Mother board questions

[JamesB]

well im gonna go show the wife the cost of the goodies before i order them. if you dont hear from me with in a 24 hour time period, its because im in the hospital

James

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by JamesB

I dont have an AGP card. so thats not an issue, the MB I selected has a built in DVI connector so i can run my Dell ultrasharp off of that.

I dont do any gaming or video editing so I really dont need a slick video setup

James

Except of course the next version of Windows is 3D accelerated and will probably sink most integrated video set-ups out there. Though of course at that point, you can just buy a new gfx card and plug it in.

Recommended 'optimial' i.e., not minimal, but the essentially required spec for vista's Aero Glass interface to work

• DirectX 9 capable GPU
• 128MB video memory—256MB preferred
• Good graphics memory bandwidth (i.e., PCIe x16 or so)
• Good pixel shader performance

[JamesB]

thanks for the heads up Gordon. But I wont go to Vista for a while.

James

[markfh]

If you plan on using XP x64 make sure all your hardware will have drivers for it. For instance, Spyder does not yet.

Make sure the software you want to use will play well with the x64 OS.

Some companies are dragging their feet on drivers waiting for the nexgen OS (vaporware).

If you're going to use XP x32 don't bother with the dual core processor. It won't use it. You'll also still be limited to 4gb ram though most MB's won't support more than 4 anyway.

I hear you about on-board video but I can tell you my ATI 512mb PCIx video card really did make a difference.

[JamesB]

your punching holes in my plan

some good points anyway, but just talked to the wife and she wants me to wait until the end of summer. she has other plans for the money

James

Originally Posted by markfh

If you plan on using XP x64 make sure all your hardware will have drivers for it. For instance, Spyder does not yet.

Make sure the software you want to use will play well with the x64 OS.

Some companies are dragging their feet on drivers waiting for the nexgen OS (vaporware).

If you're going to use XP x32 don't bother with the dual core processor. It won't use it. You'll also still be limited to 4gb ram though most MB's won't support more than 4 anyway.

I hear you about on-board video but I can tell you my ATI 512mb PCIx video card really did make a difference.

[jeffkohn]

I did some research into 64-bit XP, and at least as of last Decemer there really didn't seem to be much point. All my hardware had drivers available except the Canon i960 (which isn't connected to my workstation anymore anyway). But having drivers and having stable drivers that perform well can be two different things. I remember having all kinds of driver problems when moving from Win16 to Win32.

Additionally there doesn't really seem to be any performance advantage to running 32-bit apps on 64-bit Windows, most benchmarks I saw said that apps ran the same or slightly slower. I suppose if you have multiple apps running that were serious memory hogs and wanted to take advantage of more than 4gb of RAM then it might be worth while, but I decided to stick with WinXP Pro for now and wait to see if 64-bit support from applications becomes more common in the next year or so after the release of Vista.

[JamesB]

reading a little closer into the replies here, so I just want to get a few thing straight.

1. I will stay with winXP Home (32 bit) Im not dishing more money to uncle bill anytime soon for Vista (when ever they release it) Xp64 or what ever. Im staying with the 32bit OS for several more years

2. I need to upgrade hardware and storage support (im getting 2 300gig HD's)

3. can I still use a CP/mb that supports 64bit stuff on this 32 bit system.

4. dual core looks to be usless on 32 bit systems, is that correct?

5. im good with 4gig of memory, heck I only have 640mb now.

6. I do NOT process 300 photos at a time using PS bridge

7. No video editing (maybe once every year or so, but its a non issue for me)

8. Im not a PC gamer, I have a PS2 for games

[jeffkohn]

3. can I still use a CP/mb that supports 64bit stuff on this 32 bit system.

Sure. In fact I believe all CPU's currently shipping from AMD are 64-bit (or if not, they soon will be). The Athlon-64 has full hardware compatibility with IA32 so there is no performance penalty to using that CPU for 32-bit software.

4. dual core looks to be usless on 32 bit systems, is that correct?

Absolutely incorrect. Dual-core has nothing to do with 32/64. It's about having two processor cores, or put simply dual CPU's (yes I know I'm oversimplifying a bit, but that's basically what it is). That means better multi-tasking performance; and even if you think you're not a heavy multi-tasker, it still means that when Photoshop is hogging one CPU cure the OS subsystems can still execute on the other. I think it'd be crazy not to buy dual-core at this point in time, considering the pricing. In fact I think all the CPU's will be dual-core before long.

5. im good with 4gig of memory, heck I only have 640mb now.

4 GB is fine; in fact 3GB is fine since on an AMD system that's probably all the OS will see with Windows XP SP2 anyway. But four 1GB dimms is probably the way to go (that's what I did). You can get by on 2GB of RAM, but I'd recommend 2x1GB instead of 4x512mb so that you can expand later. More than 4GB is a waste of money unless you're running 64-bit OS, plus I think many of the current desktop chipsets probably don't support more than 4gb anyway.

[Detonate]

2 GB of RAM is still plenty in this day and age.

If you can justify the price jump to 1gb dimms, then go for it. But for the price of a single 1GB DIMM, I was able to buy 2 gigs of high performance RAM in 512 chunks. I can't upgrad without replacing DIMMS, but 2 gigs has provided me ample RAM, and I do tons of photoshopping with the very large D2x files, as well as editing High Def Video.

My processor is still a single core 3.0ghz, and I run an IDE RAID 5.

Dual Core, SATA2, 4 gigs of ram, beefy video card, etc, etc... Will obviously give you performance gains, but just keep in mind that measurable performance in benchmarking is never the same as perceivable performance in your workflow.

[JamesB]

Again thanks for all the help.

I am planing on 2x1gig memory, the MB I want has 4 memory slots supporting a total of 4gig. this way if I ever need to go beyond 2 gig it will be an easy addition. I should not need it since Im not a real power user.

James

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by markfh

If you're going to use XP x32 don't bother with the dual core processor. It won't use it. You'll also still be limited to 4gb ram though most MB's won't support more than 4 anyway.

This is bad info. XP x32 is dual core capable. The only real advantage of the 64bit port is some speed from using the 64 bit registers and the ability to access more RAM. XP 32 struggles to effectively use anything beyond 2Gb. XP 64 doesn't have that restriction. XP64 does have a lot of driver issues though (lack of availability and not backward compatible, so if there isn't a 64 bit driver version you can't use the hardware) It is also only available as XP64 Pro, so $200.

XP-32 certainly uses dual cores effectively and schedules tasks across them without problems. This helps out of the box for running multiple applications (e.g., anything + virus check for example) or any time you are multi-tasking.

Other than than ,applications have to be written to take advantage of multiple cores. Some are already - of particular note, a little app from Adobe called Photoshop makes good use of dual cores, getting around a 1.5x speed-up on a dual core system.


This Adobe support link has quite a bit of info on XP optimisation for Photoshop CS2.

Of note:

On a Windows XP 32 Home system, Photoshop can only use a maximum of 2Gb of memory

On Win XP 32 Pro, you can use the /3Gb switch to give your applications more memory, on a 4Gb system - though this has severe performance issues for the OS.

On a Win XP 64 Pro system (there is no 64 Home) Photoshop can use up to 3Gb and no more, but the OS can have more memory for swap/ scratch disk buffers.

From that link, CS2 is multiprocessor capable on all XP OSes

[markfh]

"This is bad info. XP x32 is dual core capable."

While XP 32 can see 2 processors/dual core and be "capabale" that doesn't mean that 32bit apps will perform any better on x64 vs x32. In some cases the 32bit app will perform slower because of the memory chunk it uses.

What little "perceived" performance difference you may see with legacy apps depends on how well you match your components and how much resource "ram" you have available to begin with.

CS2 "what I have" can work with x64 but most BIOS that come on consumer level (not server level) mother boards don't register much more than 3.5GB ram when you have 4GB ram in the system.

Now Linux... that's a different matter all together.

[jeffkohn]

I think Gordon's point is that Dual-core is a completely separate issue from 64-bit versus 32-bit. Maybe there's some confusion about this since all of AMD's currently shipping CPU's (dual-core or otherwise) are 64-bit. But Dual-core just mean you have two processor cores on the die; in fact the Intel dual-core chips are 32-bit. There is a definite performance advantage to having two processor cores in Windows XP.

[Gordon]

CS2, in the 32 bit version of XP has a significant performance improvement on a dual-core system.

32bit vs 64bit addressing and registers is a seperate issue than the number of processor cores on the die.

Most legacy 32 bit applications will show significant improvement on a dual-core system, running XP 32, if you are multi-tasking at all, as well.

XP 32 will most definately make significant use of both cores in a dual core system and provide typical speed-ups in the 1.5x to 2x range for any application run on it, in a multi-tasking environment.

Many commercial applications (those that are multi-threaded) will also have a significant performance improvement, running on their own, on a dual-core system. Photoshop CS2 is one of those applications (as is bridge) Typical improvement is 1.5x over an equivalent single core CPU (due to sequential computational elements, ala Amdahl's law)

[markfh]

So what you're saying is that CS2 will run up to twice as fast on my dual core system with 64bit OS system as it does on my 32bit system with 32bit OS?