New system suggestions needed

[KBD]

My uncle needs a new system since the old P4 just doesn’t cut it anymore. He needs a pc for work/personal stuff; he does a lot of work with pictures and uses photoshop extensively. This system won't be used for gaming or ocing or any other fun stuff. We haven't yet decided whether to get it from an OEM, have me build it or go to custom system builder, so at this point i just want to inquire about the CPU.

I'm kinda leaning towards the Q6600, it is reasonable priced for a quad and i feel that it would be good for photoshop which takes advantage of 4 cores. On the other hand, the
E6850 also looks very good. Surprisingly, it actually beats the Q6600 in the photoshop benchmark in Tom's hardware cpu charts, in fact my own fx-62 is only slightly inferior to the quad in this benchmark, a fact that i found equally surprising. The Q6600 does pull ahead in some benchmarks while the E6850 wins in others, i haven't seen that big of a difference in performance between the 2. I guess the main question here is: which one is more future-proof a dual or quad core? I think that the quad is, since more and more programs will be taking advantage of 4 cores in the future, but i guess i could be wrong about that. I'm also not discounting the new E8400; the only Wolfdale I’ve seen listed on newegg, though it is currently out of stock. I wonder what happened to the other 2 models intel promised to deliver? In any case, I’m usually wary of buying brand new CPUs/mobos/vid cards/etc, i usually wait until the manufacturer releases all the needed updates, revisions, bug fixes and so on since some newly released products contain flaws or don't perform to their full potential, but that's just me. So these are my thoughts on the matter, i haven't made up my mind about this yet, so that’s why i want to hear the opinions of other folks around here.

[ex_reven]

What sort of stuff does he do in photoshop?

Both the CPU's you listed are well up to the task though.
Even my e6400 is up to the task.

In the end your system will be held back by the hard drive and ram.

You want:
Dual/Quad Core
Decent Mobo
3-4 gigs ram (depending on the OS you choose)
2 high speed drives in RAID (and possibly other drives for backing up)
Large screen

[KBD]

He uses photoshop mostly to fix picture imperfections and to make them look better and modifies them so a person looks better in pic than in real life, that's part of his image consulting business. As far as the CPU, he wants something that would last him a few years, he does do some multitasking as well so that's why i suggested those 2 CPUs, they are both in the same price range and and are reasonably priced. In terms of a hard drive i was thinking either a Raptor or a Seagate Barracuda.

In regards to memory, it doesn't make sense for him to get more than 2 GB, cause he has a 32-bit XP OS which will not recognized more than 3GB anyway, is it true that running 2GB in dual channel is better than 3 Gb in single-channel? I also have a question about RAID, is it neccessary to have in his case? What are the benefits? I heard that both hard drives lose data in RAID in case of a crash, is that true?

[Scrizz]

I don't know about the raid stuff, but I have a e4400@3.2GHz and 2GBs of memory and a couple seagate barracudas. Photoshop runs smooth even Premiere runs good; unless your uncle is going to be doing video encoding and since you are not going to overclock, I would suggest getting the higher clocked dual-core. Try to see if you can get a e8400 instead of the 6850

[ex_reven]

He uses photoshop mostly to fix picture imperfections and to make them look better and modifies them so a person looks better in pic than in real life, that's part of his image consulting business. As far as the CPU, he wants something that would last him a few years, he does do some multitasking as well so that's why i suggested those 2 CPUs, they are both in the same price range and and are reasonably priced. In terms of a hard drive i was thinking either a Raptor or a Seagate Barracuda.

Ahk so he isnt doing anything on a large scale in photoshop.
Either of the CPU's will last him a long time. Though Im somewhat skeptical of the quad core in PS. As for the hard drive, Id go for a high capacity one (or two in RAID, though that wont be very necessary nor practical for him to do). I reccomend a high capacity Seagate Barracuda or Samsung Spinpoint.

In regards to memory, it doesn't make sense for him to get more than 2 GB, cause he has a 32-bit XP OS which will not recognized more than 3GB anyway, is it true that running 2GB in dual channel is better than 3 Gb in single-channel?

2 Gigs will serve him fine for the application in question. Though if he uses PAE he can use 4 gigs of RAM in XP through Address extension. The work he is doing doesnt sound very resource hungry however, so 2 gigs should cut it just fine (you can always add more later anyway).
In memory hungry apps I didnt notice much difference between single and dual channel, not sure of the effect on overall performance though.

I also have a question about RAID, is it neccessary to have in his case? What are the benefits? I heard that both hard drives lose data in RAID in case of a crash, is that true?

He doesnt necessarily need RAID, it was a performance suggestion.
He could theoretically use RAID to increase performance AND to create a failsafe in the case that the RAID (or the single hard drive if he didnt setup RAID) dies. However, it makes it a whole lot more expensive and it means that you need to spend extra money on RAID controllers etc.

RAID drives dont just 'lose' data because of a crash. There has to be some sort of major catastropic failure to cause data loss, eg - an actual hard drive fails and dies, thus removing itself from and destroying the RAID array.

My reccomendation is that he has a main hard drive (the high capacity one) and then either a secondary hard drive, or something where he keeps regular backups of his work in an organised manner. I dont recommend RAID in his case, since it costs more and makes it more difficult to setup the system. The performance/redundancy benefits arnt worth it in this particular case in question IMO.

[panchoman]

2 gigs of fast ram is minimum for photoshop.. i'd recommend getting 4 gigs if he plans on doing heavy duty stuff in photoshop.. as it loves using ram and ram is preety cheap now a days. a q6600 will do nicely.. as photoshop is multi threaded and will really help process large images etc. a decent mobo like a gigbyte p35 ds3l rev 2 will more then suffice and a mid range video card like an 8600gts will do nicely for a graphics card.

[ex_reven]

He wont need more than 2 gigs, unless the documents he works on breach more than 10000x10000 pixels, which I dont think he will be doing since he's only touching up photos.

:toast:

[francis511]

I`d swear by my new(ish) q6600 , but the teh e8400 beats it in quite a few benchmarks .

[KBD]

I think i'll go with ex_reven's advice: i'll tell him to get 2GB of RAM since he's not doing heavy duty photoshop work and won't be working on 10000x10000 pixel pics, if that won't be enough he can always add more later. For HD it will be 2 Barracudas, 1 main and 1 storage, i got one of those myself and i'm very happy with it. Won't be doing any RAID, i wouldn't know how to set it up anyway if i were to build this system. A mid to mid-to-low range DX 10.1 card should suffice

Though I'd like to do a bit more reading on the Q6600 and E6850 before making a decision. Not sure about the mobo, case and PSU yet, that will depend on whether he wants to get it from an OEM.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! They were quite helpful :toast:

[ex_reven]

I think i'll go with ex_reven's advice: i'll tell him to get 2GB of RAM since he's not doing heavy duty photoshop work and won't be working on 10000x10000 pixel pics, if that won't be enough he can always add more later. For HD it will be 2 Barracudas, 1 main and 1 storage, i got one of those myself and i'm very happy with it. Won't be doing any RAID, i wouldn't know how to set it up anyway if i were to build this system. A mid to mid-to-low range DX 10.1 card should suffice

Though I'd like to do a bit more reading on the Q6600 and E6850 before making a decision. Not sure about the mobo, case and PSU yet, that will depend on whether he wants to get it from an OEM.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! They were quite helpful :toast:

No worries.

With the barracuda, try and get the 7200.10 if possible.
Its the fastest in the desktop level Seagate drives IMO.

The 7200.11 is slower than it (I think because it has more platters?)

[KBD]

No worries.

With the barracuda, try and get the 7200.10 if possible.
Its the fastest in the desktop level Seagate drives IMO.

My thoughts exactly, thats the one i'm using myself!

Thanks again! :)