Photoshop spec- £500

AdamEW · 4 Nov 2008 at 18:04

Hi there,

My brother has come home today and told me he wants me to spec him a computer for around £500. It's main use will be photoshop and maybe some light gaming (though this isnt his main preference). He uses a 750GB external hard drive for storage so 320GB should be ample. He also said he would like a tv card as he doesnt have a tv in his room where he lives.

With CS4 using gpu acceleration what kind of graphics card should I be looking at for the best performance?

Heres what I have so far :

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Edit: Noticed the 640GB Samsung f1 is only a few pounds more expensive, seems silly not to go for that.

GM2 · 5 Nov 2008 at 16:59

I was looking for something very similar a week or two ago.

My understanding is that Photoshop CS4 uses graphics acceleration and that most reasonable GPUs have more than enough grunt to give it all it needs.

I was going to get:

HIS ATI Radeon HD 4670 IceQ Turbo 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

This is very similar to the PowerColor card you've spec'd, but runs at a slightly faster core speed (780 not 750MHz) and has non standard cooling.

After much debate and lots of advice, I ended up getting the 512Mb version of:

OcUK GeForce 8800 GT 1024MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

for about £76. But they seem to have now sold out - or at least I can't find it!

I also opted for an Asus P5Q board. I actually bought the E version as it has eSATA, one or two other extras and I managed to find it for £104 delivered. All the P5Q boards have a very good reputation here and are recognised as being fast and easy to overclock. I don't know enough about the Gigabyte mobo you've selected to comment on it.

I also went for the Corsair 520w modular power supply. I wanted a modular supply to keep things tidy and organised, and Corsair have a great reputation here and elsewhere.

You should probably also allow for Vista 64 if you want to get the best out of CS4.

Good luck.

Pilky01 · 5 Nov 2008 at 17:00

GPU acceleration is only available on nvidia gpu's I think

AdamEW · 5 Nov 2008 at 17:11

Pilky01 said:
GPU acceleration is only available on nvidia gpu's I think

I believe that people thought this previous to the release of cs4, but it was just a rumour. .. see here :

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9809&Itemid=1

My brother had to order last night and he went for something similar to the setup above, Im sure it'll be more than capable and much faster than his current computer!

GM2 · 5 Nov 2008 at 18:52

AdamEW said:
My brother had to order last night and he went for something similar to the setup above, Im sure it'll be more than capable and much faster than his current computer!

I'm sure you're right!