[Leica] OT - Best PC Setup for Photoshop Question

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

I've been busy, so I haven't weighed in to this conversation.
If I wanted to buy a dedicated computer to run Photoshop and Mac wasn't an 
option, I would get a Sun Ultra 40 configured with Windows XP Professional 
x64 Edition:

If money was no object, I'd get 2 dual-core Opteron processors, 8 GB of 
memory (no point getting any more than this; Photoshop CS2 can only use 3GB) 
with the NVIDIA Quadro MVS 285 graphics card, and 4 disks. The boot disk 
would be 80GB SATA, and the other three would be 250GB 7200RPM SATA2. I'd 
use one of the 250GB SATA2 disks as my home directory, and then I'd mirror 
the other two in a RAID 0 configuration and use the mirrored pair as 
Photoshop's scratch disk. I estimate that this configuration 
would cost about US$10K, though I can't get through to any Sun pricing sites 
tonight to verify that guess.

When Photoshop CS3 comes out, I'd expect it to be 64-bit clean, and then you 
will really get your money's worth out of those Opterons.

If $10K is too much, then go with 1 dual-core processor, 4GB of memory, and 
2 disks; put your photoshop scratch storage and your home directory on the 
big disk and use an 80GB boot.

Brian Reid
LUG Saloon Keeper