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General discussion

Build for Graphics Workstation

Oct 13, 2004 12:33AM PDT

I am looking to collect some ideas before plopping down a large amount of money for a machine that can keep up with my graphics work.

I work in publishing and I use applications like Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator often. I find that I need to run at least two of these applications simultaneously along with the standard Outlook and Internet Explorer. At times, my system slows to a crawl (P4 2.8, 768MB RAM, 128 NVidia Ti4200, 50GB HD). What suggestions would you make to help me modify this? I have tinkered with the idea of dual processors but then there is the P4 Extreme Edition.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Robert

Discussion is locked

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Re: Build for Graphics Workstation
Oct 13, 2004 12:41AM PDT

Next year you will see DUAL-CORE CPUs that will make you cry you paid so dearly for a DUAL-CPU motherboard based solution.

As to your machine crawling, the only time I see this is if the user leaves programs running they are not using. Also, INTERNET EXPLOERER is a great way to let parasites on the machine and again the complaints are similar to yours.

Post if you dare a hijackthis log and let's see if your machine has parasites. I will not do much other than note if I see them.

Bob

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Re: Build for Graphics Workstation
Oct 22, 2004 1:16AM PDT

I also use similar graphic applications and run them simultaneously.

To run those applications simultaneously, you need: a professional graphic card the like nvidia quadro nvs280 or fx500 or ati firegl (128 NVidia Ti4200 is maily design for 3d game applications), and 2 or 3 identical harddisks in raid 0 or raid 5 configuration, (for speedy data transfer between data processing and storage subsystem, as these graphic application uses a large tempfile and stored it in harddisk as scratchdisk. eg. while composing an A0-size poster in photoshop, the tempfile can be blotted to more than 1 gb, and you need to partition your hd into several drives around 20-40gb each), and 1536 MB RAM is the minimun.

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Re: Build for Graphics Workstation
Oct 24, 2004 1:31PM PDT

A dual Opteron system with some 10,000 rpm hard drives would be nice.