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Choosing a Computer System for Digital Imaging
I feel there are some good points and some misleading points made in this article. I
am a graphic designer and have more experience in this area than in my hobby
(Photography). I'll start with the accurate points that should be emphasized. RAM,
RAM,RAM - It's like money, you can't have too much. I personally prefer http://
www.memorytogo.com I spent around 2 hundred for 2 gigs for my mack there
almost 2 years ago. Monitors are very important, but LCD's still haven't reached the
quality found in CRTs when comparing dot pitch, aperature, or pixels per inch. As
far as having two monitors, it's more costly by the time one upgrades the video card
and cables then bying one solid 22inch CRT. Personally I chose the Philips
Professional Brilliance, for price/color control capabilities. The best color control
on the market to my knowlede in that found in Lacie monitor calibration systems.
A point of disagreement regarding the need for less quality for desktop publishing.
I produce posters which are 24'x36" and need not only reproducable fine art quality
imaging but also the ability to create an 8pt type face for a copyright. In terms of
storage capacity DVD's are great for archiving but at around 10 bucs a disk, they
are not the choice for backups. I will add some more points when time allows. One
other note in terms of software. Buy at educational pricing, even if it means you
have to pay 180 bucs at the local community college, you save thousands on
software. To view some educational pricing on software like Photoshop,
Pagemaker, Quark or Wacom Intunous Tablets check out http://www.journeyed.
com
-- Kyle Nolan, February 21, 2003
Concerning CPU and RAM choice, currently the way to go is AMD. On a cost and
performance side the Athlon and the P4 are more or less equivalent. One month the
Intel is the fastest, one month the AMD is: it does not really matter what you have,
just buy a CPU one or two steps behind the cutting edge and you will get the best
performance for your bucks (i.e. right now that would be an Athlon XP 2400+).
Where you really save money is on the RAM: RAMBUS modules (the ones used
by the latest P4 motherboards) are about TWICE as expensive per megabyte as
DDR modules (the ones used by Athlon motherboards)! If you want 1 GB of RAM
that can be a nice amount of money, almost the difference between a (good) CD
burner and a (entry level) DVD burner. Speedwise, in principle RAMBUS should
be faster than DDR. In practice you won't see the difference. Last but not least
when shopping for DDR memory, get the PC-2700 modules (333 MHz bus clock),
not the marginally cheaper PC-2100 (266 MHz). Don't buy PC-3200 (400 MHz)
DDR: most motherboards support only 1 (one) PC-3200 module, that is 512 MB of
RAM. If one day you want/need more memory you'll have to throw away your
hugely expensive super-fast PC-3200 module and get two PC-2700. Well done!
Concerning backup devices, IMHO a CD burner doesn't make much sense: I scan
my 35 mm film on a Canon FS4000 and the resulting Photoshop files are around
http://www.photo.net/photo/computers (28 of 33)7/3/2005 2:19:07 AM