Questions on a new Windows machine for Photoshop

I thought I would pose my questions here since we have some high end Photoshop users as well as IT professionals here.

I'm getting ready to build a new Windows based workstation for the primary purpose of Adobe Photoshop. I'm trying to build it to be ready as much as possible for upgrade to Windows Vista once it is tried and true. Some highlights of my new PC will be:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ processor, Abit motherboard supporting 4 Gigabytes of RAM, (buying four 1 Gig sticks), Plextor DVD and CD burners, Western Digital Raptor 150 Gig. 10k RPM hard drive for the operating system, (Windows XP and Photoshop CS), and dual 500 Gig Western Digital Hardrives for storage. I also purchased the new Matrox P650 dual head 128 Meg card with PCIe interface.

I've done some reading about using 4 Gigabytes of memory in Windows XP - and I know it is supported, but I have read some conflicting information, (at least to me), about using XP Home vs XP Professional - getting the machine to recongnize all 4 Gig of memory. Is anyone currently doing this or might have some insight on whether or not this is true, and that I should consider upgrading to XP Pro in the interim? Some of the reading says that the machine may not show a full 4 Gig of memory, but Windows is using that - and some sources say the opposite.

I'm not very literate on a lot of these subjects, so I sure appreciate any feedback I might be able to get.

Thanks!

The only intelligent comment I can make on this is that we have done extensive testing of our AV products on XP Pro and XP Home. The only difference I've seen between the two is that Home is simply a castrated version of Pro. You can't log into a Windows Domain with Home. Unfortunately I can't speak to the 4-gig of RAM issue since we test with insufficient RAM (to make sure we don't crash and burn in low memory situations) but we never test with "too much" RAM

So as far as I know, if you're not running a Windows Domain on your home network, XP Home should work just fine, if you can figure out the truth about the RAM limitation rumors.

Thanks, Curtis. I know with XP Pro you can make a BOOT.ini switch from 2 to 3 gig, allowing Photoshop to utilize up to 3 Gig, (if I understand it right) - it doesn't mention anything about be able to do this with XP Home in the tech bulletin, though. Just Pro and and the server version(s). It sounds like it might cause issues in other ways though, but I still might check it out.

Given my limited knowledge of windows, I would say 4 Gigs of RAM on any flavour of XP should be fine. How efficiently XP uses 4 Gigs is not known. The Athlon 64 bit processors are blazing fast. You could also try the new Intel Centrino Core Duo - Sony is shipping Viao laptops with Centrino Duo and they are selling like hot cakes. I dont use Photoshop so cant comment anything there. Hope this helps.

You will be better off saving your $ on 2 gigs and putting a small raptor (SATA) drive utilitzed ONLY for cache management. Always try to have your PSCS2 floating cache on a drive (SATA and not external) that is not on the same drive as your PS exe. This simple change boosted by PS responsiveness by more than double. I'm running jsut about what you describe except with a Gigbyte MB adn 2gigs of memory (OCZ with heat sinks), and an external Lacie terabye of storage. You can pick these up for $600-700 at egghead. I fell in love with the maxtor one touch until both failed me while I was in Baghdad. Took 2 months but I got most of my pics back. These early one-touch units did not have a built in fan. New ones should be ok. Throw some extra fans in the box!

Randy

Ned, I sent an email to our "lab rat" Dave. Dave keeps our QA and Live Virus labs functioning and he deals with all our hardware issues. The following is his reply:

A 32-bit processor can address only 4GB worth of addresses, and since the PCI devices use up address space, not enough is left to address the whole of the RAM. No matter if you take PCI devices out of the loop, they are counted in most BIOS's. Not certain disabling them would even count.

If you have a 32-bit processor, the problem can't be solved. I think most modern Intel processors support 36-bit addressing (for up to 64GB of RAM), but XP Pro doesn't support that. Windows Server 2003 does (maybe not all editions though, I'm not sure).

If you have a 64-bit processor, you can probably solve the problem by installing a 64-bit OS. The OS can handle more because of the way the addressing happens.

Thanks for the additional comments, guys. I think I will just run it as is, and take advantage of 64 bit computing once Vista is on the market and reliable. I thought about XP 64 bit version, but right now I am leery of going that route in regards to compatibility with drivers and my printer. Thanks again!

There is a difference between XP Home and Pro version. They are not built on the same internal code even though they share the name XP. XP Pro is moe stable, more network aware (both for home networks and internet networks) and more secure.

Most of the workstations I have at my work run XP Pro, although I have to support some workstations at people's homes that have XP Home version, and the Home version is a real pain to support. What is built in and a snap in Pro is a pain to get to work in the Home verison. They just don't run the same.

Vista is not going to be out for awhile, probably not till next year... at least not available to the masses. And after it is out, you can expect a good 6 months of incompatability with drivers, hardware and programs. XP was the same way, which is why so many people stayed with 2000 and even Win 98 for so long. By the time Vista gets out, there are going to be at least 3 more improvements in motherboards, CPU's, bus speeds, hard drives, etc. So buying cutting edge now, will probably be middle of the road by next year. But you will have a nice machine until then.


Mike

I'm reading more and more about the Pro advantage, so I used some of my gallery sales money and added a copy of this version XP to the machine's part list.. I should have it up and running this weekend ....