o.k., after reading so much the last few days & nights my eyes have crossed, i think i may have figured out a strategy for a fairly serious computer upgrade. i recently started working with photokit sharpener pro on sizable gallery prints (20x30ish) and you can guess what this means. 1Ds 16 bit files uprezzed with 6-8 adjustment layers yielding at times files of 2-3 gb!! kinda slows thangs down a touch!
so from my reading and consultations with my good friends/computer geeks who've helped to clarify some of what i'm just learning, i think i've reached a decent starting point:
for o/s & scratch disk, 2 fast scsi (15k) hard drives (fujitso seems pretty reasonable) probably not setup in raid 0;
a good amount of RAM (4 gb) but not too much b/c with 32 bit o/s ps doesn't access more than 2s;
matrox 128 mb PCIe video card for my twin trinitron crt monitors;
a 200-300 gb sata hard drive for internal archiving (in tandem with backup dvds);
and finally some sort of dual cpu or dual core cpu setup. my budget pretty much dictates either one very good amd athlon 64 2x 4800 dual core cpu or 2 less expensive single core amd athon 64s in a two slot motherboard (either tyan or asus).
my question is this: which would photoshop cs2 rather see? two single cores or a single dual core?also, of course i'll do a consultation with the final builder, but have i made any fundamental errors or wrong assumptions in my component choices here. i'm pretty much a newbie and any help would be greatly appreciated.
on a side note, i live and work in sedona, arizona as a landscape photographer. i do guided photo expeditions here and in many of the other wonderfully photogenic locations throughout northern arizona. so, in return for your good advice/suggestions, don't hesitate to ask for location suggestions if you're ever planning on coming down this way.
many thanks again in advance!
oh, and here's a nice one from this fall: