Thinking of getting a Desktop PC - Graphics Cards

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-Rob-

Say Cheese!...Oh, and call me Susan
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I've been using a laptop at home for the last 4 years or so but I'm thinking of getting a desktop now that I have the space to put one. The problem is I have no idea what to get. My budget isn't particularly high, maybe £500 in total but I want to get the best performance possible for processing my photos on. I'll use it for the internet and general office stuff too but primarily for photos (Photoshop CS3).

I have looked at desktops with an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 4Gb of Ram and about 500Gb HDD which I think will be fine. What I'm clueless about is how good the graphics card needs to be. I don't understand them at all. I looked at one machine that had the above spec with a NVIDIA GeForce 7100 (shared) graphics card. What does it mean that it is shared? Is it built in to the motherboard and can't be upgraded? Higher spec machines have cards like the 1GB ATI Radeon HD4850 graphics. Does the 1Gb act like a RAM just for the graphic processing meaning the higher the better/faster?

If I'm just doing photos and not gaming do I really need to worry that much about what card is in there?

Any help or advice would be very much appreciated.
 
Yeah, Shared means it is built into the motherboard and 'shares' the system RAM. Avoid like the plague!

CS4 will take advantage of the graphics card, but only for the fancy graphics stuff like throwing the image around using the hand tool.

Photoshop is more memory intensive than it is processor, so go for a system that has a discreet graphics card and plenty of RAM. I process 1Gb film scans on my system and it has 4GB and thats plenty :D
 
Thanks Gandhi. So I'll avoid the shard/built in ones. Do I really need a 1Gb card though or would 256k or 512k be enough if I had 4Gb of RAM too? The 1Gb graphics cards only seem to come as standard on the top of the range and more expensive machines but if the concensus of opinion is that I need a top graphics card then I'll stretch my budget. If it's going to be a waste then I'll stick to what I can afford.
 
the 4850 is mild overkill but for the price it's at is a generally good card, main thing to consider is what resolution you're running your screen at but either way even a modern inbuilt graphics card can cope easily with a standard 19-22" screen
 
Are you planning on building the PC yourself, or buying a pre-built PC? If you do plan to build it yourself then that would make the budget a bit better.

A good card that would work well with Photoshop smoothly will be a Nvidia 8800GTS, or a 9600GT. I've built a couple of PC's, so if you need any help if you intend to build one, throw a PM my way!
 
alexkidd said:
even a modern inbuilt graphics card can cope easily with a standard 19-22" screen
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I hadn't even considered that. Does the size of the screen affect the performance of the graphics card? I'll probably get something in the region of a 19 to 22" screen so does that mean if the screen isn't massive then a half decent graphics card will cope just fine?
 
Pieface said:
Are you planning on building the PC yourself, or buying a pre-built PC? If you do plan to build it yourself then that would make the budget a bit better.

A good card that would work well with Photoshop smoothly will be a Nvidia 8800GTS, or a 9600GT. I've built a couple of PC's, so if you need any help if you intend to build one, throw a PM my way!
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I've heard a lot of people say that building your own is a much cheaper way of doing it but I just don't have the knowledge to be able to do it. I am OK at using computers but building one is a whole different ball game.

If anyone local to Preston knows what to do and fancies building one for me for less than I can buy one for then give me a shout. I'd happily consider it.
 
I've built a couple of PCs' which I have been using for PS and Lightroom. On both occations I have used motherboards (MoBos) with built in graphics capability. Never had any performance problems. Important performance criteria seems to be plenty of RAM and stacks of HDD space.

If you get a MoBo with a couple of expansion slots, you can always upgrade by adding a graphics card at a later date.
 
aye basically most graphics render 2d without any problem these days 1920x1080 and above it starts to get a bit ****y i'd say but even the most basic graphics cards shouldn't really moan a great deal about photoshop on a standard sized display

a 3xxx or 4xxxx series from ati or nvidia equivalent will be fine imho (no doubt someone will disagree though)

and yeah, ram is muchly important but 4gb or over you're going to need a 64 bit operating system to address it properly
 
I can easily build one for you. I move up to Preston in less than 4 weeks (Going to UCLAN), and I can do it within a few days if you want.
 
Pieface said:
I can easily build one for you. I move up to Preston in less than 4 weeks (Going to UCLAN), and I can do it within a few days if you want.
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OOOooo on a sidenote, I'm the new treasurer of Preston Photographic Society and we're always on the lookout for new members. Our new season starts in about 4 weeks so if you're interested then come along and see what you think.

http://prestonphotographicsociety.org/index.htm

As for building me a computer. If you could PM me an approximate spec and what it'd cost then I could be interested. I'm in no rush to buy as my laptop is doing OK for now but I would like a desktop in the not too distant future.
 
If you're on a budget, get a secondhand Radeon X1900XT 512MB from eBay. They are excellent cards, fully compatible with Photoshop CS4 and have two digital outputs, so you can hang twin monitors off it if you want. You can probably pick one up for less than £50, which is an absolute bargain.
 
-Rob- said:
OOOooo on a sidenote, I'm the new treasurer of Preston Photographic Society and we're always on the lookout for new members. Our new season starts in about 4 weeks so if you're interested then come along and see what you think.

http://prestonphotographicsociety.org/index.htm

As for building me a computer. If you could PM me an approximate spec and what it'd cost then I could be interested. I'm in no rush to buy as my laptop is doing OK for now but I would like a desktop in the not too distant future.
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Just give me a budget and I will look into it for you and will send you a list sometime this week.

And I may have to come to the society, as long as it's not that far away from the Uni as I'm not taking any form of travel with me.
 
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