Tesla Coil wrote:
(snip)
> The most efficient way I've found yet to
> assure desired results is to create an 8.5" x 11" image
> file and paste onto it for the page layout. With 300 dpi,
> you're playing with a 2550 x 3300 pixel field; paste/drag
> operations proceed chokingly on my not-regarded-until-
> now-terribly-brain-damaged platform: an AMD K6-II
> 450 with 256Mb RAM using a Diamond Viper V550
> video card (16Mb RAM there).
>
> Thus far, everyone I've asked divides evenly on which
> of these components would be critical to upgrade--all
> with seemingly plausible arguments for their position.
> Perhaps someone here could shift the balance?
Ah, you're reminding me of what I experienced when I tried to make a
version of my band's album cover large enough for a 12" LP.
3600 x 3600 with several layers and I only had 64 MB at the time. It
was sheer agony.
I guess my short answer is:
If you're swapping memory to disk, that's definitely the biggest
problem and you should get a lot more memory. Memory is amazingly
inexpensive right now, I just saw that 256 MB of PC133 RAM can be had
for $60 at a lot of places on pricewatch.com.
If you're not swapping, then it might well be the CPU that's the
biggest problem. The K6-II is kind of slow on floating-point stuff
which Gimp will work pretty hard. I tried doing what you describe on a
Pentium II 366, which should be roughly comparable to your CPU, and
watching top in an xterm I noticed that dragging large selections does
hit the CPU pretty hard, up to 85% at times.
As to the video card, I doubt that's the biggest problem, but I have
noticed a big difference between having a card with good accelerated X
support and one that uses generic SVGA support without acceleration.
But this difference was noticeable on everything, just dragging xterms
around. If you are only having problems in the situation you describe,
then see what top can tell you. I bet you're maxing out your RAM or
CPU or both and a video card won't help that.
--
................. paul winkler ..................
slinkP arts: music, sound, illustration, design, etc.
web page: http://www.slinkp.com
A member of ARMS: http://www.reacharms.com
