From: Tom C
From: Doug Franklin <[email protected]>
On 2012-09-10 18:23, Darren Addy wrote:
Not a lot to input here, but I think the most important considerations
should be: CPU horsepower (i7), maximum RAM (and I'd load it up,
preferably 16GB minimum), and connectivity [...]
I disagree, to a point. In his shoes, I'd get less CPU, more RAM, and
faster storage. Photos have a huge impact on storage, especially if
you're using Adobe programs (assuming they're still doing the 'we know
better than the OS how to manage memory' thing).
Even though I've worked in IT for 32 years, I'll be the first to admit
that I don't know it all. Each (I) tend to work in niches of IT and
therefore many areas are outside our (my) realm of specific expertise.
Technology is moving at such a pace, that what one knew 3 years ago
doesn't hold sway today. I work in business applications software
development. Therefore hardware is generally outside my area, though I
understand terminology and concepts.
I'd like an i7 CPU. I can't tell the difference between the various
versions of it. Yeah I see the minor differences in speed and cache,
but in real noticeable terms what does that mean? Is it worth $200 or
$500 for a different version? I suspect not.
More RAM? I think that could make a noticeable difference. 16G vs 24G
vs 32G? I have no idea other than that more could be better but also
possibly overkill.
I haven't researched the mSATA drive stuff that's available. Can
someone explain what that means?
My gut tells me that in addition to CPU, RAM and SSD drives are the
items that will enhance performance as far as speed is concerned. The
slowest component in a system will drag down all other others.
One of the workshops I attended as part of the annual convention for
Professional Photographers of NC was a short class on specifying a
computer optimized for Photoshop. I'll try to summarize succinctly.
Intel i7 - offered in several tiers. The second tier is good enough for
PhotoShop and has a really big price discount off the top tier CPU.
Probably moot for laptops. You're going to get whatever the manufacturer
chooses. If the manufacturer offers several different CPUs, choose the
one with the biggest L1 cache.
Hard-drives - 3 of them; boot, scratch & storage. A laptop won't do
this, but there are a bunch that have the option for two hard-drives.
The key is to try to put PhotoShop's scratch disk on a different drive
from Windows virtual memory. Hard-drives are the easiest thing to
upgrade later, even on a laptop.
RAM - RAM is cheap (relatively) it's easier to just max it out. Whatever
the maximum the motherboard will accept is how much you "need", because
if you buy the RAM when you buy the motherboard, there's no worry later
if you'll be able to find the right RAM to upgrade. If you have enough
RAM, PhotoShop will never use the scratch-disk.
Video - should have 1Gig of ram itself & support Open-GL.
The key point here is RAM. Max it out from the very start, because
that's going to be the most difficult (most expensive) to upgrade later.
You can frequently get a big discount on RAM from the manufacturer if
you "upgrade" to max RAM when you order your laptop.
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