Need VGA Card Recommendation - 300mb Photoshop image files

[darrelll]

I'm anxiously awaiting the Core 2 Duo (Conroe) processors and have been slowly gathering the other pieces for my dream workstation PC. Specs below:

I've read here that Photoshop doesn't require a high end vga card and a mid range card will be fine. I'm wondering if having a large 512mb ram on the vga card will be helpful on large still images of over 300mb?

I've noticed on my current machines once my memory usage exceeds my ram, my image processing really slows down. So, I'm thinking/hoping that perhaps my images would be loaded into the vga ram... Does anybody know about this?

I've been looking at the eVGA 7600GS w/512mb at newegg at around 130 bucks after MIR. Or maybe an x1800 card. I'm not a gamer as I'm afraid if I played some games, I wouldn't get any sleep at all.... (addictive personality LOL). I'd like to avoid a video power connector as I think I will need the modular connectors for all my drives.

I'm also wondering if you think 500w psu is enough power. The Antec psu fits the p180b case beautifully, but I can get a Raidmax 630w cheap (40 bucks after MIR) and yes, I've read a couple reviews to avoid Raidmax.

I run a dual monitor setup with a 20" 1600x1200 204B Samsung LCD and a 21" Sony CRT (ready for the scrap heap)

Components of Workstation

ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP mobo (not yet released)
2-4gb ram (start with 2gb, wait til 800 ddr2 gets cheaper before adding addtl 2gb)
Antec P160b case
Antec 500w SP-500 SmartPower ATX v2.0 psu
4x 300gb Seagate SATA II 16mb cache HD's Raid5 setup
2x 120gb WD PATA Boot and program HD and PS Scratch HD
DVD RW
DVD ROM
1.44 FD
500gb SATA II EX backup drive

I haven't build a PC in 20 years and this has been a fun project. I will install either XP Pro or 2003 Win Server... probably XP Pro as I've not used Server before. Was thinking of a clean install of Vista but, I don't want to be dealing with bugs for 6 months on this machine so I'll avoid Vista at this time. My boot drive will be housed in a pull out drive enclosure so in the future I could simply pull the drive and replace it with a fresh drive for Vista once I'm convinced Vista is stable enough.

Always looking for the best bang for the buck as most of us here...

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[cleeve]

Photoshop doesn't care at all how much RAM is on your video card. Doesn't make a lick of difference.

Photoshop uses system RAM. And lots of it!

Get 2GB of system RAM at least! It'll make your life easier...


If you're not playing games, get the cheapest videocard with dedicated RAMN (not shared RAM like the turbocache or hypermemory cards) you can find.

 

[linux_0]

I would suggest a Dual S940 or Socket F Opteron with 4+GB RAM and 3Ware 95xx hardware RAID.

Opterons have 2x the memory and IO bandwidth.

The Tyan S2895A2NRF and similar boards from Iwill or Supermicro are great for photoshop.

:-D

 

[mpjesse]

yeah video card isn't going to matter much unless you're using rendering plugins that use the video card.

like cleeve said, PS uses system RAM- not GPU ram.

the most important part of a good photoshop system is RAM size, RAID 0 or 0+1, fast HDD (like a 10K raptor) and of course the processor.

the rest won't have an impact on performance.

 

[WhatUsername]

Matrox.

 

[choknuti]

As others here have mentioned getting a new video card isn’t going to help with Photoshop since it’s mainly a memory heavy application. One thing that you could use though is the gigabyte solid state memory module. It sells for around 150$ here and supports up to 4 GB. Since it uses the SATA port cheap memory will be enough. It is fantastic as a photoshop scratch disk (I’ve personally seen a b4 and after case on a friend comp). In one word WOW!!!!

 

[nubetube]

Am I mistaken when I say that the Woodcrest core would be better for apps like photoshop. Since Woodcrest is for servers, it will probabally be a lot better for professional applications like PS.

 

[linux_0]

Am I mistaken when I say that the Woodcrest core would be better for apps like photoshop. Since Woodcrest is for servers, it will probabally be a lot better for professional applications like PS.

Opterons have 2/4/8 times more memory and IO bandwidth which makes them ideal for photoshop and server apps.

They also multitask very well.

 

[fainis]

on a proper sistem (cpu, lots of memory) you can have excelent results with tnt riva.......

on a crap sistem...you can even put a triple quadruple x1900xtxxxxxx super crossfire setup ...cause you won`t get far in photoshop :lol:

 

[darrelll]

As others here have mentioned getting a new video card isn’t going to help with Photoshop since it’s mainly a memory heavy application. One thing that you could use though is the gigabyte solid state memory module. It sells for around 150$ here and supports up to 4 GB. Since it uses the SATA port cheap memory will be enough. It is fantastic as a photoshop scratch disk (I’ve personally seen a b4 and after case on a friend comp). In one word WOW!!!!

That Gigabyte ramdisk looks interesting, but it's only SATA 150 and not SATA 300. Also it's $150 excluding memory. So a 4gb ramdisk would run me about $300 or more.

But this got me thinking, I wonder if I could use one of my 4gb CF cards as a scratch disk? If so, wonder how fast it would be and how well would it work. The advantage would be that I don't have to spend a dime as I've got a fast reader, fast CF card...

I'm going to have to try this out...

Any thoughts?

 

[kitchenshark]

SATA 300 interface probably would help for the ramdisk but, the speed the device offers already is FAR in advance of what ANY hard drive can deliver.

Mmmm, it would take some VERY fast flash memory to beat a Raptor for a scratch disk.

I would say that if you don't want to use the Gigabyte ramdisk, look at a pair of Raptors in RAID 0 for your OS/scratch disk.

 

[andinobi]

Now photoshop Cs4 need RAM VGA much bigger because it use for image display, if you open 15 images high resolution then 2Gb RAM VGA is needed

And you can use 32bit anymore because max RAM 32bit is 3,2Gb (512Mb for VGA and 256 for other) So 2Gb VGA + 3Gb RAM is 5Gb total.


i think x64 with 2Gb VGA and 8Gb RAM on your machine is strong for Cs4


It different between cs3 and 4, cs3 non need bigger VGA RAM

I use this for editing everyday, and 256Mb VGA is not enought for Cs4