filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
I've got a Celeron 466 with 128MB of RAM and recently bought a Nikon Coolscan LS4000. I think it's time to upgrade my machine! I've concluded that I need a custom built machine with a graphics card where the look up table can be calibrated and a high end monitor. Can anyone recommend graphics cards that can be calibrated? I was thinking of Matrox. I was planning on getting a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and running under Windows 2000. The Nikon Coolscan produces file sizes of around 70MB, so a lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. Finally if anyone has any recommendations as to companies in the UK that could build such as machine I would be grateful. So far my research has turned up these people who build hi end systems but I'm not sure I would need a dual processor? Isn't RAM more important? http://www.amazoninternational.com/ Thanks, Julie -Original Message- From: Jawed Ashraf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 1:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows I went from a PIII 500MHz to a 1.2GHz Athlon recently and file load times (16-bit 44MB scans, uncompressed PS file format) went from around 7s to 3s. A set of nasty PS operations on the same file (RGB->CMYK->LAB->RGB, Dust'n'Scratches, Auto Levels) went from 105s down to 46s. This test ran entirely in RAM (I had 640MB of RAM for the PIII, but only 512MB for the Athlon). Very worthwhile. I hate to think how many moons would pass waiting for a PIII-500 to process ICE and GEM... 7200 drives kill 5400 drives as soon as lots of random disk access occurs (i.e. not reading or writing a single file). This is valuable if you are trying to scan (using say Nikon Scan or Vuescan) while also editing in PS. And browsing the web. And writing emails. And playing Quake, if you're really dextrous. A friend just bought some cute little Promise IDE ATA 100 controller for his PC. Win 2K sees it as a SCSI device. Despite the fact he has a PII-450 (groan, PS really doesn't like that generation of Pentium) files on his system load very quickly now, around 4s for that file I mentioned above (it was 6-7s). OK, some of it is W2K, but it seems to me that a separate controller will make your life just that little bit sweeter. Jawed > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dana Trout > Sent: 28 July 2001 20:49 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows > > > I find that little of the time spent is due to the disk drive, which is > the reason for my comment that a 7200 rpm drive, even though it is 33% > faster than a 5400 rpm drive, will not necessarily reduce load times by > a like percentage. > > As for my times being slow, you're right: I was quoting the performace > of my "junker" computer which is used only for scanning -- it's a 466 > Celeron with 512MB RAM but Intel's woefully undersized L2 cache. > However, the times you quote make me wonder if you are loading > LZW-compressed TIFFs. If so, it is *definitely* time for me to upgrade > the scanner computer! > > Thanks for your comments, > --Dana > -- > From: geoff murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows > Date: Saturday, July 28, 2001 6:15 AM > > Hi Dana, > Gee your times seem very slow. I tried loading a 56mb file > from > my scratch disk and it took 3.6 seconds. A 169mb file took 17 seconds. > This > on a Win 98SE machine with a 1Ghz Athlon and 512mb of PC133 ram and two > 7200rpm hard drives. Scratch partition is not on the hard drive which > has > PS6. 7200 rpm drives made a significant difference to overall speed. > > Geoff Murray > www.geoffmurray.com > > - Original Message - > From: "Dana Trout" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 7:40 AM > Subject: RE: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows > > > > A 25% faster drive won't necessarily get you 25% faster load/store > > times. PhotoShop seems to be inordinately slow in dealing with > > compressed TIFFs -- I got curious so I set up a cache large enough to > > hold the whole file (53MB). The first time I loaded it into PhotoShop > > it took 61 seconds (reading from the disk). I then closed the file > and > > reloaded it into PhotoShop (this time from the cache -- the disk > light > > never even blinked) and it took 55 seconds. And I'm reasonably sure > > that a RAM cache is *much* faster than a 7200 rpm drive! > > > > BTW, Ed's VueScan takes less than 30 seconds to read the same file. > > --Dana > > -- > > From: Rob Geraghty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits > in > > Windows > > Date: Friday, July 27, 2001 12:22 AM > > > > < snip > > > > > On the other hand I'm reasonably sure
RE: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
I'm using a PIII 800 with 768 MB and a Matrox G400 Dual Head under Win98SE. It's a year and a half or so old now, and I'm still very happy with it. If I was building a new one now, I'd do a gigahertz processor with 1 gig of the fastest RAM I could find, a G500 card and maybe one of those new 100 gig Maxtor drives, with Win2K. The only spec you've quoted that I'd change is the amount of RAM. The more the better, and RAM is cheap right now. Even if you don't get a gig to start with, make sure your motherboard can support it, so you can add it later. I don't know much about it, but I've heard that PS6 will support dual-processor systems. That may be more exotic than you really need, though. I find my system is more limited by RAM size and speed, and disk speed, rather than raw CPU speed. Paul -Original Message- From: Cooke, Julie [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 1:50 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec I've got a Celeron 466 with 128MB of RAM and recently bought a Nikon Coolscan LS4000. I think it's time to upgrade my machine! I've concluded that I need a custom built machine with a graphics card where the look up table can be calibrated and a high end monitor. Can anyone recommend graphics cards that can be calibrated? I was thinking of Matrox. I was planning on getting a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and running under Windows 2000. The Nikon Coolscan produces file sizes of around 70MB, so a lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. Finally if anyone has any recommendations as to companies in the UK that could build such as machine I would be grateful. So far my research has turned up these people who build hi end systems but I'm not sure I would need a dual processor? Isn't RAM more important? http://www.amazoninternational.com/ Thanks, Julie -Original Message- From: Jawed Ashraf [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 1:12 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows I went from a PIII 500MHz to a 1.2GHz Athlon recently and file load times (16-bit 44MB scans, uncompressed PS file format) went from around 7s to 3s. A set of nasty PS operations on the same file (RGB->CMYK->LAB->RGB, Dust'n'Scratches, Auto Levels) went from 105s down to 46s. This test ran entirely in RAM (I had 640MB of RAM for the PIII, but only 512MB for the Athlon). Very worthwhile. I hate to think how many moons would pass waiting for a PIII-500 to process ICE and GEM... 7200 drives kill 5400 drives as soon as lots of random disk access occurs (i.e. not reading or writing a single file). This is valuable if you are trying to scan (using say Nikon Scan or Vuescan) while also editing in PS. And browsing the web. And writing emails. And playing Quake, if you're really dextrous. A friend just bought some cute little Promise IDE ATA 100 controller for his PC. Win 2K sees it as a SCSI device. Despite the fact he has a PII-450 (groan, PS really doesn't like that generation of Pentium) files on his system load very quickly now, around 4s for that file I mentioned above (it was 6-7s). OK, some of it is W2K, but it seems to me that a separate controller will make your life just that little bit sweeter. Jawed > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dana Trout > Sent: 28 July 2001 20:49 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows > > > I find that little of the time spent is due to the disk drive, which is > the reason for my comment that a 7200 rpm drive, even though it is 33% > faster than a 5400 rpm drive, will not necessarily reduce load times by > a like percentage. > > As for my times being slow, you're right: I was quoting the performace > of my "junker" computer which is used only for scanning -- it's a 466 > Celeron with 512MB RAM but Intel's woefully undersized L2 cache. > However, the times you quote make me wonder if you are loading > LZW-compressed TIFFs. If so, it is *definitely* time for me to upgrade > the scanner computer! > > Thanks for your comments, > --Dana > -- > From: geoff murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: filmscanners: Scanning and memory limits in Windows > Date: Saturday, July 28, 2001 6:15 AM > > Hi Dana, > Gee your times seem very slow. I tried loading a 56mb file > from > my scratch disk and it took 3.6 seconds. A 169mb file took 17 seconds. > This > on a Win 98SE machine with a 1Ghz Athlon and 512mb of PC133 ram and two > 7200rpm hard drives. Scratch partition is not on the hard drive which > has &
Re: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
Matrox is fine. With Windows 2000, since your file sizes are ~70MB, why not 1GB of RAM? RAM is dirt cheap these days. Maris - Original Message - From: "Cooke, Julie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 12:50 PM Subject: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec | I've got a Celeron 466 with 128MB of RAM and recently bought a Nikon | Coolscan LS4000. I think it's time to upgrade my machine! I've concluded | that I need a custom built machine with a graphics card where the look up | table can be calibrated and a high end monitor. | | Can anyone recommend graphics cards that can be calibrated? I was thinking | of Matrox. | | I was planning on getting a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and running under | Windows 2000. The Nikon Coolscan produces file sizes of around 70MB, so a | lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. | | Finally if anyone has any recommendations as to companies in the UK that | could build such as machine I would be grateful. So far my research has | turned up these people who build hi end systems but I'm not sure I would | need a dual processor? Isn't RAM more important? | | http://www.amazoninternational.com/ | | Thanks, | | Julie
RE: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
> > I've got a Celeron 466 with 128MB of RAM and recently bought a Nikon > Coolscan LS4000. I think it's time to upgrade my machine! I've concluded > that I need a custom built machine with a graphics card where the look up > table can be calibrated I am missing something here? I think you'll find all modern graphics cards support calibration. I presume you are talking about per-channel (R, G, B) gamma corrections, as performed by Adobe Gamma. (Hmm, come to think of it, a friend running an Athlon / Geforce 2 MX / W2K / ADI Monitor cannot get Adobe Gamma to calibrate his monitor. When I moved the sliders NOTHING HAPPENS - anyone know why this might be? He is set up for 32 bit colour. Luckily the default calibration is pretty good.) > and a high end monitor. I strongly recommend you buy a 19" (or bigger if you're feeling extravagant) monitor with a Mitsubishi NF (Natural Flat) tube. The latest ones have a linear dot-pitch across the whole screen (I think it is .25 whereas older ones have .25-centre, .27-edge dot pitch), which improves "edge-to-edge" contrast and focus. You have to be careful to spec a monitor that has this tube, though, as both are extent. I rate Iiyama, but you will have to come to your own conclusions on price/performance. The tube is not the whole story with monitors. It takes very high quality electronics to produce excellent images. For example my work monitor is a 17" NF tube (a Dell) but the electronics are quite poor - I can't get it to produce images anything like as good as my home PC. It also suffers from image stability problems - something you can test for by Alt-Tabbing between two web pages, one black and one white (both filling the screen, www.dpreview.com is good for black pages). If the screen "jumps" in response to each swap and does other "violent" things, you know it's crap (the technical term for this is "regulation", good regulation means the image doesn't jump with large changes in brightness) . Trouble is, I don't know where you can test monitors. You'll just have to trust reviews. Use www.google.com to search for reviews. Search with something like "mitsubishi NFmonitor review". > > Can anyone recommend graphics cards that can be calibrated? I was thinking > of Matrox. Matrox is possibly the best regarded manufacturer of graphics cards for 2D work (i.e. normal desktop computing, image manipulation) but has fallen way behind in 3D (bad at most games!). ATI is next. NVidia is definitely not highly rated for image quality. (I use ATI.) If you think you might go to dual monitors, Matrox and ATI are pretty close (ATI prolly has the advantage). You could use your current monitor and put all your Photoshop palettes on it, while viewing your image full-screen on the nice monitor. You can also browse the web on the old monitor in those tedious moments while filters run, or scans are being GEMmed and ICEd. You want a card that can support 85Hz (or more) refresh rate at your chosen resolution. Please check the monitor can support this combination of resolution and refresh rate, you'll be surprised that some can't at high res, even in this day and age. > > I was planning on getting a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and > running under > Windows 2000. The Athlon/RAM combination is very good value at the moment (actually that combination is silly money). If you buy as a complete system you should have no trouble - though it is fair to say that W2K and some varieties of Athlon motherboard do not get on. I personally wouldn't use W2K, as it is the most incompatible operating system MS has produced in years. I have one friend with it who reports all kinds of grief with software, drivers, hardware - he has re-installed operating system at least 5 times - he's not incompetent, he's just dealing with poorly written software and "unlucky" combinations. He won't upgrade his PC for fear that W2K won't work, cos it is currently reasonably stable on his 450MHz Pentium II. I have another friend, though, who dual boots W2K/W98. W2K is for browsing the web, Photoshop, writing letters. W98 is for Quake. > The Nikon Coolscan produces file sizes of around 70MB, I guess you intend to scan at 8-bits. My 512MB Windows 98 PC handles 71MB scans quite happily. > so a > lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. No, 512MB would be my recommendation. Unfortunately Photoshop has some kind of bug in it that means you have to re-start it every few hours of editing as it doesn't seem to want to free-up all memory when an image is closed. (Version 6.0.1) > > Finally if anyone has any recommendations as to companies in the UK that > could build such as machine I would be grateful. www.overclockers.co.uk Some of their prices (e.g. RAM) are not very good, buy overall package prices seem very fair. You don't need to be an overclocker to buy a PC from them, though you might have to persuade them that you *really* don't want the case
Re: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
memory is super cheap right now, a 256mb module is only $34.. so stock up, your new motherboard should handle 3 modules, for a total of 768mb of memory. You should also make sure you get a fast hard drive, usually 7200rpm and ATA100. I like IBM drives. "Cooke, Julie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I was planning on getting a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and running under >Windows 2000. The Nikon Coolscan produces file sizes of around 70MB, so a >lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. Herm Astropics http://home.att.net/~hermperez
RE: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
At 21:24 01-08-01 +0100, Jawed Ashraf wrote: >The Athlon/RAM combination is very good value at the moment (actually that >combination is silly money). If you buy as a complete system you should >have no trouble - though it is fair to say that W2K and some varieties of >Athlon motherboard do not get on. I personally wouldn't use W2K, as it is >the most incompatible operating system MS has produced in years. I have one >friend with it who reports all kinds of grief with software, drivers, >hardware - he has re-installed operating system at least 5 times - he's not >incompetent, he's just dealing with poorly written software and "unlucky" >combinations. Then I must be dealing with only 'lucky' combinations on my Win2K system because the four USB devices (Wacom tablet, Garmin GPS programmer, cordless mouse, and USB2IDE thingamajig), two firewire devices (Nikon LS-4000 and Canon DV camera), Pinnacle video capture board, Epson SCSI scanner, Promise ATA100 controller, DVD-RAM, SCSI tape, etc etc. all worked immediately and smoothly as soon as they were installed. No conflicts, no reinstalls, no BSOD's. The system is a dual-933 MHz Dell workstation with an i840 chipset and 768 MB PC800 RDRAM. If someone has to continually reinstall their OS then they are overlooking some fundamental incompatibility such as the m/b itself, the system BIOS or intermittent problems with a hard disk. It's also possible that they're running an upatched system without the latest Service Packs and the like. By the time that Microsoft gets an OS to be totally smooth they make it obsolete, for example, NT 4.0 or Windows 98SE. I have local copies of the text versions of the Windows Hardware Compatibility Lists. If you go by their size which closely correlates to the number of compatible devices that they list the order of *decreasing* compatibility and hardware support is as follows: NT 4.0 = 5.4 MB list (best) Win98 = 4.6 MB list Win 2000 = 3.4 MB list Win Me = 1.9 MB list (worst) > > so a > > lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. > >No, 512MB would be my recommendation. Unfortunately Photoshop has some >kind of bug in it that means you have to re-start it every few hours of >editing as it doesn't seem to want to free-up all memory when an image is >closed. (Version 6.0.1) Use a Memory manager such as the one from AnalogX or MemTurbo. NikonScan 3.1 causes Photoshop to quit unexpectedly now and then but otherwise I've never seen the memory problem that you mentioned. >I've seen tests that show Photoshop improves quite nicely with dual >processors Unfortunately, the same test shows you are far better off buying >a 30%-faster single processor PC! It will cost less and work better. If I were buying today I'd go for a dual Athlon m/b with DDR RAM as the most bang for the buck. Conventional RAM is dirt cheap but it's a serious bottleneck when compared to DDR or RDRAM. The latter, however, is greatly overpriced. In my opinion the worst combination would be a new P4 machine at any speed with SDRAM. That would be like putting the engine of an old VW bug in a new Lamborghini. Cary Enoch Reinstein aka Enoch's Vision, Inc., Peach County, Georgia http://www.enochsvision.com/, http://www.bahaivision.com/ -- "Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object." ~Joseph Campbell
RE: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
> > At 21:24 01-08-01 +0100, Jawed Ashraf wrote: > >The Athlon/RAM combination is very good value at the moment > (actually that > >combination is silly money). If you buy as a complete system you should > >have no trouble - though it is fair to say that W2K and some varieties of > >Athlon motherboard do not get on. I personally wouldn't use > W2K, as it is > >the most incompatible operating system MS has produced in years. > I have one > >friend with it who reports all kinds of grief with software, drivers, > >hardware - he has re-installed operating system at least 5 times > - he's not > >incompetent, he's just dealing with poorly written software and "unlucky" > >combinations. > > > Then I must be dealing with only 'lucky' combinations on my Win2K system > because the four USB devices (Wacom tablet, Garmin GPS > programmer, cordless > mouse, and USB2IDE thingamajig), two firewire devices (Nikon LS-4000 and > Canon DV camera), Pinnacle video capture board, Epson SCSI > scanner, Promise > ATA100 controller, DVD-RAM, SCSI tape, etc etc. all worked > immediately and > smoothly as soon as they were installed. No conflicts, no reinstalls, no > BSOD's. The system is a dual-933 MHz Dell workstation with an > i840 chipset > and 768 MB PC800 RDRAM. I was referring *specifically* to the combination of Athlon/x motherboard/W2K. > > If someone has to continually reinstall their OS then they are > overlooking > some fundamental incompatibility such as the m/b itself, PRECISELY MY POINT - dear oh dear, some Athlon chipsets (KT133A, say) don't get on with W2K. > the > system BIOS or > intermittent problems with a hard disk. It's also possible that they're > running an upatched system without the latest Service Packs and the like. > By the time that Microsoft gets an OS to be totally smooth they make it > obsolete, for example, NT 4.0 or Windows 98SE. This friend killed his system trying to install SP2. He wiped it clean and went back to SP1. > > I have local copies of the text versions of the Windows Hardware > Compatibility Lists. If you go by their size which closely correlates to > the number of compatible devices that they list the order of *decreasing* > compatibility and hardware support is as follows: > NT 4.0 = 5.4 MB list (best) > Win98 = 4.6 MB list > Win 2000 = 3.4 MB list > Win Me = 1.9 MB list (worst) NT4 is roughly as bad for playing games as W2K. If you play games you're considered a masochist if you use NT/W2K. Simple things like graphics cards and sound cards are not supported sufficiently well under the big OSs. Many games explicitly state that W2K is not supported. > > > > > so a > > > lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems > with this spec. > > > >No, 512MB would be my recommendation. Unfortunately Photoshop has some > >kind of bug in it that means you have to re-start it every few hours of > >editing as it doesn't seem to want to free-up all memory when an image is > >closed. (Version 6.0.1) > > > Use a Memory manager such as the one from AnalogX or MemTurbo. NikonScan > 3.1 causes Photoshop to quit unexpectedly now and then but otherwise I've > never seen the memory problem that you mentioned. I get this problem even when NS hasn't been started on my system. Re-starting PS clears the RAM completely. > > >I've seen tests that show Photoshop improves quite nicely with dual > >processors Unfortunately, the same test shows you are far > better off buying > >a 30%-faster single processor PC! It will cost less and work better. > > > If I were buying today I'd go for a dual Athlon m/b with DDR RAM as the > most bang for the buck. http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1483&p=15 By the time you've factored in the cost of 2 CPUs and the motherboard to support them, you've added 40-50% to your costs, and MP doesn't give you a 50% performance boost over the single processor system. It's around 30% as far as I can tell. If you absolutely must have the best performance available now, then yeah, get the dual CPU. > Conventional RAM is dirt cheap but it's a serious > bottleneck when compared to DDR DDR gives a performance boost of 5-10%. But DDR is worth buying because it is 5% extra performance for 2-3% extra cost. > or RDRAM. The latter, however, is greatly > overpriced. In my opinion the worst combination would be a new P4 machine > at any speed with SDRAM. That would be like putting the engine of > an old VW > bug in a new Lamborghini. LOL. The P4 is a pile of crap. In a year's time it'll prolly be worth considering. AMD's roadmap seems to show it falling significantly behind Intel next summer, I reckon. Jawed
Re: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
> I was referring *specifically* to the combination of Athlon/x > motherboard/W2K. And > PRECISELY MY POINT - dear oh dear, some Athlon chipsets (KT133A, say) don't > get on with W2K. I have an Athalon 1.33 and a KT133A motherboard running W2K. Also running a load of USB & SCSI perhipherals, as well as firewire for a Nikon scanner. There is nothing inherently wrong with this combination. It works as well as I could want it to. W2K is, in my experience with it, rock-solid stable and reliable. I've been running various different systems, and I can count the number of W2K crashes in the past one and a half years on one hand. > This friend killed his system trying to install SP2. He wiped it clean and > went back to SP1. His experience is not typical. He probably has some hardware issues. I don't know anyone who's killed their system by installing SP2. > NT4 is roughly as bad for playing games as W2K. If you play games you're > considered a masochist if you use NT/W2K. Simple things like graphics cards > and sound cards are not supported sufficiently well under the big OSs. Many > games explicitly state that W2K is not supported. That's a good thing, really. W2K and NT do not allow application software to write directly to the hardware, and as a result the systems are more stable and more secure. Use 98/ME if you want to play games, use NT/W2K if you want to get some work done. > > If I were buying today I'd go for a dual Athlon m/b with DDR RAM as the > > most bang for the buck. > > http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1483&p=15 > > By the time you've factored in the cost of 2 CPUs and the motherboard to > support them, you've added 40-50% to your costs, and MP doesn't give you a > 50% performance boost over the single processor system. It's around 30% as > far as I can tell. If you absolutely must have the best performance > available now, then yeah, get the dual CPU. It really depends on the application. Some applications and graphic card drivers are optimized for multi-processor systems and give a much higher performance boost. Some applications don't show any change at all. > DDR gives a performance boost of 5-10%. But DDR is worth buying because it > is 5% extra performance for 2-3% extra cost. Lucky you. Here it's about 50% more. > LOL. The P4 is a pile of crap. In a year's time it'll prolly be worth > considering. AMD's roadmap seems to show it falling significantly behind > Intel next summer, I reckon. The P4's 400mhz system bus is much faster than the Athalon's 133mhz bus, and the 3.2gb bandwidth of Rambus is about twice as high fast as DDR ram. For some applications that involve huge files and lots of ram, the P4 platform will easily outperform the Athalon. This would include some of the higher-end 3D animation packages. Athalon systems are probably better for Photoshop. It's hard to generalize which is better. A person would need to consider their applications, and get whichever is best suited to their needs.
Re: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
Hi Julie, I have an Athlon 1Ghz with 512mb of memory and it performs very well. A very interesting comparison of PC's is at this address http://jazzdiver.com/photoshop/index.htm Go to the Photoshop 6 performance comparison section.Should help you decide ( my results are down the bottom - L. ) Geoff www.geoffmurray.com - Original Message - From: "Herm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 7:31 AM Subject: Re: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec > memory is super cheap right now, a 256mb module is only $34.. so stock up, your > new motherboard should handle 3 modules, for a total of 768mb of memory. > > You should also make sure you get a fast hard drive, usually 7200rpm and ATA100. > I like IBM drives. > > "Cooke, Julie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >I was planning on getting a 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and running under > >Windows 2000. The Nikon Coolscan produces file sizes of around 70MB, so a > >lot of fast RAM is important. Can anyone see any problems with this spec. > > Herm > Astropics http://home.att.net/~hermperez >
RE: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
> At 21:49 02-08-01 +0100, Jawed Ashraf wrote: > >I saw benchmarks of a 1.3GHz Athlon outperforming a 1.7GHz P4 in > >Photoshop... Wish I knew where they were now. > > Possibly here: > Choosing the Best Platform for Adobe Photoshop > http://www.xbitlabs.com/cpu/photoshop-platform/ That wasn't it, but that's a good article. Thanks. Jawed
Re: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
> > I have an Athalon 1.33 and a KT133A motherboard running W2K. Also > > running a > > load of USB & SCSI perhipherals, as well as firewire for a Nikon scanner. > > There is nothing inherently wrong with this combination. It works > > as well as > > I could want it to. > > http://hardocp.com/reviews/mainboards/abit/kt7a/ > > Read the fifth paragraph (counting from below the byline) about DIMMs and > W2K. That would apply to the Abit board. I'm running an Asus board, and am always switching configurations. Right now I have three 512 meg DIMMS, but I've run the board with one and two DIMMS. Never any instability problems. > > It really depends on the application. Some applications and graphic card > > drivers are optimized for multi-processor systems and give a much higher > > performance boost. Some applications don't show any change at all. > > We were talking Photoshop. Photoshop does genuinely get better with a > dual-processor system. So it seems. As soon as the Athalon dual systems are out in full force, I'll probably go that route. > Ah, I should have said I was comparing prices of Crucial (made by Micron) > RAM. I would recommend peeps don't buy "unbranded" RAM. Crucial and > Corsair are the most respected names. Prices of unbranded RAM are quite a > lot cheaper. In high performance systems I reckon this is a risky route to > take. I pretty much use Micron exclusively. It's about 25%more than generic ram, but in my experience it's been 100% reliable. DDR ram is still overpriced here in Canada. > I saw benchmarks of a 1.3GHz Athlon outperforming a 1.7GHz P4 in > Photoshop... Wish I knew where they were now. I may have seen the same benchmarks. The P4 does better in some tests, the Athalon better in others. Overall, the nod was given to the Athalon systems However, if you're working with huge files (in the hundreds of megabytes), the P4 with it's faster throughput might be a better choice.
RE: filmscanners: RE: Custom PC spec
> > I was referring *specifically* to the combination of Athlon/x > > motherboard/W2K. > > And > > > PRECISELY MY POINT - dear oh dear, some Athlon chipsets (KT133A, say) > don't > > get on with W2K. > > I have an Athalon 1.33 and a KT133A motherboard running W2K. Also > running a > load of USB & SCSI perhipherals, as well as firewire for a Nikon scanner. > There is nothing inherently wrong with this combination. It works > as well as > I could want it to. http://hardocp.com/reviews/mainboards/abit/kt7a/ Read the fifth paragraph (counting from below the byline) about DIMMs and W2K. > > W2K is, in my experience with it, rock-solid stable and reliable. > I've been > running various different systems, and I can count the number of > W2K crashes > in the past one and a half years on one hand. Cool. > > > NT4 is roughly as bad for playing games as W2K. If you play > games you're > > considered a masochist if you use NT/W2K. Simple things like graphics > cards > > and sound cards are not supported sufficiently well under the big OSs. > Many > > games explicitly state that W2K is not supported. > > That's a good thing, really. W2K and NT do not allow application > software to > write directly to the hardware, and as a result the systems are > more stable > and more secure. Use 98/ME if you want to play games, use NT/W2K > if you want > to get some work done. I get plenty of work done here, thanks! I can get blue screens if I misconfigure something in BIOS (experimenting!). > > > > If I were buying today I'd go for a dual Athlon m/b with DDR > RAM as the > > > most bang for the buck. > > > > http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1483&p=15 > > > > By the time you've factored in the cost of 2 CPUs and the motherboard to > > support them, you've added 40-50% to your costs, and MP doesn't > give you a > > 50% performance boost over the single processor system. It's > around 30% as > > far as I can tell. If you absolutely must have the best performance > > available now, then yeah, get the dual CPU. > > It really depends on the application. Some applications and graphic card > drivers are optimized for multi-processor systems and give a much higher > performance boost. Some applications don't show any change at all. We were talking Photoshop. Photoshop does genuinely get better with a dual-processor system. > > > DDR gives a performance boost of 5-10%. But DDR is worth buying because > it > > is 5% extra performance for 2-3% extra cost. > > Lucky you. Here it's about 50% more. Ah, I should have said I was comparing prices of Crucial (made by Micron) RAM. I would recommend peeps don't buy "unbranded" RAM. Crucial and Corsair are the most respected names. Prices of unbranded RAM are quite a lot cheaper. In high performance systems I reckon this is a risky route to take. > > > LOL. The P4 is a pile of crap. In a year's time it'll prolly be worth > > considering. AMD's roadmap seems to show it falling > significantly behind > > Intel next summer, I reckon. > > The P4's 400mhz system bus is much faster than the Athalon's > 133mhz bus, and > the 3.2gb bandwidth of Rambus is about twice as high fast as DDR ram. For > some applications that involve huge files and lots of ram, the P4 platform > will easily outperform the Athalon. This would include some of the > higher-end 3D animation packages. Athalon systems are probably better for > Photoshop. It's hard to generalize which is better. A person would need to > consider their applications, and get whichever is best suited to their > needs. I saw benchmarks of a 1.3GHz Athlon outperforming a 1.7GHz P4 in Photoshop... Wish I knew where they were now. Jawed
