PC configuration for PS

[Gurglamei]

I asked a similar question regarding Lightroom, and recieved some quite interesting answers.  FWIW for your work :

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....showtopic=21068

[Craig Murphy]

Even if a file you are working on goes to 750mb why would one need a 150gb 10,000rpm hard drive for a scratch disk?  I'm not saying this is wrong.  Just asking, as my knowledge of an optimal set up is not that great.  Photoshop and or Lightroom go to the scratch disk only after using all the space on whatever drive they are hosted on or do they go immediately to whichever drive you designate as the first scratch disk?

Thanks for that link Gurglamei.  Don't know why I did not find it previously.  So I see from Shewe that Lightroom does not use scratch disk.

[mistybreeze]

My studio produces cross-platform but most work is performed on MacPros. The consensus among my IT PC consults was to avoid Vista as long as possible, especially if photography is your game. I tend to listen to those more knowledgeable. Plus, my studio cannot afford workflow breakdowns. Considering I started my computer career on a PC and Photoshop has always been a Mac-friendly app, maybe you should take heed to those fantastic Apple commercials where the fat, PC guy fails to light his Vista sign. Absolutely brilliant.

Jeff Schewe was kind enough to post Scott Byer's blog address: http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/
Be sure to read: PSWorldPerformancePresentation_Expanded
http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/PSWorldPe...on_Expanded.pdf
Scott includes PCs in his discussion and I think Scott's PDF is one of the most important "performance" articles out there. These treasures are indeed hard to find.

Just asking, as my knowledge of an optimal set up is not that great.

Take more time with your research and comb the forums with a fine-tooth to steadily build your knowledge. The information is here and there, and photographers tend not to enjoy repeating themselves. Performance and cpu optimization hasn't changed much in the last year.

If you were on a Mac, I'd suggest visiting Macgurus.com. I have no idea if such a site exists for PC/Photoshop users. They have a plethora of great technical information.

[Farmer]

Even if a file you are working on goes to 750mb why would one need a 150gb 10,000rpm hard drive for a scratch disk?  I'm not saying this is wrong.  Just asking, as my knowledge of an optimal set up is not that great.  Photoshop and or Lightroom go to the scratch disk only after using all the space on whatever drive they are hosted on or do they go immediately to whichever drive you designate as the first scratch disk?[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Craig - Photoshop will use whichever scratch disk you have nominated as the first to use.

Edit/Preferences/Performance and then select which disks you want PS to use and then you can change their preference order.

The Raptors are certainly good, but you will obtain the "best bang for buck" just putting in a dedicated SATA II drive and put nothing else on it.  An 80GB drive is extremely cheap although you may want to (literally) spend a few dollars more for a 160 or higher as they tend to have a larger cache on the drive (more performance).  The Raptors are faster (and a solid state drive even better due to access times, but there are still a few issues there not least of which being cost) but for virtual memory work (which is what the scratch disk is) the benefit will be marginal compared to the additional cost.

If cost is not a factor, you could use 2 x Raptors in [a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_0#RAID_0]RAID 0[/url] but realistically it's not going to affect your workflow unless you're batch processing massive amounts of data.

You do want this to be a different drive to that being used by Windows for its virtual memory (and that, in turn, should be a different drive to your operating system drive and data drive) for maximum performance.