Question regarding dual machine and photoshop

[gravitywell]

My fiance is in a biotech lab (grad student) at Vanderbilt University. She's been assembling 20 smaller pictures into large pictures, and doing some minor cut/paste/editing of videos (with another program).

My understanding of a dual machine...is "A computer with two processors" I read the "what is smp" sticky, but I dont know what programs use multiple threads, etc.

Basically....my simple question, would a basic dual setup help my fiance? My current machine (listed in sig.) can be crippled under the weight of 21 images open at once. Would a dual 1700+ system handle the load?

[dustybyrd]

My fiance is in a biotech lab (grad student) at Vanderbilt University. She's been assembling 20 smaller pictures into large pictures, and doing some minor cut/paste/editing of videos (with another program).

My understanding of a dual machine...is "A computer with two processors" I read the "what is smp" sticky, but I dont know what programs use multiple threads, etc.

Basically....my simple question, would a basic dual setup help my fiance? My current machine (listed in sig.) can be crippled under the weight of 21 images open at once. Would a dual 1700+ system handle the load?


i was a biology grad student who did a lot of photoshop editing of images as well...and i currently do some as a postdoc...

i use two dual AMD 2.1ghz machines (see sig)...one at work and one at home....

photoshop is a partially multithreaded application...that is to say...that some of the tools photoshop uses are SMP enabled...many of the tools are single threaded from what i can tell (ie they use up to and not exceeding 50% cpu power on a dual machine...indicating they are not using multiple threads)...i have used some functions that suck 80-90% of total cpu power from my dual, indicating they are multithreaded...

i would say that provided she has at least ~1.5ghz of AMD or p3 tualatin power or 2.2ghz of p4 power then the most important thing to added performance with photoshopping of that nature would be RAM and more RAM...

with 21 images open and being edited, depending on the size of the images, you will quickly run out of RAM...and then you're asking the hard drives to allow scratch disks to do the work...and they're a lot slower...

so depending on your budget...i would get as much RAM as possible...then get as high as FSB as possible with as much CPU power as possible...

i use dual machines because i frequently am running multiple applications at once and dual systems handle that much faster and more stablely...

ALSO...note that you can set the amount of RAM photoshop can use (of your total machine's amount) by going into edit>preferences>memory and image cache....then setting it to whatever % of the total RAM you want photoshop to use...

i use 1gb of RAM in each machine and typically allow photoshop about 700mb....then i use powerpoint at the same time to bring in images for presentations...

[diehrd]

If you want to perform editing on several images at once the dual will provide a smoother more consistant level of performance.And of course the more ram the better.I would be happy to run photoshop 8 with 21 open images for you and let you know how wel my system handles what it is she is doing if you tell me exactly what she is doing...Tony

[gravitywell]

Thank you both for your input!

As soon as she gets back, I'll get the specifics on the images she's using, and what she's doing.

Unfortunatly, if I didn't build a dual machine, it wouldn't be anything "amazing" rather than, dual 1700+'s or something similar. Living off of a single income kinda dampens my play money :) Then again, I will be overclocking it.

[MadSkillzMan]

minor cut n pasting of videos would benefit from SMP as well. I run Ulead media studio pro 7, renders great, little editing or complete special FX.

i run photoshop CS and see great advantage of having a dual with it.

[gravitywell]

I sat down with my fiance today, to watch what she was doing with photoshop. She has 25 images (approximatly 1.3mb filesize each) open, she has to hit Ctrl+L (dont know what its called, effects color haze) and minorly adjust the brightness/haze on the images. After adjusting size, she changes the resolution from 72pixels per inch to 300 pixels per inch (which drops the image size, they are just adjusting the pixels per inch, not the actual number of pixels).

After changing file size, she pairs up the images (similar images of the same slides, one is red, one is blue) and match them, cutting and pasting them overlapping each other onto a new image. She then gets the hard copy of the slide (grayscale instead of black and red/blue). Then accumulates the four images, onto a new image (Four images: Original, Red, Blue, and Red/Blue). So, our 25 images have turned into considerably more.

Understandalby, its easier to just open the three images she needs and once, but I've watched her do it, its monotonous and very time consuming.

The comp in question (in signature) randomly doesn't respond (cursor doesn't even work for a minute or more). Performance can be greatly slowed, even to a standstill.

So, back to my original question, slightly modified....SMP or new mobo/high speed RAM/processor? (running a lame Nforce 1 board with minimal Overclocking abilities, and a Palomino chip that I can get from 1.67 to 1.72!!!)

I'll also mention that we will be purchasing a Canon ZR-90 MiniDV camcorder, as soon as they are released. I haven't ever performed anything involving digital video ro miniDV before, so if I'll be getting into encoding and editing (which I prolly will, if MiniDV is capalble of that) then I'll also be crossing that bridge. (sorry for the horrible sentence)

Maybe I could talk her into letting build a higher quality dual machine with nice RAM ;) (one could hope)

[dustybyrd]

I sat down with my fiance today, to watch what she was doing with photoshop. She has 25 images (approximatly 1.3mb filesize each) open, she has to hit Ctrl+L (dont know what its called, effects color haze) and minorly adjust the brightness/haze on the images. After adjusting size, she changes the resolution from 72pixels per inch to 300 pixels per inch (which drops the image size, they are just adjusting the pixels per inch, not the actual number of pixels).

After changing file size, she pairs up the images (similar images of the same slides, one is red, one is blue) and match them, cutting and pasting them overlapping each other onto a new image. She then gets the hard copy of the slide (grayscale instead of black and red/blue). Then accumulates the four images, onto a new image (Four images: Original, Red, Blue, and Red/Blue). So, our 25 images have turned into considerably more.

Understandalby, its easier to just open the three images she needs and once, but I've watched her do it, its monotonous and very time consuming.

The comp in question (in signature) randomly doesn't respond (cursor doesn't even work for a minute or more). Performance can be greatly slowed, even to a standstill.

So, back to my original question, slightly modified....SMP or new mobo/high speed RAM/processor? (running a lame Nforce 1 board with minimal Overclocking abilities, and a Palomino chip that I can get from 1.67 to 1.72!!!)

I'll also mention that we will be purchasing a Canon ZR-90 MiniDV camcorder, as soon as they are released. I haven't ever performed anything involving digital video ro miniDV before, so if I'll be getting into encoding and editing (which I prolly will, if MiniDV is capalble of that) then I'll also be crossing that bridge. (sorry for the horrible sentence)

Maybe I could talk her into letting build a higher quality dual machine with nice RAM ;) (one could hope)



i just did some of those things you said on my dual 2.1ghz AMD...(and actually those are some of the exact things i did as a graduate student as well)...

anyway...the resizing of the image appears to be multithreaded as over 80% of my cpu resources are used when i resize a 2.5mb file from 72 to 300 pixels/in...

so i would suggest a dual AMD for her purposes...

also, with every 1mb file you are editing in photoshop, 3-4x as much RAM (or more) is required to do photoshop functions on it...so with 25 files open that's over 100mb of RAM used just on those images...not including windows (another ~60-160mb) and the photoshop program itself (another 50-70mb)...and whatever other programs she is running...so that would mean she would need a minimum of 350mb...but in reality i would get at least 1gb of RAM for heavy photoshop use...

get at least dual 1.5ghz+ AMDxp and at least 1gb of RAM and she should have a lot more fun...

and certainly having a dual will mean the cursor shouldn't get stuck at all when doing these tasks...at least mine never does...

[rottenspam]

Aceshardware did a good review on dullies and single CPU systems on Photoshop. It find most often that memory bandwidth played the biggest role in overall performance, and it was pretty clear that a single opteron or P4 could decisevly beat a dullie in the MP2000 range for the same price or less money. But RAM is most likely her bottleneck, and a good raid array may help in matters too.

[gravitywell]

Are there any dual AMD boards with SATA? I've been seriously toying with the idea of dual Raptors.

What RAM do you guys suggest on a single proc system or a dual proc system?

[dustybyrd]

Are there any dual AMD boards with SATA? I've been seriously toying with the idea of dual Raptors.

What RAM do you guys suggest on a single proc system or a dual proc system?


i use a promise SATA RAID card ($50 from newegg) that has 2 SATA ports for RAID, and one IDE port for backup...and i use 2 western digital raptors with it...and one 80mb,8mb cache maxtor with it...

i am not aware of any dual AMD boards (other than opterons) that have SATA native...

i would get kingston hyperX cas2 RAM...pc2700 if for less than 166mhz fsb...

or higher speeds pc3500+ if for more than 166mhz fsb (ie for single proc system)

for photoshop and general use (non gaming...but scientific, etc...use) i would not get a p4...i would get a dual AMDxp...or if i had more money i would get a dual opteron...dual Xeon wouldn't be a bad choice either...

[gravitywell]

Well, I have a strong feeling, this machine would become our scientific and gaming machine :) As my 2000+ is starting to show its age.

I'll have to sit and figure out some numbers, but I'll be looking at Athlon's or Barton's, because I definatly can't afford Opterons (that I know of)


Edit/Add

Ok, I looked at Opteron's on Newegg, the 1.4ghz runs 183 each. But you suggested at least dual 2.0ghz. The 2.0 Opteron's run $799 (lol) which is definatly not in our budget, although we could -maybe- swing the 183 (would just take me longer to get it all together).

Would you stick with the 2.0ghz suggestion? Or could I possibly overclock those 1.4ghz opterons to 2.0? Or is the opteron magically faster than a standard chip?

I'm really sorry for all of the newbie-ish questions. Again, I appriciate all of your answers :)


Edit/add

Okay, I found two Opteron boards on newegg....435 and 515 each....oh dear, that's a lot of money for a motherboard, let alone adding in another 450 for just processors...Unless there are alternatives that I dont know about

[dustybyrd]

Well, I have a strong feeling, this machine would become our scientific and gaming machine :) As my 2000+ is starting to show its age.

I'll have to sit and figure out some numbers, but I'll be looking at Athlon's or Barton's, because I definatly can't afford Opterons (that I know of)


Edit/Add

Ok, I looked at Opteron's on Newegg, the 1.4ghz runs 183 each. But you suggested at least dual 2.0ghz. The 2.0 Opteron's run $799 (lol) which is definatly not in our budget, although we could -maybe- swing the 183 (would just take me longer to get it all together).

Would you stick with the 2.0ghz suggestion? Or could I possibly overclock those 1.4ghz opterons to 2.0? Or is the opteron magically faster than a standard chip?

I'm really sorry for all of the newbie-ish questions. Again, I appriciate all of your answers :)


Edit/add

Okay, I found two Opteron boards on newegg....435 and 515 each....oh dear, that's a lot of money for a motherboard, let alone adding in another 450 for just processors...Unless there are alternatives that I dont know about

if money isn't an issue then get the Xeon or opterons...

but...if it is...

i would say that if you plan on gaming more than using photoshop then probably the best bet would be the p4 2.6c hyperthreader and o/c it to 3.3+ghz...

but if you plan on equal amounts of each or more photoshop use then i would suggest getting the dual AMDxp 2ghz...

another thing to consider is how long will you use this machine? if more than 3 years...then i would go with the dual over the p4 under any circumstances...

because imagine you could right now have a dual 700mhz p3 or a single 1ghz p3 machine...which would you want? my guess would be the dual 700mhz...and for the same reason i would bet that in 4 years having a dual that is slightly slower than the fastest current single cpu would be more enjoyable...

[rottenspam]

MSI sells a dual opteron board for ~$228 on newegg. Remember you need registered ram too...

But as far as I can tell a fast single processor machine will do better than a mid range dual MP. Especially in bandwidth limited tasks. But if going for a dual opteron it won't suffer the same limitations as the older MP platform.

[diehrd]

It would appear to me if you are trying to really help her the dual would be the solution.And if you plant a nice video card in it the games you play will run quite well.So if it is for her primary benifit then dual if it is for a game benifit do a single with a high over clock.

[gravitywell]

It would basically be a gaming machine to help her out. Because its for school, she gets priority of the machine over me playing a game or surfing. I have a Radeon9800pro128mb already. I can't see a dual being horribly slow for gaming (I may be wrong). Basically, I'm looking at building a new machine, with the added benifit of helping her out.

No one really touched back on the MiniDV camcorder. Does that involve encoding or editing? Would a dual benifit that?

And what of the opteron, is their 1.6ghz faster than my 1.6ghz 2000+ ?

[diehrd]

Because you have an XP 2000 and that Radeon 9800 pro I would just build a dual XP system and close the L-5 bridges. That way you save a ton of dough and with that vid card will have a gamers system while helping her out...Dude you need a boad and 1 processor and invest in a good power supply and there ya have a new dual box.....

[dustybyrd]

No one really touched back on the MiniDV camcorder. Does that involve encoding or editing? Would a dual benifit that?

And what of the opteron, is their 1.6ghz faster than my 1.6ghz 2000+ ? [/B]


i totally agree with diehard....with a 9800pro you will be able to play any game with all the eye candy and with expceptional frame rates on a dual xp system...

unless you're loaded the expensive opteron isn't worth the added speed for what you'll be doing...

i don't know about miniDV stuff...

you should be able to get a dual board for ~$150 and another xp processor that you turn into an mp for ~$50 and a powerful powersupply for $65-100...(i would get the antec tp 480 or 550 or the fortron 530)....

check out these forum's classifieds and 2cpu.com's for dual boards...