My last system (last month) used a raid0 array for the main boot drive, applications and windows cache file. My ps scratch was on another single drive.
My currect system uses a single drive for boot and windows cahce file, with the PS scratch on a raid0 array.
Using a benchmark script (I can't remember where it was right now, it involved a large pic of a horse), I tested a few configurations on the old system several months ago. I found a good jump in performance when I moved the PS scratch off the same volume as the windows cache file.
When I was setting up this new system, I wanted to be sure to maximize performance, so I tested a few other configurations as well. I found only a couple seconds difference between having the ps scratch on the single or raid0 array, but still a good jump in performance as long as the two were separated.
The only reason I switched from the raid0 boot to the single drive, is I also run flavors of linux, and now can partition the single drive for them. LILO still will not boot from a raid0 array.
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I thought so too until I actually tried it.
...
When I was setting up this new system, I wanted to be sure to maximize performance, so I tested a few other configurations as well. I found only a couple seconds difference between having the ps scratch on the single or raid0 array, but still a good jump in performance as long as the two were separated.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53562\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Thanks for the info. A few questions if you don't mind:
- what types of drives did you configure in RAID0 for the scratch?
- how large were the files you used for this testing?
- what operations were done on these files?
- how big was the scratch at that time?
Thanks.
Regards,
Bernard
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The Raid drives are regular western digital caviars, 120GB ea.
Like I said I don't remember the specifics of the script, but the scratch was hundreds of MB at peak, and constantly churning for several minutes.
I do want to do it again, as I have now gone from 1GB to 2GB ram and would like to gauge the difference as well. I'll have to search for it soon.
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That'd be great, many of us deal with images that are larger than 1 GB (scanned 4*5 with adjustement layers or larged stitched images with masks), and the scratch can typically get up to 3 or 4 GB.
Regards,
Bernard
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I know the test wasn't that large - but if you can tell me how to construct such a test I'll be glad to ru it.
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Kaelaria, you are a bald face liar. Where did I clearly say I agree with the articles I referenced? Put up or shut up!
Tim thought that the most relevant quote form one article was a benchmark test result, when the whole point of the article was that benchmarks are not representative of actual real world performance. Furthermore, I thought the conclusion was a more relevant synopsis of the article than one line taken out of context. I did not, however, express any agreement or disagreement with the conclusions of the articles.
Kaeleria, please show me where I've " admitted [I haven't} EVEN HAVE OR HAVE TRIED A RAID0 ARRAY." This claim of yours is another bald face lie. Again, put up or shut up!
I have never pretended to be a computer guy, whatever that means. If you don't like the results of the tests done by AanandTech and Storage Review, and you think that your over four years of experience makes you more qualified than them, that's fine with me. Maybe you are more qualified. But I know that you are a bald face liar, and I have no reason to suspect the same from the people at AanandTech and Storage Review.
DiaAzul, you may be correct. I'd like to see an actual, in-depth test of RAID 0 for Photoshop scratch disk. I've tried, but have been unable, to find such a test report. For me, and me only, I'm not ready to try RAID 0 on my home computer for my Photoshop scratch disk until I see some evidence that it would provide a significant benefit. Your theories may be correct, but as demonstrated in the articles, real world performance can be different than what is commonly expected.
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Tim, you should do some research on actual RAID 0 performance for a desktop PC. Every test report that I've read found no significant performance increase. This topic has been discussed on this forum in the past.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53326\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Here's you clearly agreeing...plus what I already quoted above...
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Tim, I haven't looked into RAID 0 for quite some time. I'd add a RAID 0 if I thought it would speed up Photoshop for me. [a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53390\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
And here's you admiting you have zero actual experience of which to comment on.
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Calm dowm gentlemen, every exchange like this is a brick that contributes to turning this forum in a replica of DPreview...
Cheers,
Bernard
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Kaelaria, you are a bald face liar. Where did I clearly say I agree with the articles I referenced? Put up or shut up!
Kaeleria, please show me where I've " admitted [I haven't} EVEN HAVE OR HAVE TRIED A RAID0 ARRAY." This claim of yours is another bald face lie. Again, put up or shut up!
I have never pretended to be a computer guy
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53584\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Proven, proven, and - yeah, that's quite obvious - now stop giving computer 'advice'.
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Calm dowm gentlemen, every exchange like this is a brick that contributes to turning this forum in a replica of DPreview...
Cheers,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53587\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Perfectly calm. I just like correct information on a given subject, not armchair quarterback BS.
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Kaeleria, it's amazing that you can say such nonsense publicly. My statements that you quote in no way support your allegations. It seems obvious that you don't understand the meaning of simple english words, you're irrational, or you simply have no hesitation to make obviously false statements.
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To anyone reading this for raid0 information...it definitely has it's uses.
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Video Card:
Adobe systems have stated several times that Photoshop does not utilize the video card. (search for the documents on tweaking PS for performance) The video card only matters in its ability to run the monitor resolution you need to run at a decent refresh rate (75Hz or more). Refresh rates do not apply to LCDs.
The Matrox cards are beneficial over others only if you are using CRT monitors and the usefulness only really applies to the legibility of text onscreen. Matrox cards are know for producing the sharpest image possible for analog CRTs. If you are using LCDs this does not matter as the signal is digital.
One video card will not help you photoshop better over another video card.
Windows Vista will be mostly Vector based (mathematically rendered and not with bitmap images) and hardware accelerated if your system can handle it. Much like the Macs are today but more-so.
Buying a fast video card that is "Vista Ready" is only important if you a) later upgrade to Vista (which may or may not turnout to be a valuable thing to do) and b ) want to have the pretty interface special effects that Vista will be capable of.
If neither of these items matter to you than don't worry about the video card too much. Any of the old 128MB Nvidia or ATI cards will do you well and only cost you about $30. If you only use one display, many of the motherboards out there with built-in video will do the trick.
A fast video card is not a requirement for upgrading to Vista.
Ram:
Max out the ram. Buy Windows XP Professional as that allows for 3GB of Ram and Windows XP Home limits you to 2GB. XP Pro 64-bit will allow up to 16GB of ram but driver and software support for it is minimal meaning your experience could be rather problematic.
CPU:
Defiantly get dual-core system at a minimum. Honestly, PS is optimized to take advantage of multiple cores and it shows (YMMV of course). I have several clients with single-core 3.2Ghz P4s that are easily only 1/5th the overall performance of my Dual 2.3Ghz Mac (and that was before I upgraded it from 1.5GB of RAM to 3.5GB). It drives me nuts because I have to use the confounded things regularly.
It should be noted that a dual-core system won't always be faster than a single core system per-se. It all depends on the actions you're doing. It will make things run more smoothly overall and that is just as important. Sheer speed doesn't mean squat if the system comes to a halt if you try to browse a folder in Bridge while PS is batch processing in the background (just one example).
Dealing with large files, a dual-core system with as much ram as you can squeeze into it will make the difference between tapping your fingers waiting for crap to happen and getting things done. I would not recommend skimping on your computer, especially if you deal with large files. You'll only end up with a frustrating experience. A more powerful system may cost a bit more but it'll last you longer and make you happier.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=52899\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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How about easing up on the verbal pissing contest, and devising a RAID 0 performance test with real-world relevance to Photoshop users (like doing a batch conversion of 300 RAW images with some sharpening and other common image processing operations) and posting the results of RAID 0 vs single drive? He said / she said arguments about how many drive platters can dance on the head of a RAID controller in a non-Photoshop context aren't particularly useful.
(http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/strife.jpg)
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One caution about video cards: While PS may not need a sophisiticated card, the video display may.
For example, I have an Eizo CG210 (1600x1200) and it specifically takes advantage of an ATI 5100 card (on XP Pro), for hardware control of the display that is used when calibrating with ColorEyes Display and for the live rotation feature.
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How about easing up on the verbal pissing contest, and devising a RAID 0 performance test with real-world relevance to Photoshop users (like doing a batch conversion of 300 RAW images with some sharpening and other common image processing operations) and posting the results of RAID 0 vs single drive? He said / she said arguments about how many drive platters can dance on the head of a RAID controller in a non-Photoshop context aren't particularly useful.
(http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/strife.jpg)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53610\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Write me a script and tell me exactly what hardware configs you'd like tested and I'll be happy to do that tonight.
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Hi.
I went through the same frustrations with my computer and I finally bought the perfect photography computer for me. Here are the specs.
Dell Precision Workstation 650. Dual 3.1G processors 4 Gig memory (two for Photoshop and two for everything else), two 15K SCSI hard drives in Raid 0 73Gigs each. One IDE? (I forget the latest name they use) 400Gig hard drive. Two Dual layer DVD burners 16X. I've attached a Canon 4990 scanner, i9900 printer, Colorvision for color management of monitor and printer, Eizo L997 20.4" monitor for pictures, Dell Ultrasharp 19" monitor for Photoshop tools. 6 x 8 Wacom Intuos tablet.
Incidentally, my camera equipment is all Nikon - D2x camera, 17-55mm f2.8, 12-24mm f4, 70-200mm f2.8 vr, 105mm micro, 50mm f1.8, tc2e II.
I've been using it for about eight months and am still thrilled with the speed. The real key is the 15K drives in the Raid 0 array. It's expensive, but I have stopped shopping for equipment and have removed all frustration from my workflow which employs RAW processing at 20megs per picture.
Steve Abramson
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Pom mentioned batch converting wedding photos (in this or another thread). Run on some 300 photos that would seem like a pretty valid test.
The problem with this is that most people only have one (decent) machine to run this on. So if you'd like multiple data points we'd need the same RAW files winging around. (Or maybe just one duped 300 times.)
15k SCSI drives are just hella fast. In a RAID or not. But for the price and noise of two of them I could run a second machine.
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I should know better than to wade into this mess, but I am a "computer guy", professionally for almost 20 years. So here goes...
RAID 0 writes exactly the same data to each drive in a pair of drives, so write speed is exactly the same as a single drive. But reading from the drives is independent, so read speed is theoretically doubled. "Theoretically" meaning that if the transfer bus can handle it and the controller has sufficient buffer RAM, you get doubled read performance.
In Photoshop terms, if you're batch processing a set of RAW captures into some other format, how much of the total time is spent reading from and writing to the drive(s)? As the resulting file size increases in relation to the source file size the benefit of RAID 0 fades into obscurity... remember: reading is faster, writing is unchanged. So if you're reading 20 MB files and generating 20MB files the RAID 0 setup will take AT LEAST 75% of the time the single drive setup will take (read time is 50% of total time, write time is 50% of total time, RAID 0 read performance exactly double). If you're reading 20 MB files and generating 80 MB files, the RAID 0 setup will take AT LEAST 90% of the time the single drive setup will take (read time is 20% of total time, write time is 80% of total time, RAID 0 read performance exactly double).
But then we get into how long does it take to write X bytes versus read them? On most drives, writing takes more than twice as long because the drive itself writes the data and then reads it back to verify it's correct. So then the above examples become even worse.
Out here in the real world, processing time ain't zero, either... far from it. The first example (20MB in, 20 MB out) may really be 25% read time, 50% processing time, then 25% write time. So then the total time of RAID 0 versus single drive becomes almost 90%. The second example (20 MB in, 80 MB out) may really be 10% read time, 60% processing time, and 30% write time. The total time of RAID 0 versus single drive becomes 95%.
So RAID 0 is really only applicable to applications that read a lot and write very little. Databases are the classic example - most are searched endlessly but updated only rarely. Photoshop, at least in my use, writes more than it reads. Bridge building thumbnails will be much faster, but not most of the workhorse functions, with a RAID 0 setup.
Conclusion: RAID 0 offers little benefit for Photoshop. Buy a faster single drive. Use separate drives for operating system, data, and scratch. Use the fastest transfer bus available: SCSI320 or FireWire.
I personally use 15,000 rpm SCSI internal and FireWire external drives in a Dell Precision Workstation 340 with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor with 1 GB of RAM (2002 vintage). For my raw captures from a Canon Rebel XT, 1 GB of RAM running Windows 2000 has proved to be plenty, and I work in ProPhoto RGB.
And now back to your regularly scheduled photographic content...
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I should know better than to wade into this mess, but I am a "computer guy", professionally for almost 20 years. So here goes...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53622\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Clear as a bell, and very helpful. Thanks!
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Oh yeah, if you want a RAID setup that writes faster than a single drive use RAID 5 with SCSI drives. That's what professionals use in servers. The more drives you add, the better your performance. The data is "striped" across multiple drives, plus "check data" so if any one drive fails the array still functions.
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It isn't correct tho. Only a 15 year computer guy here. But 5 of it was recently spent doing development at a SAN company.
RAID 0 is striped. RAID 1 is mirrored.
So in RAID 0 each hunk of data is only written to one drive. It is read from one drive. But those hunks are alternated so you hunk one is on disk 1, hunk 2 is on disk2, hunk 3 is on disk 1 and hunk 4 is on disk 2, etc.
With RAID 1 each hunk of data is written to both drives. If one fails you have the second available. Reads can obviously come from either drive. (Perhaps this is what you were thinking of.)
RAID 5 is slow to write because the parity information has to be figured out and written. So each time you write to a disk you have to write the information, read a sector, create the parity information and write that. It is a single read to get it back. (Unless you are rebuilding.)
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I should know better than to wade into this mess, but I am a "computer guy", professionally for almost 20 years. So here goes...
RAID 0 writes exactly the same data to each drive in a pair of drives, so write speed is exactly the same as a single drive. [{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=53622\")
Not true at ALL, I hope you mis-typed. That is the definition of RAID1, not RAID0.
RAID0 breaks the data into chunks, called stripes, and sends those concurrently to the drives. If you have a 2 drive RAID0 array, the data is split in half to each drive - hense, the speed boost.
Here is a good article (a test of a specific raid controller chip) with lots of data showing exactly how things break down performance wise on different applications and setups: [a href=\"http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/print/sil-3124.html]http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/print/sil-3124.html[/url]
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Yes, I stand corrected. What I described is RAID 1, AKA mirroring. Sorry, been a while since I did that sort of thing and I don't build anything without redundancy. RAID 0 is striping across two drives so in theory read and write performance could both be doubled.
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"RAID 5 is slow to write" shouldn't be an absolute statement. It is a bit slower to write than RAID 0 given the same number of drives, but much faster than any single drive. The calculation of the check data is also done by the array controller, so it doesn't use the computer's processor(s). I've yet to find a customer that's willing to gain a bit more performance at the price of risking the RAID array be down when any one drive fails, but that's large commercial customers buying servers. If it's a scratch drive with temporary data you don't care about, go for it.
I think we're getting way outside what's useful to most people on this site, though. If they want a quad processor server with a SCSI RAID array to run Photoshop, they'll find a knowledgable vendor to assist them.
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We'd all like a DMX.
It should be noted, that RAID 5 is wonderful for data integrity. So if you really want to make sure that you never lose any photos and do not mind the performance hit RAID 5 is great. (Provided lightning doesn't whack your entire system.)
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Kaelaria (and everyone else reading this thread), I apologize for my acerbic remarks. I should have used more diplomatic language to make my points.
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I should know better than to wade into this mess, but I am a "computer guy", professionally for almost 20 years. So here goes...
RAID 0 writes exactly the same data to each drive in a pair of drives, so write speed is exactly the same as a single drive. But reading from the drives is independent, so read speed is theoretically doubled. "Theoretically" meaning that if the transfer bus can handle it and the controller has sufficient buffer RAM, you get doubled read performance.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53622\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Are you sure that this is correct? My understanding is that in a RAID 0 set up, half the data is written to disk A, and half the data to disk B, which, if correct, would mean that the amount of data to write per disk is less than when using a single drive, hence the increase of performance.
What you write looks more like RAID 1 to me.
Am I wrong?
Regards,
Bernard
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As I posted, you are correct.
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I just wanted to add this link, because I too wanted to know if there was an increase in speed using different RAID configurations. Please don't think of it as a slight or anything, but the testing they have done here says differently...
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ultima...g_pc/page15.asp (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ultimate_workstation_ultimate_gaming_pc/page15.asp)
Take care,
*steve
maybe we lost it in the transition to a new server, but I couldn't find any posts indicating Raid 0 was ineffective in increasing the performance of a Photoshop scratch disk - which is the application I have in mind. In fact a quick review of the links resulting from a google of Raid 0 Photoshop were very consistent in saying that Photoshop temporary files were a sweet spot for a Raid 0 configuration. I know that raid 0 won't give a boost to normal disk io, but the scratch disk is a special application. Please let me know of any links that claim the opposite - thanks.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53335\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that CS2 could only use 2 gig of RAM?[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=53482\")
With a Windows XP standard configuration you're totally right.
Fortunately there are workarounds making your assumption wrong:
If you add the switch /3GB in boot.ini, Photoshop can allocate up to 3GB of RAM. More here:
[a href=\"http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html]http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html[/url] och här:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platf...PAE/PAEmem.mspx (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx)
/G
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Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that CS2 could only use 2 gig of RAM?
I have a p4 1.6 with 2 gig ram and a fast couple of HD's with the program on one and the caches/pics on another.
Running batch actions on 240 RAW files (open, PTLens, auto contrast, shadow/highlights, smart sharpen, save) took over 4 hours with nothing else running. The annoying thing is that short of a major system upgrade, i.e. dual processors, etc, it ain't going to get that much better. A wedding can easily be 300 files that need batching.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53482\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
It sounds like you need a Mac G5 dual processor workstation. Use the PC for other office tasks.
Bud James
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I never received any e-mails indicating responses were added since my last post on the 12th. Probably just as well as it seems this thread has degraded into a nerd-fight over RAID!
Skipping past the RAID debate and back to the topic at hand:
Daniel,
OK, I'll start.
How about the many applications that you were using on your PC:
- Adobe products -> did you have to buy new licenses,
- ...
Didn't you find that many applications available for PC are not for the Mac?
That lack of application, and the portential cost of migrating licenses are the main reasons why I don't see myself seriously considering that tempting quad core G5 with 8 GB RAM...
Besides:
- are there still SCSI cards available for the G5? Would I be able to connect my Imacon scanner?
- is my Samsung LCD screen usable?
Thank you in advance for your feedback.
Regards,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53407\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
The only Adobe Product that I had was PS CS2 and that did not require a new license. I simply filled out a form and agreed in a contract to destroy the PC copy. They then sent me a full Mac version in the mail.
I have a Po license for Noise Ninja 2 which is good for both platforms.
Focal Blade is not available on the mac but I never use it anymore anyway since I have PK. Unfortunately, PK did need a new license but I was able to use a coupon code for a "two-platform license" which brought the price down to $66.
There are many apps on the PC that are not available on the Mac, however there are equivalents that are just as good or in most cases (for me) better than the PC counterparts. (I have also noticed that the overall quality level of available software on the mac exceeds that on the PC. Particularly with independent developers.) On the PC I used SmartFTP as it was the simplest and most cost-effective FTP tool I could find but on the Mac I bought Transmit which is worlds better in functionality and ease of use.
Other applications I have found open-source equivalents for that are far better than anything available on the PC. One example is in Instant messaging. On the PC the best available was Trillian but it required a license to access its full features. On the Mac I use Adium X.
The only thing I have not found a replacement for on the Mac has been in web development. I used TopStyle 3 on the PC and have yet to find anything remotely as good on the Mac. Odd since many of the top web developers are Mac users... BBEdit comes close but it is a heavy-duty all-around text editor and lacks some of the CSS-centric functionality that TopStyle has and it lacks auto-complete which is a huge time-saving feature.
I should make a note on QuickBooks. It has a Mac equivalent but it is a turd. It lacks many of the features found on the PC version and I've heard it's quite buggy and poorly put together. Basically it exists just so the can claim they support Macs. For this I run the windows version in Virtual PC.
(It's funny but the most stable install I've ever used of Windows is my installation in VPC on my Mac)
In summary, the cost in software for switching to Mac was about $300 USD. $200 of that was VPC.
Most of the software I had on the PC not mentioned here was security and maintenance software. All of which is either unnecessary (anti-virus/anti-spyware) on the Mac or built-in and automated (maintenance) on the mac.
I can't answer your question about SCSI support. You'll have to ask some Apple dealers or poke around some apple-centric forums for that one. Apple dropped SCSI support a wile ago so I'm sure people have found ways around it. Mac nerds are quite hard-core and resourceful in utilizing the Unix underpinnings in OS X I've noticed.
All new Macs (sans the iMac) use a standard DVI connector so your LCD will work just fine.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I thought that CS2 could only use 2 gig of RAM?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=53482\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
On the PC that is correct. The standard version of Windows is 32-bit which limits it to a max of 3GB of ram (2GB for WinXP Home) and PS is limited to 2GB. On the 64-bit version of XP (with a 64-bt CPU) PS can utilize 3GB if enough RAM is installed (6GB max useable by XP-64). Someone mentioned a switch in the boot.ini to allow more ram to be used on a standard windows install but that may not work on all computers. PS on the Mac can use up to 4GB.