August Iaia
New member
About to build a new PC because my current one just can't handle Photoshop CS4. Would love feedback on the following preliminary decisions:
(1) Going 32 bit XP Pro with 4 GB. I understand I may not get full use of all 4GB, but my understanding is 64 bit OS's are still a bit buggy, and I just don't want to go the Vista route if I can help it. My PS files are small to moderate size (nothing near the 300MB range--yet LOL).
(2) I'm thinking about using two large 7200 RPM hard drives, one to store work files and another for backup only, and a small/moderate size 10,000 RPM hard drive for the OS and program files. I've read that keeping the photoshop swap file on a drive separate from the one the Windows uses for a swap file will improve performance. I see four choices:
Do you think I'm going to get much of a boost from getting the second 10k hard drive. The case I'm getting will have the room, and the small drives don't seem to cost that much. But I don't want to overthink this either.
(3) I'm going Intel, and will pick a CPU chip one generation back to maximize price vs. performance. I haven't picked a chip yet, but I understand maximizing data transfer between RAM/CPU/hard drives is the major consideration as opposed to multiple cores?
(4) Going to use a motherboard with an Intel based chipset.
I'd be very grateful for any feedback you could give me. Thanks.
(1) Going 32 bit XP Pro with 4 GB. I understand I may not get full use of all 4GB, but my understanding is 64 bit OS's are still a bit buggy, and I just don't want to go the Vista route if I can help it. My PS files are small to moderate size (nothing near the 300MB range--yet LOL).
(2) I'm thinking about using two large 7200 RPM hard drives, one to store work files and another for backup only, and a small/moderate size 10,000 RPM hard drive for the OS and program files. I've read that keeping the photoshop swap file on a drive separate from the one the Windows uses for a swap file will improve performance. I see four choices:
- Run the OS and photoshop on the 10k drive, and the photoshop swap file on the work files hard drive in a separate partition.
- Run both swap files on the 10k drive, and just use the large drives for storing working files and backup.
- Get a second small 10k hard drive (which wouldn't be to expensive) just for the PS swap file.
- If I'm going to have two 10k hard drives, why not just run them in a RAID array and have both swap files on the RAID drive. Since it's RAID, I have twice the throughput to make up for having both swap files on the same volume.
Do you think I'm going to get much of a boost from getting the second 10k hard drive. The case I'm getting will have the room, and the small drives don't seem to cost that much. But I don't want to overthink this either.
(3) I'm going Intel, and will pick a CPU chip one generation back to maximize price vs. performance. I haven't picked a chip yet, but I understand maximizing data transfer between RAM/CPU/hard drives is the major consideration as opposed to multiple cores?
(4) Going to use a motherboard with an Intel based chipset.
I'd be very grateful for any feedback you could give me. Thanks.