Hi all,
It’s my first post to Tom’s Hardware!
I’m a graphic designer. My current PC setup is a mashup of some of my old Gateway PC(2 CD/DVD Drives), and some homebuilt bits including a BIOSTAR: P4M900-M7 FE mobo (4 Gigs of DDR2 Ram but I don’t know how to find out more specifics on the memory) and a Pentium D (940?) processor.. My Graphics adapter is an ATI Fire-GL3600 with 256 mb. I work primarily in Photoshop, Dreamweaver and InDesign and some simple 3d (Sketchup) with mostly medium sized files. My OS is Windows 7 Pro. I have 2 IDE hard disks (250GB, 400GB) and one SATA 500gb). 500 WATT psu.
One would think that the above setup would be fine handling most of what I do, but launch iTunes, a browser, and Photoshop and I find myself under-resourced. When I look at my resource monitor, it shows 4096 MB of installed memory, but all but 1776 of it is available and 287mb is free. (I need to uninstall XP mode).
This seems to be a continual issue with PC’s. Seems every time I improve the hardware, the OS and software get more bloated and once again I’m running into performance issues. The quick fix seems change out the motherboard and CPU to one that could handle more memory but I’m on a couple deadlines and have limited funds so any words of wisdom are deeply appreciated.
My question is this: Off the tops of your heads, can anyone suggest a motherboard/cpu setup that might allow for more memory (16 GB maybe) that won't break my bank. Perhaps one that would retrofit my old memory and processor (or is that a waste?). I've seen some for 70-90 bucks that have 2 slots for 8 Gigs but I would love to get a cheap board with 4 slots and 16 gigs. I welcome all ideas however and if you know of a board (regardless of slot count) that would work for me, please advise. One board that looked promising was an ASUS P5P43TD. Would that be compatible with my existing memory and processor until I can spend some more $$$?
Any other thoughts on the right way to approach this? Also, I've heard snippets about compatibility between different graphics adapters and mobo's like nForce boards won't play with my ATI card, etc. Any thoughts on this matter?
I will continue to research this topic more but I have some big projects running now and need to make a move now. Any advice, general and specific to my situation would be of great help.
So, thankyou, thankyou thankyou in advance, Any and all advice is welcome. Please let me know if you need additional info.
Greg
It’s my first post to Tom’s Hardware!
I’m a graphic designer. My current PC setup is a mashup of some of my old Gateway PC(2 CD/DVD Drives), and some homebuilt bits including a BIOSTAR: P4M900-M7 FE mobo (4 Gigs of DDR2 Ram but I don’t know how to find out more specifics on the memory) and a Pentium D (940?) processor.. My Graphics adapter is an ATI Fire-GL3600 with 256 mb. I work primarily in Photoshop, Dreamweaver and InDesign and some simple 3d (Sketchup) with mostly medium sized files. My OS is Windows 7 Pro. I have 2 IDE hard disks (250GB, 400GB) and one SATA 500gb). 500 WATT psu.
One would think that the above setup would be fine handling most of what I do, but launch iTunes, a browser, and Photoshop and I find myself under-resourced. When I look at my resource monitor, it shows 4096 MB of installed memory, but all but 1776 of it is available and 287mb is free. (I need to uninstall XP mode).
This seems to be a continual issue with PC’s. Seems every time I improve the hardware, the OS and software get more bloated and once again I’m running into performance issues. The quick fix seems change out the motherboard and CPU to one that could handle more memory but I’m on a couple deadlines and have limited funds so any words of wisdom are deeply appreciated.
My question is this: Off the tops of your heads, can anyone suggest a motherboard/cpu setup that might allow for more memory (16 GB maybe) that won't break my bank. Perhaps one that would retrofit my old memory and processor (or is that a waste?). I've seen some for 70-90 bucks that have 2 slots for 8 Gigs but I would love to get a cheap board with 4 slots and 16 gigs. I welcome all ideas however and if you know of a board (regardless of slot count) that would work for me, please advise. One board that looked promising was an ASUS P5P43TD. Would that be compatible with my existing memory and processor until I can spend some more $$$?
Any other thoughts on the right way to approach this? Also, I've heard snippets about compatibility between different graphics adapters and mobo's like nForce boards won't play with my ATI card, etc. Any thoughts on this matter?
I will continue to research this topic more but I have some big projects running now and need to make a move now. Any advice, general and specific to my situation would be of great help.
So, thankyou, thankyou thankyou in advance, Any and all advice is welcome. Please let me know if you need additional info.
Greg