I do a lot of heavy image processing that includes HDR work with 5 images, and want to up the speed. I have been given suggestions that conflict, and I'd like to get some input here.
I'm currently running CS4 32bit on a WinXP 32bit machine, a Dell XPS730. I have a 2.6GHz quad core Intel processor, 4Gb of DDR3 1333mHz RAM, 2 nVidia GeForce 9800GT video cards in SLI configuration, and a wonderful NEC 3090 monitor. My system drive is a 500Gb Western Digital Caviar Green drive, and my photos are on a WD Caviar Black 1Tb internal drive with a second one used to back up my data.
Some of the choices are:
1) XP 32 bit to: Windows 7 32 bit, Windows 7 64 bit or XP 64 bit
2)Upgrade to 8Gb (the machine's max) of DDR3 1333 mHz RAM if I go to 64 bit XP or Win 7 (32 or 64 bit)
3)Change the video cards to a single card with 1Gb of video ram?
4)Change my 1Gb data drive to a RAID 0 drive? What is involved in that?
If anybody can come up with some other choices, other than getting a new computer, let me know, as well. Thanx.