CPU and GPU for graphic designer?

Gerpur · 10 May 2012 at 16:46

A friend of mine needs a new computer for graphic design only. He uses After effects, maya, photoshop, bridge and indesign if that says anything

I was mainly wondering about cpu, gpu and maybe amount of ram needed. Budget is about £1000-£1500 and he only needs the computer with case and OS.

Would i7 2600k be enough or something like i7-3820 much better? I was thinking about 16GB ram and something like GTX 560 as gpu. Any of these programs favour Nvidia over AMD?

All comments appreciated since I have more knowledge about gaming computers

Curio · 10 May 2012 at 17:17

Based on my experience building a PC for my missus (freelance graphic designer/illustrator) and doing some design stuff at work using Adobe CS...

Video card isn't all that important at all. CPU also doesn't matter as much as you might think - the wife has a 3.2GHz i3 and it flies....she loves it. Any current med/high end CPU will be fine. If there's one area I would spend money on it would be a fast hard disk and SSD - SSD for OS and Apps and then a big/fast drive for storage. You'll also probably want some external backup/storage - a big portable drive is usually good for graphic designers. You could consider the various RAID setups too. As much RAM as you can afford as well - although the missus surprisingly has never had issues with 4GB.

SMed · 10 May 2012 at 20:27

A huge monitor, 27" minimum.

Gerpur · 10 May 2012 at 22:49

Curio said:
Based on my experience building a PC for my missus (freelance graphic designer/illustrator) and doing some design stuff at work using Adobe CS...

Video card isn't all that important at all. CPU also doesn't matter as much as you might think - the wife has a 3.2GHz i3 and it flies....she loves it. Any current med/high end CPU will be fine. If there's one area I would spend money on it would be a fast hard disk and SSD - SSD for OS and Apps and then a big/fast drive for storage. You'll also probably want some external backup/storage - a big portable drive is usually good for graphic designers. You could consider the various RAID setups too. As much RAM as you can afford as well - although the missus surprisingly has never had issues with 4GB.

Thanks for the replay, will probably just get i5 then with ssd + fast storage drive and 16GB ram

pc_monkey · 10 May 2012 at 23:00

I have both i5 2500k and i3 21230. Tested them both with batch jpeg conversion with photoshop and the i5 is a lot quicker. I would suggest get at least an i5 and at least 8gb memory.

wozzsta · 11 May 2012 at 01:05

i could be wrong but im pretty sure that some of the programs you mentioned can utilise hyper-threading, which afaik only the i7 series offers, so ide go with an i7 3770k +256gb SSD + 2TB storage + 16gb ram and a gtx570 + 27" monitor i put the 570 cuz they may do some 3d work/rendering also they are only £200 atm so might as well

Benjyshwa · 11 May 2012 at 01:19

I think for the most part, graphic design doesn't require a pc with much power. Its when you start getting into complex high-poly 3D work where a top end system is needed.

So with that in mind and like others have said, don't skimp on a nice monitor.

Gerpur · 11 May 2012 at 11:52

Thanks for all the help, he ended up getting i7 3770, 16GB ram, 120GB ssd with 2TB as storage and HD 7770 GPU and already had 2x 24" monitors.

Curio · 11 May 2012 at 16:09

wozzsta said:
i could be wrong but im pretty sure that some of the programs you mentioned can utilise hyper-threading, which afaik only the i7 series offers, so ide go with an i7 3770k +256gb SSD + 2TB storage + 16gb ram and a gtx570 + 27" monitor i put the 570 cuz they may do some 3d work/rendering also they are only £200 atm so might as well

Just for the record, the i3 series also uses Hyper-Threading...

As for CPU power in this context, I've found I don't really care about pure rendering time - if a Photoshop filter takes 15-20 seconds instead of 10 seconds I don't mind. What I notice more is disk speed. My work machine and the machine at home are similar specs, however my work machine has a very slow old hard drive.....and man does it drive me nuts.

wozzsta · 11 May 2012 at 17:12

Curio said:
Just for the record, the i3 series also uses Hyper-Threading...

As for CPU power in this context, I've found I don't really care about pure rendering time - if a Photoshop filter takes 15-20 seconds instead of 10 seconds I don't mind. What I notice more is disk speed. My work machine and the machine at home are similar specs, however my work machine has a very slow old hard drive.....and man does it drive me nuts.

Ow thanks for the info on the i3 thats pretty cool.