What computer?

[NMS]

I am in the process of purchasing another PC but this time I want something which is very powerful.

My requirements are graphic and web design... actually the graphics part is the most problematic. I do not want a Mac, but I prefer a PC, original intel pentium 4

Follwoing this, I am a bit undecided on what system I would need. The point is it is useless having 2 Megs of Ram if you have 2Gb processor. Besides RAM exists in quite a number of varieties... should I go for the PC3500 - 433 speed?

Anyway... I am open to any suggestions or directions you might want to share with me. BTW... the cost of the PC is not important.

Thanks

[satis]

well, if you don't care about cost, you could just go with the best all-around. :) Did you want to go multi-processor?

Personally I'm an AMD fan, but if you want absolute max performance you'd be best going with Intel for now. AMD is, unfortuanetly, lagging behind, though that may change when they finally release their 64bit chip.

I would definitely go with DDR RAM. Corsair and Kingston are both very good RAM manufacturers... you want a low cas latency. I'd also probably go with a gig of RAM, maybe more if you're feeling froggy.

http://www.corsairmicro.com/
http://www.kingston.com

As far as motherboards go, I'm afraid I know nothing about Intel mobos. If you wanted to go with AMD, I'd recommend something with the nForce2 chipset... I believe that's currently the performance leader.

If you REALLY don't mind spending money, may I also suggest you get a RAID-5 SATA add-on board. Besides being ATA150 SATA, RAID will increase your drive throughput considerably. Here's a good example... at only $104, the controller is a good deal. Of course, the drives will run you a nice chunk of cash (especially since you need 4 SATA drives).

http://www.xpcgear.com/rocketraid1640.html

hrmmm... best video card out I believe is still Ati's radeon, specifically the 9800 pro.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800pro/index.html

That will cost a good arm and a leg, but if you want the best of the best.... :) I'm not sure if you're be more interested in a professional graphics card rathre than a gaming one. I don't know much about the business side of graphics cards, though.

That's about all I can think of right now. Was that of any help?

[bdoc]

If you're looking at Intel based I would definately recommend the new P4's with Hyperthreading and the 800mhz sidebus. That's power! I just wish they were a little cheaper.

[NMS]

Thanks for your comments.

My design purposes are purely in 2D and no animations... However I am thinking of having a DVD a nice 19" monitor to be able watch some movies while sitting on my workchair.

But my major efforts and cash spent should be directed towards a fast processor (and motherboard) and RAM quality/size.

Is it worth purchasing 1Gb of RAM when you can turn harddisk space into RAM? I will have 2 hardisks 60Gb and 80Gb with 2/3 partitions each. The minimum RAM should be at least 512...will 1Gb increase performance so just be there (just in case)

When I do a task manager in winxp I notice that the processor is holding the speed n ot the RAM usage. RAM usage is always at the first (lowest) green bar.

[satis]

depends on the number and size of files you look to be manipulating. Typically with 2d graphics it's all stored in RAM in uncompressed format. Plus whatever you have on your clipboard.

So....if you plan on having 2-3 different pics open, all of considerable size and color depth, I'd go for more RAM. Photoshop sucks up alot of RAM by itself, anyway. With how relatively cheap RAM is, I'd say go for the full 1GB. Maybe 2 512MB sticks. I think the 1GB sticks are still considerably more expensive.

As far as caching it to the harddrive, you want to avoid that if at all possible. RAM is FAST, HD is SLOOOOW. If you run out of physical RAM the O/S starts swapping RAM out to the hard drive, but it takes alot of time to read and write that data, during which you'll probably be twiddling your thumbs because the O/S becomes not-especially-responsive while doing alot of that.

That's just my take, though. I'm a sucker for massive quantities of RAM. Another positive thing about huge amounts of RAM is RAM drives. Talking about copy RAM to harddrive? How about harddrive to RAM? You can set up windows to make a virtual drive (say, e:) that is, actually, RAM. If you've got 2GB of RAM, you could dedicate 1GB to being your e: drive. You could then copy programs or files to that RAM drive and wouldn't have to worry about HD acccess speeds at all. Of course, you have to remember to copy it off the drive before shutting down the computer or restarting it, but blah. I toyed with doing something like that for some games I play.