What should I be looking for in a new computer

I'm having a lot of trouble with my current computer in that things go really slow and I get messages about high CPU use or high memory use. Mostly when I'm in PSE9 but sometimes other places as well. It took over 3 hours to back up about 9K images to a new external hard drive. That seems excessive. What I've got now is an HP desktop with a Intel Pentium Dual CPU @2.2GHz, and 2 GB of RAM. I run Windows Vista. Any thoughts about how much computing power and memory I would need? I read a Blog from a magazine columnist and he said you really don't need lots of computing power but need memory and a good monitor. I do plan to talk with the folks at Puget Systems but I'd like a little knowledge to ask intelligent questions before doing so. Advice and recommendation appreciated.

Peter

Hi, Peter - lots of collective knowledge here, and you're sure to get some good ideas. (not from ME - I'm very computer ILliterate) . In the meantime, do a search here on "computers" or "PC recommendations" etc. See the "search engine" above the green line at the top here.
Sandy

Peter, I have a Puget Systems computer. It is, without a doubt, the best machine I've ever used. I suggest that you go to Puget's site and send them an e-mail, or give them a call, and tell them what your computing needs are for now and in the near future. They will help you get what you want and they will not try to sell you something you don't need.

Here are the specs for my computer, as built:

Motherboard: Asus P8H67-M EVO REV 3.0 Micro-ATX
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K QUAD CORE 3.3GHz 95W
Ram: Kingston 16GB DDR3-1333 (4x4GB)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GT 430 1GB Silent
Primary Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6 Gb/s
Secondary Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6 Gb/s
CD / DVD: Asus 24x DVD-RW Lightscribe SATA (black)
Case: Antec Mini P180 (Black)
Power Supply: Antec TruePower 650W Power Supply
CPU Cooling: Scythe Katana 3 CPU Cooler
Keyboard: Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 (Keyboard/Mouse)
Ext. Drive: Western Digital External USB2/SATA 1.0TB Drive with free Automatic Backup and Restore Set-up
OS: Windows 7 Professional: 64-bit OEM SP1
Software: Security-Microsoft Security Essentials

I use my computer for most of my computing needs, including image work in PSCS5. It worked right out of the box and continues to perform quickly and flawlessly six months later.

Your current machine is running up against two bottlenecks. First, Vista is CPU and RAM intensive. A 2.2 Ghz Pentium and 2 GB of RAM is minimal for decent system performance. If you add image work in PS on top of that, your system is doing a lot of read/writes to the disk for the Windows paging file and the PS scratch disk. Disk read/writes take time, so your system slows down.

In the near term, add another 1 GB ram stick; it's cheap and effective. Also, stop any programs that run at startup that can be started manually when needed. If you need help doing this, let us know. Lastly, delete uneeded files, uninstall old programs you don't use and then defragment your hard drive. These few things will give a marked increase in performance.

--P

I agree with everything Preston said.

I would also take a look at a solid state drive for the fastest possible drive. They're still pricey, but would be very good for just PS processing work, not necessarily for storing large amounts of data.

You need more RAM to run Elements and Vista, which is a notorious resource hog.
Before you spend a lot of your hard earned money on a new system, spend a little of it on as much RAM as your current computer can accept (8GB total would be optimal) and an upgrade to Windows 7 instead. Your current CPU should be plenty good for image processing. I'll bet you money that you'll see a significant difference for the fraction of the cost of a new computer.

Robert X. Cringely said, "No computer can be too fast, have to much RAM or too much hard disk space." And I'd add, "Or too good a monitor." Cringely may be a pseudonym, but he's right. If you're like me, you spend more time behind a computer monitor than you do behind a viewfinder. That's argues for a certain budget priority. I'm a big fan of Macintosh computers, and I urge you to look at them. If only because life is to short for Vista. But Puget Sound has some pretty good products.

Please do yourself a favor and check out a Mac. I finally did. They just work without all the problems associated with PC's. There support is second to none! Good Luck, Conrad

Please do yourself a favor and check out a Mac. I finally did. They just work without all the problems associated with PC's. There support is second to none! Good Luck, Conrad

Peter, I'll add a bit to what John said above. Before spending money on more RAM, check to see how much RAM your machine can use. Older motherboards and BIOS may not support more than 4GB, so do check this out.

Also, if you decide to upgrade to Win 7 be sure your machine is capable of doing so. You'll also need to ensure that your programs and hardware are compatible. I do not know if your machine is 64-bit compatible. If it is, this is the way to go because 64-bit will accept much more RAM and performance is much improved over 32-bit. If you can upgrade to Win7, I suggest Win7 Pro-SP1, 64-bit. There is a MS tool you can download and run that will tell you what is compatible, and what is not. Win 7 Upgrade Advisor.

So, take a look at what it would cost to upgrade your current box vs purchasing a new one. Be sure to factor in your time and effort, and the inevitable frustration index.

Oh, one more thing about Puget Systems. When you receive your machine, it will be clean--no trial cr*pware, advertising or any of that BS. It will have the OS and MS Security Essentials (if you want it) on a clean and defraged drive. This was a big point for me as I was able to install my programs and get right to work without having to uninstall a bunch of junk.

--P

I would go for a Mac, also, even though they are more expensive. BIG ISSUE though, you would need to re-invest in your software for the Mac.

Don't know how long you have had your system. Get a Systems Utility software that will run on your system and let it check it out. After long term, there are usually tons of disk problems that the Utility software can fix. Also, as someone stated, do a disk defragmentation. You usually have to boot using a CD in order to defrag your system disk. You did not say how much of your current disk is being used up. If you are getting low on disk space, you WILL have problems with programs that do alot of disk swaps between disk and main memory. Even with a lot of main memory, some of these programs still use disk space for your operations.

9000 images is alot of data. Are these jpg's, tiff's, or RAW? Are they huge files each? 3 hours might have been fine.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone and particularly the advice about upgrading my current PC. Microsoft analyzed my machine and said I could upgrade to Win7 but only the 32 bit. HP website said with my configuration I can only go to 4 G of RAM which is double what I have but not the 8 that might give better results. I'll think on this a while. The extra RAM and a new OS might be enough to stall buying a whole new unit for a while. I'll also go through my hard drive and uninstall unwanted stuff HP loaded on and do a defrag. Enough little things might add up to a real improvement.

Hi Peter
RAM is fairly cheap and can be an effective upgrade if you're strapped for cash. Check out crucial.com

Buck - I bumped into crucial while doing some checking around but knew nothing of them. Sounds like they are a decent outfit, so I'll look closer at their pricing, etc. They had what looked like a pretty good engine for analyzing the computer and matching it to compatible upgrade parts. Thanks.

Peter,

I've ordered from Crucial in the past. Everything went well. I recommend Kingston RAM. The performance is excellent, and the prices reasonable. The fancy RAM that's out there is not cost effective, imho.

If you are going to upgrade your RAM, I suggest you replace all of it. Get two-2GB sticks, non ECC, DDR2. Given the age of your motherboard, it may not be able to use the latest DDR3 RAM, but you might check to be sure.

--P

You should see a big difference with 4GB of RAM (Kingston or Crucial) and Win7. As I re-read your original post, I got to thinking that 9000 is a very large number of image files and, depending upon the file format, 3 hours may not be that unreasonable as Troup noted.

"...I got to thinking that 9000 is a very large number of image files and, depending upon the file format, 3 hours may not be that unreasonable..."

I agree with John and Troup on this. 9K images is a pile! If the connection to the external drive is USB, then 3 hours is not unreasonable at all.

--P

Yeah, it was USB 2.0. Just seemed like a lot of time. But now that it's done all I need to do are the updates which should take way less time. Thanks everyone for all of the information, it has been very helpful and may save me quite a few $$# in the short run. I realize I eventually will have to upgrade but I hope this will be a reasonable solution for now. I'll report back on the outcome of the upgrades. - Peter

I just took the plunge and bought my first MAC BOOK PRO. I have had it for 2 weeks now. I'm still uploading all my programs but the guy had be sold on a lot of features. IT IS FAST! TOP OF THE LINE. I have been a PC person for 25 years. Its a learning curve but I'm liking it. Also they said that I should get 7 years out of this. I got 7 years out of my GATWAY notebook so for the money that was the way to go for me. Good luck and if you have a MAC store go to it and check it out.

Peter, my computer is not too different from yours, Dell, 2 MB RAM, Vista and CS2, and I'm starting to see the end of the line somewhere in the future, but I don't think I have any huge slowdowns like you've described. It would be pretty risk free to clean up your hard drive of unused programs, defrag, run a decent utilities program and registry cleaner, maybe transfer big files to an external drive, and maybe add a little RAM. Guess most of that has already been said, but just saying I'm getting by with a similar system and hoping to get a little more use from it. My RAM expansion slots are maxed out so technology will catch up with me before long.

Roger,

I think you meant 2 GB, rather than MB for you RAM! Anyway, if your machine is using a Pentium 4 CPU, the motherboard should be able to support up to 4GB of RAM. You might want to check the motherboard specs to be sure.

If your board can support that much RAM, replace all of your existing RAM sticks with new ones. It will make a big difference.

--P

Preston, Thanks for the correction. My bad. Also, thanks for the suggestion on replacing the RAM sticks. I will look into it further. I'm giving my present machine maybe another year and I'd love to have your system or similar. It looks about perrfect.