New computer - Is this any good?

SMT

SMT

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Simon
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I'm looking at a PC or maybe MAC upgrade in the near future. TBH I've really lost touch with the latest greatest hardware specs etc., over the past few years, so would like some advice please.

I'm looking to run Photoshop CS5 on the new machine and process RAW files from my 5D MKII.

I came across this Lenovo Ideacentre B310 on Amazon. Seems like a great price on the face of it?

Thanks - Simon.
 
To be honest its rubbish, the sceeens on all the all in one models except the iMac and the Dell XPS One 24 are rubbish, horrible viewing angles and they just stick a plate of glass on the front just to improve contrast

The Ram is relativly slow at 1066 Mhz and its only an i3 processor which is still old dual core technology

Go for something like this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320631501599 with a seperate screen
 
Gary Coyle said:
The Ram is relativly slow at 1066 Mhz and its only an i3 processor which is still old dual core technology
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i3 isn't old dual core technology - it's based on the Clarkdale architecture which was new for the first gen ix processors. It might "only" have 2 cores, but it's still quite a bit faster than the old core 2 duos. Whilst 1066 may be a bit slower than current (the latest ix range use 1333MHz), but DDR3 is way faster than DDR2.

As to which one to get, I'd agree with the others - get a separate desktop and a decent screen (refurb Dell 2209WA off ebay perhaps?)
 
arad85 said:
i3 isn't old dual core technology - it's based on the Clarkdale architecture which was new for the first gen ix processors. It might "only" have 2 cores, but it's still quite a bit faster than the old core 2 duos.
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Well not strictly true, it might be faster under certain situations but you need to be multi tasking with several applications running and working to actually notice, to be honest for what i run my core 2 duo 3.33 out performs any standard i7 quad core, too many people get hung up on the latest processor speeds and get annoyed when running an i7 and just browsing and emailing they dont notice a blind bit of difference, if youre gonna be running photoshop and processing multiple RAW images and doing some intensive video encoding at the same time then yes it might have the edge but stick some extra ram in and that negates the difference.

all of that sort of contradicts my first post but it is true
 
Gary Coyle said:
Well not strictly true, it might be faster under certain situations but you need to be multi tasking with several applications running and working to actually notice, to be honest for what i run my core 2 duo 3.33 out performs any standard i7 quad core, too many people get hung up on the latest processor speeds and get annoyed when running an i7 and just browsing and emailing they dont notice a blind bit of difference, if youre gonna be running photoshop and processing multiple RAW images and doing some intensive video encoding at the same time then yes it might have the edge but stick some extra ram in and that negates the difference.

all of that sort of contradicts my first post but it is true
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What I meant was clock for clock faster. Clearly it's silly to suggest that a 2GHz newer gen processor will be faster than a 3.3GHz older gen processor. There are two "standard" i7's now, first and second gen. Clock for clock, the newer the architecture, the faster the processor (as Intel hone their microarchitecture). That is, a quad core first gen ix running at 3.33 will be faster than a core 2 duo at 3.33. A second gen ix at 3.33 will be faster than either of the other two. For general day-to-day usage, newer architecture chips at the same clock speed will be faster. Rule of thumb is for most people (i.e. non video/gamers/togs), higher clock speeds = better performance, although you do have to factor into that a balance as slower older disks will limit things like program load times.

If you're photoshopping or video editing, you need a balance of memory vs processor power & I/O (disks). PS/editing is something that can be nicely parallelised so more cores over clock speed will help. I've been able to get my 8 cores on my i7 to run flat out when encoding video and applying filters and given I have a good dollop of clock speed advantage over your core 2 duo (I'm running at 4.3GHz), I'm willing to bet it would be a tad quicker for everything ;)

As to memory, 4G will probably do most people, but anyone dealing with decent sized raws would be advised to get 8G. I've not been able to get Lightroom to go over 2G of memory usage in real life even though I have 16G installed. PS will suck memory though (think I've maxed out at around 12G used - currently have 7.2G used). Lightroom (as it doesn't suck all available memory) should benefit from a separate scratch disk though.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Perhaps it might be better if I could get some help identifying what minimum spec components I should be looking at. I don't need to have the latest and I guess most expensive technology if it's not really going to make a huge difference to what I am going to be using it for.

To put it in perspective my current PC is about 7 years old running a 2.66Ghz Celeron and 2GB of seemingly very slow RAM. :eek:
 
SMT said:
Thanks for the replies.

Perhaps it might be better if I could get some help identifying what minimum spec components I should be looking at. I don't need to have the latest and I guess most expensive technology if it's not really going to make a huge difference to what I am going to be using it for.

To put it in perspective my current PC is about 7 years old running a 2.66Ghz Celeron and 2GB of seemingly very slow RAM. :eek:
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OK. Assuming raw processing of 5DII images:

Min memory: 4G, desirable 8G
Min disk: 500GB, 1T preferable, but with a backup strategy
OS: Win7 64bit (the 64bit will allow you to see more than 3G of memory)
Processor: one of the new Intel processors (i3/i5/i7). There are 2 generations of these. You can tell them apart as the newer gens have 4 digits (and an optional letter) after them e.g. i5-xxx first gen, i5-2xxx second generation.
i3 = low end
i5 = mid range
i7 = higher performance

for the second gen processors, i3 = 2 CPUs each with 2 threads (looks like 4 CPUs), i5 = 4 CPUs each with 1 thread, i7 = 4 CPUs each with 2 threads (making it look like 8 CPUs). The i5 and i7 CPUs will also self overclock by about 10% when needed (this is called Turbo Boost).

Choice depends on budget, but I'd go second gen with either i5 or i7. Take a look at the benchmarks on this page: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/15 to see what the relative performance is of processors you're looking at.
 
I'm pretty sure that Ideacentre are trying to rip off the imac concept, but using a cheap and nasty TN panel instead of an IPS panel like an imac (so colours will suck)
 
I have a macbook laptop and a desktop pc, i use the laptop for just about everything it never lets me down, never crashes and is much faster than my newer pc. I use iphoto for photography on the apple the only downside on my macbook is the battery.
 
chrizzy184 said:
I have a macbook laptop ... never crashes and is much faster than my newer pc.
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And presumably is both more expensive and a faster processor. Really, if someone who owns a Mac says that they've had anything other than better performance for more cost we can have a mini-weekend celebration!
 
PS. I can't remember the last time my Win PC crashed, and it is faster performance than any Mac available (including MacPros) at a fraction of the cost.................. <sigh> I win, I win.... :rolleyes: (if only we had a forum smiley that was rolleyes... :rolleyes: :D)
 
arad85 said:
PS. I can't remember the last time my Win PC crashed, and it is faster performance than any Mac available (including MacPros) at a fraction of the cost.................. <sigh> I win, I win.... :rolleyes: (if only we had a forum smiley that was rolleyes... :rolleyes: :D)
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Most people either dont know or forget that both machines use exactly the same hardware, the ONLY difference is the OS
 
arad85 said:
PS. I can't remember the last time my Win PC crashed, and it is faster performance than any Mac available (including MacPros) at a fraction of the cost.................. <sigh> I win, I win.... :rolleyes: (if only we had a forum smiley that was rolleyes... :rolleyes: :D)
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:lol:

my laptops currently on a 2:11:28:39 uptime (and thats low because i SP1 final release'd windows 7).. probably wont reboot it until the next round of updates hit our WSUS server on the 8th.
 
Gary Coyle said:
Most people either dont know or forget that both machines use exactly the same hardware, the ONLY difference is the OS
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Precisely. And once you're doing actual CPU processing, it's only the raw CPU power that matters. The OS/UI just work in different ways.
 
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