Christmas 2011 PC for Wife

[Adcadet]

No, but when she sees that I spent considerably more at Newegg than the $400-600 I quoted her, I'll have some explaining to do. Even now, she's not completely comfortable with spending that kind of money, as am I now that I think about the marginal gain going from from E7200.

 

[Santilli]

Is there a drop in CPU replacement that offers a doubling of computer power?
Example is the 3800+ dual core more then doubled the speed of the 3200+ on my HTPC.
It was 50 bucks, used.

I did find that big jumps, like single to dual cores, or dual to quads are usually worth doing on old motherboards.

 

[blakerwry]

Don't the older versions of photoshop also have limited SMP support? I seem to recall that some functions (like opening and saving) in PS were single threaded up until some of the most recent versions (CS4?).

 

[Adcadet]

Today she had some Photoshop work to do, so I made her do it on my computer (i7 2600K, 16 GB RAM, Intel X25-M-G2 that held the picture) to compare it to hers. She was very impressed with the speed that photos opened and saved, and somewhat impressed with the speed of actually doing the photo manipulations. From this I think she really would love an SSD (eek, can I afford an SSD large enough to store all of her photos? Can she be trained to move her photos from her camera to SSD, then onto a mechanical HD after editing?), and some more RAM/CPU power would likely help as well. She really noticed the difference. She was not impressed with my dual monitors.

The three options I'm currently considering:

1. Get more RAM to use with her old RAM (2x1 GB kit) to bring her up to 4 GB. I can buy a second kit of the kind of RAM she has to bring her up to 4X1 GB sticks ($34). And get an SSD (thinking Crucial M4, 64 GB, $110). Total of $144.

2. Get her more RAM, but insist on going to 8 GB by using two 2x2 GB kits. I'm leery to mix 2 GB sticks with her old 1 GB sticks (if anybody thinks mixing memory sizes is a good idea, let me know). This could cost me $120. Add in the Crucial M4, total of $264

3. Get a new chip/mobo/RAM and SSD - Asus P8H67-V, i3 2100, 2x4 GB kit of RAM, and a Crucial M4 64 GB, total of $376.

Does anybody know what kind of a limitation it will be running a newer SSD (Crucial M4 or Samsung 830) on a SATA II (3 Gbps) controller? If it's huge, I suppose I could get myself a new SATA III SSD and give her my 80 GB X25-M-G2.

 

[ddrueding]

If she is doing one photo at a time (not batch operations), then having the images saved on a HDD and just having the apps on the SSD wouldn't be that bad.

 

[Santilli]

"
1. Get more RAM to use with her old RAM (2x1 GB kit) to bring her up to 4 GB. I can buy a second kit of the kind of RAM she has to bring her up to 4X1 GB sticks ($34). And get an SSD (thinking Crucial M4, 64 GB, $110). Total of $144.

2. Get her more RAM, but insist on going to 8 GB by using two 2x2 GB kits. I'm leery to mix 2 GB sticks with her old 1 GB sticks (if anybody thinks mixing memory sizes is a good idea, let me know). This could cost me $120. Add in the Crucial M4, total of $264

3. Get a new chip/mobo/RAM and SSD - Asus P8H67-V, i3 2100, 2x4 GB kit of RAM, and a Crucial M4 64 GB, total of $376.

Does anybody know what kind of a limitation it will be running a newer SSD (Crucial M4 or Samsung 830) on a SATA II (3 Gbps) controller? If it's huge, I suppose I could get myself a new SATA III SSD and give her my 80 GB X25-M-G2. "

I don't like options 1 and 2. 3 sounds ok, but, should be a second step to four, which is start with the X25 M G2, and put it in her machine, and see how it runs.

I think that should make a big enough difference that she will be impressed. If it doesn't,
then start looking for a new motherboard, ram, and CPU combination.

Whatever you do, don't throw money away on ram for an old system/motherboard/OS.

I run my server on a SATA II controller:

 

[Adcadet]

For now, I'm moving her from Photoshop CS2 to 5 and giving her my 80 GB Intel X25-M-G2. I'll try to get her to adjust her workflow to first put pictures on the SSD, do the editing there, then move them over to mechanical mass storage when done. If she still wants a little more speed, I'll add in some more RAM. If she still lusts after my computer, I'll go the chip/mobo/RAM route.

 

[Santilli]

Don't think RAM on an old system is the answer. Skip that step, and go to new mobo/cpu/ram if the SSD isn't enough.

 

[time]

I'm leery to mix 2 GB sticks with her old 1 GB sticks (if anybody thinks mixing memory sizes is a good idea, let me know).

I can't see a problem mixing 1GB and 2GB sticks. The board should select the slower timings from the SPDs automatically if they're not the same. This would solve your dilemma by giving you 6GB total while limiting your outlay on RAM to $60. That seems about right considering it can't be used in a more recent motherboard.

That is, buy a single 2x2GB kit (or 2 separate 2GB sticks, this 'matched pair' stuff doesn't make much sense).

 

[Stereodude]

Upgrading her Photoshop to a newer version isn't likely to improve her perceived speed of Photoshop.

 

[ddrueding]

If you have enough RAM (and 4/6GB is enough in this case) having the picture on the SSD isn't going to help that much. Once you open the image, it is in RAM one way or the other until you save it. I'll try to do a test on this right now...

 

[ddrueding]

...yup. Adobe CS5 installed on an SSD, 5 18MP RAW images copied to either the SSD or 4TB SATA drive. +/- <5%, and honestly the HDD seemed faster. Once they were open there was no speed difference, and saving was about the same speed as well. No point in complicating her life with the copy over/copy back step. Having CS5 on the SSD (and having any swap file on the SSD) is the important bit.

 

[Adcadet]

Remember, this is the lady who insists on opening all 20+ pictures to edit at once. But good point about the benefit of having Photoshop itself on an SSD.

 

[sechs]

Make sure the set the SSD as a scratch disk.

 

[time]

So Adcadet, how did your plan pan out for you and your wife?

 

[Adcadet]

She's still working on backing everything up and figuring out what programs she wants installed on the new SSD. I was hoping to do the install this week but it probably won't happen for another week.