Graphic Design spec help

K1LLSW1TCH · 11 Nov 2009 at 15:49

Hello peeps. I've been given £10,000 to build 5 machines for a university project that are going to be used for graphic design purposes, what would you lot recommend spec wise?

I was thinking of something along the lines of Wolfdale chips in all 5 machines, probably the E8400 because of it's clockability. 4GB of ram in each machine and then for the graphics card maybe something like a 9800GT? I need to factor in the costs of monitors, keyboards and mice so bear that in mind too. I wasn't going to be giving them anything silly like quad core CPU's and top of the range graphics cards because in my opinion, for a little graphic design that's going to be overkill.

Cheers for any replies.

reflux · 11 Nov 2009 at 15:50

You've got £2000 per machine, which means you can easily afford a quad core and lots of RAM.

Personally I'd go i7, 6GB RAM, fast hard disks and a 24-30'' high quality screen.

Depends what they'll be used for really - if it's hardcore photoshopping with a lot going on that spec would be great. If not, then you don't need the whole £10k by any means.

K1LLSW1TCH · 11 Nov 2009 at 15:54

reflux said:
You've got £2000 per machine, which means you can easily afford a quad core and lots of RAM.

Personally I'd go i7, 6GB RAM, fast hard disks and a 24-30'' high quality screen.

Depends what they'll be used for really - if it's hardcore photoshopping with a lot going on that spec would be great. If not, then you don't need the whole £10k by any means.

Cheers. Would you still go for something along the lines of a 9800GT? they are going on here for less than £100 which is great and I think they'd be more than adequate for photoshopping. What do you think?

Narziss · 11 Nov 2009 at 16:03

Personally I'd go i7, 6GB RAM, fast hard disks and a 24-30'' high quality screen.

Sounds about right to me

My RAM gets milked (pun intended and no weird pics please) as I normally have several graphic packages open at once. Nothing p*sses me off more than having to wait 10 minutes for a .psd to open.

A good screen is paramount for obvious reasons. I'd be lost without my dual screens with so much going on to be honest.

EDIT - Just checked my work mac and it has these specs:

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Memory: 4 GB
Processor Name: DualCore Intel Xeon

No wonder it feels like I am flogging a dead horse sometimes in comparison to my home PC! Cheap gits. Keep in mind that I'm on this thing 8 hours a day running photoshop, flash, fireworks, illustrator... If that's anything to go by you'll have a good few quid left over!

Xelene · 11 Nov 2009 at 17:03

Does that include software? I guess you'll get Academic licenses so that shouldn't be too much. I'd say something like 800 quid on 2 good 24" screens, then the rest on i5, 8GB, whatever the cheapest graphics card with 1GB RAM is, maybe a boot SSD, a nice *big* fast scratch drive, good quality kb and mouse, maybe a tablet and a decent understated case.

Maybe pool a nice colour laser printer between them.

Xelene · 11 Nov 2009 at 17:07

Narziss said:
No wonder it feels like I am flogging a dead horse sometimes in comparison to my home PC! Cheap gits. Keep in mind that I'm on this thing 8 hours a day running photoshop, flash, fireworks, illustrator... If that's anything to go by you'll have a good few quid left over!

Sounds like my work PC, it's just a pig to do anything on - I often have a couple of 1GB JVM's running with debuggers attached. So much more pleasant doing that kind of work at home.

reflux · 11 Nov 2009 at 17:13

K1LLSW1TCH said:
Cheers. Would you still go for something along the lines of a 9800GT? they are going on here for less than £100 which is great and I think they'd be more than adequate for photoshopping. What do you think?

No need for anything even of that level; whilst the latest version of PS does use GPU acceleration, it will run even on 7800 cards so really you'd need a 4330 or 3450; something low end would be fine basically.

K1LLSW1TCH · 11 Nov 2009 at 17:58

Cheers everyone. Sorry for the late reply, I usually update my threads quicker but I popped out for a spot of dinner.

I think I'm going to go for 6GB of fast ram in each, Radeon 4550's, 500GB spin point F3's in all of them and now here's where I'm undecided, I'm not sure wether to go AMD or Intel, I'm looking at bang for buck so that I've got the biggest amount possible left over for 5 quality screens.

EDIT: looks like the 4350 is a better choice. Lot's of VRam and cheaper too.

atmax1 · 11 Nov 2009 at 19:07

i7 would be nice (hyper threading and for the future) and 4-6gb of ram, and your right you will want a lower end gfx card for a graphic designer but something not really old as adobe cs4 uses your gfx card as well.

Your want good large screens (min of a 24")

lsg1r · 11 Nov 2009 at 21:07

Personally I'd be looking at a 1156 socket i7 rig as in my experience photoshop hardly ever uses both my cores heavily and the faster single core performance would be beneficial, then sling in 8GB ram, ssd for a scratch disk (they're cheap enough) and another drive(s) for the os and programs etc. Now I'd be looking at going for a quadro fx580 for the gpu as they've got better customer support and they have better drivers (stability etc), they're a bit more pricey but well within the budget.

Another option is to maybe consider an imac 27" with quad cpu etc as they come in at under 2k even with an upgrade to 8GB and the i7 cpu.

If you stick with say an i5 model (pc or mac) you could get a wacom tablet too which would be a god send for anyone who gets heavily into graphic design, also maybe get a single calibration device so the screens are accurate.

Depending on cost of the base unit you could probably look at going dual monitor too (say something like the samsung f2380)