Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/12/13

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Photoshop hardware requirements?
From: Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 11:58:20 -0800

Ah, finally a topic where I probably have more experience than many others 
on this list.
I have several computers that I custom-built just to run Photoshop, and I 
have one more (the one on which I am typing this message) that was 
store-bought just to run Photoshop.

More RAM is better, but not every computer responds properly to having a 
lot of RAM. For example, the computer on which I am typing this message is 
a Dell Precision 410 with a 400MHz PII processor, 768 meg of memory, the 
fastest SCSI card in the world (an 80 MB/sec LVD PCI), and 3 IBM fast wide 
ultra-3 SCSI disks. This machine ought to be so fast it snaps my neck, but 
it isn't, because the underlying BIOS and Windows 98 don't know how to deal 
with all of that RAM.

At home I have a machine that I built myself that has a 300 MHz Pentium II 
processor, 512 meg of memory, 2 Ultra DMA/66 IDE cards, and 4 Ultra DMA/66 
10,000 RPM disks. It uses an Asus P2B motherboard and an ASUS bios. I have 
a SCSI card in it, but I use it to run my scanner and DAT drive, and don't 
look to it for disk performance.

My office computer, the Dell that was factory-configured to run photoshop, 
is about 1/4 the speed of my homebrew special whose CPU is 25% slower and 
which has less RAM. This is because the speed at which Photoshop runs is 
determined by how fast it can get its data, and that involves bus, bios, 
interrupts, and so forth.

I've tried striping RAID controllers, but neither NT4SR4 nor Win98 deals 
with them very well.

But my measly little 233-MHz PowerMac G3, the beige one, with only 384 megs 
of RAM and only one SCSI disk, outperforms all of my PCs. I'd say that my 
biggest Mac is twice as fast as my fastest PC for photoshop use. This is 
because the memory architecture of the Mac, and the Mac's ability to get 
data in and out of disks quickly, is just better suited to photoshop.

If you have less than 256 megs of RAM, you can speed up your photoshop 
performance by adding more RAM.
If you want to work with big disks and don't want to invest in SCSI you can 
buy for about $75 a PCI IDE Ultra DMA card and add another UDMA disk to 
that. But if you are buying a computer whose only purpose is to run 
Photoshop, and you want it to be as fast as possible, buy a Mac.