YACQ (...yet another computer question)

[addo]

Really aimed at a somewhat rare breed - people who actively use graphics-heavy industry software and also know computer insides.

I am at the point where replacement of the old box (circa 2003) is sensible as a hedge against serious failure.

People send me - for work - PDFs which may be drawn at A1 or A0 size, and have deep "layering" of graphics like shading, markups, labelling.

What I generally need is a machine which can open these files smartly, scroll evenly and apply changes promptly.

Oddly enough it seems many of the "gaming" computers have good processors and decent amounts of RAM to cope with rapid refreshes and high resolution graphics - not a million miles from the reality of what I do (although the "shoot 'em up" buttons are not fitted, much as I may wish for them). Am I barking up the right tree here?

Working budget would be around $1000 at local Fleabay prices - say the kind of box that might be £700 (inc VAT) online in the UK. So...

Can anyone nominate basic specs to look for, and things to avoid? Advice much appreciated!

Cheers, Adam.

[KP]

As long as the app supports running on multiple threads(or cores) then there shouldn't be a problem. I'd offer one of my rigs to you but shipping could be an issue

Generally with adobe you don't need a powerful gpu just a good set of matched ram, processor and fast HDD, though ssd's are coming down in price and going up in size they make a good buy for outright performance if you don't mind he highly degraded lifetime compared to a real HDD.

For what you need about £500 should easily do what you need and not break a sweat!

[myglaren]

It is quite a while since I built a new machine, probably about time I replaced this one so I am rather out of the loop but I think that your assessment of a gaming machine being close to what you need is about right - try one with a pair of graphics cards for the sort of graphics processing power that you are aiming for - unfortunately a pair of high spec graphics cards would swallow your budget and then some

I buy most of my stuff from Overclockers UK who pretty much specialise in the sort of thing you are looking for.
They are very much value for money rather than cheap.

[Kowalski]

PDFs are 2D graphics, so a powerful 3d graphics card won't be a whole lot of help. Unless you're playing with CAD software e.g. AutoCAD or 3D modelling software e.g. 3DStudioMax, you don't need to spend money on anything other than a standard graphics card. From past experience of playing with large images, having lots of RAM was the most important thing.

If your current computer is from 2003, a cheap, basic PC is going to be a lot faster. My advice would be to buy a standard PC today with half your budget and spend the other half of the budget on another standard PC in 3 years time!

I'd be looking at an AMD quad core, e.g. Athlon X4, 3GB of RAM and at least a 500GB hard disk. If you're going over 3GB of RAM, you'll need a 64 bit version of Windows to make use of it.

[addo]

Thanks; I was thinking quad core and 64 bit Windoze. Is 8GB of RAM overkill?

Autocrud is something I may experiment with - albeit on a student licence through a mate. However it would probably be fairly basic domestic housing stuff - not complete walk-throughs of shopping malls or anything like that.

Looking at Fleabay it seems cheaper to buy than build - at least in Oz; even when you tweak a shelf spec machine it still comes out at less than component prices.

Cheers, Adam.

[Xaccers]

It's often the case these days that an off the shelf PC, even with very good spec, can be cheaper than a self built jobbie (how times have changed!).
Get one with at least 4GB of RAM, with the ability to take more, so make sure not all memory slots are full, otherwise if you find out you need 8GB instead, you'll have to dump the 4GB you've already got.
If there's the bleeding edge and cutting edge of technology, I normally go for the rusty edge as quite often in real terms there's very little difference in the ends of the market.

Consider a decent LCD tv as your monitor, I use a 32" cheapo Tescos one, which does the job well, although if there's small text on the screen I have to zoom in (danielle for some reason won't let me use her 40" Sony), assuming you get a graphics card with HDMI out. Bonus of this is the audio uses the same lead so no need for extra speakers.

[magictorch]

Every Designer or technician I have ever worked with has always sworn by Apple for image, document creation and manipulation

Jamie

[KP]

Every Designer or technician I have ever worked with has always sworn by Apple for image, document creation and manipulation

Jamie

Obviously they make enough money to buy a nice 2k machine though...

Win 7 64 Bit and 8 gig of ram should see you fighting fit for a fair while.

I would go with a 2 HDD approach, one for data and one for the OS thats fast. Everytime you install an app take an ISO of the CD/DVD and keep it on the data drive and then every year or so wipe the machine(just the OS drive!) and start again and it will feel like you have a new machine

Also dont forget to hoover it out every few months...

Otherwise they end up like this [/url]

[jgra1]

I have used Acad a fair bit Adam, mainly in 2d mode.. although this was a long time ago now..


not much help with the other questions, although in my job we often work with 20 Gig images and most of us here are on Windowz 7, quad core and about 8GB of ram.. at least that's what we are being upgraded to right now, as I understand it..

j

[Xaccers]

Every Designer or technician I have ever worked with has always sworn by Apple for image, document creation and manipulation

Jamie

Mostly because every designer or technician they have ever worked with also had macs.
Back in the day, it was the sensible choice, most design programs only really worked well on macs, but for the last decade or so PCs have been the cheaper equivalent option, which is one of the reasons why apple won't support adobe flash on many of their products in retaliation for adobe translating their "mac" programs successfully to PCs, thus giving people that alternative.
If you ask mac business users why they use macs, most say it's because other people in their industry already use macs so it saves on researching the actual options.

[magictorch]

I must hasten to add I have never owned one myself and until recently have always used Pentium 4's running Linux or FreeBSD.

If you have spare budget buy a NAS or build one from your old machines. Try and keep data seperate or at least backed up from the main device.

Thats my 4p worth

[Kowalski]

Consider a decent LCD tv as your monitor, I use a 32" cheapo Tescos one, which does the job well, although if there's small text on the screen I have to zoom in (danielle for some reason won't let me use her 40" Sony), assuming you get a graphics card with HDMI out. Bonus of this is the audio uses the same lead so no need for extra speakers.

For those whose eyesight isn't as sharp as it used to be this is a good suggestion, one caveat is if you're going to use a TV as a monitor, you'll want one that does full 1080p, otherwise you'll be stuck at 1366x768 resolution instead of a more usable 1920x1080.

[addo]

I'm probably OK with the present 19" monitor - for my usage it's about crunching power rather than visibility.

Rolling my eyes at peripheral costs these days - a toner cartridge for my ancient fax costs more than a new machine. (Odd as it may seem, faxes are still used heavily in the building trade here!)

[Xaccers]

I must hasten to add I have never owned one myself and until recently have always used Pentium 4's running Linux or FreeBSD.

If you have spare budget buy a NAS or build one from your old machines. Try and keep data seperate or at least backed up from the main device.

Thats my 4p worth

I've started using dropbox to make transferring files to my mobile and work laptop easier while I'm away from home.
They give you 2GB of space free which they increase if you install on more computers or get others to sign up.
Anything saved in the dropbox folder or subfolders is automatically uploaded to their servers, and there's the ability to access previous versions I believe (similar to shadow copy in windows which is a godsend at work).
Of course as it's a 3rd party server, you have no control over how secure it is (something people seem to forget with cloud computing) so be aware that if you're working on sensitive documents there is always the possibility that such a service could be hacked.

[addo]

Mostly sorted on the specs now (built around a Core i7 2600K CPU), getting hung up on graphics cards.

Looking for good suggestions on cards, must have dual DVI (not linked). 1GB or more, wondering how much difference between DDR3 and 5 if not playing shoot 'em up games.

"HIS" branded stuff seems good value - a red herring? Working budget for a card AUD$220 (£140) including postage.


As a side note, the prefab systems here have some gotchas. By the time you purchase Win7/64B (they are loaded with a trial version) and upgrade to 8GB of name brand RAM plus add a respectable PSU you are back at being cheaper to build by a couple of hundred...