Advice needed: Updating computer for editing and stacking

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

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Planapo
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Advice needed: Updating computer for editing and stacking

Post by Planapo »

Hi folks,

The desktop pc on which I do my photo editing suffers from working quite slowly when I have some folders open and edit my photos.
Consequently, I think it will get stuck when, hopefully in the near future, I try my first steps in stacking. Hence, I thought of updating the machine a bit with more RAM, or maybe I should look for another graphics card? But before sinkin´ dough I would like to ask you people who know more about computers and photo-editing.

Here are some details which I´ve found in the papers of my slow desktop pc, whatever they mean, ... "A-tisket A-tasket, I lost my yellow basket ...":smt061 :smt100 :oops: :wink: :lol:

Manufactured in Feb. 2002 by Dell (Model name "Dimension 8200")
Pentium 4, 1.6 GHz with 256 kB full speed cache and 400 MHz front side bus, intel 850 chip set
currently 128 MB (2x 64 MB elements) PC800 RDRAM (non-ECC), but four slots for max. 2048 MB dual channel with 3.2 GB/s data rate are there
40 GB EIDE HDD, 5400 rpm, Ultra ATA-100
64 MB nVidia GeForce2 MX 4x AGP graphics card with NV11 graphics processor and 64 MB SDRAM
Windows XP home

I hope from these specs one of you can tell me what hardware I should get to update this pc for the intended purpose. If any additional details of the computer´s current setup are necessary, please tell me, and I´ll try to find out more.

Thanks in advance for your appreciated help.:D

Kind regards,
Betty

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Betty,

I am sorry to say, your machine is so old that upgrading it is almost surely not cost-effective. The usual pattern with computers is that cost/performance improves by 2X every 1-1/2 to 2 years. Your machine is roughly 3 doubling periods old and therefore represents technology that was 8X less cost-effective than current new equipment. Always be sure to run the numbers for upgrade versus new.

What do you need? Well, here's what I use:

Dell Precision 360 (July 2003)
Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz
1 GB RAM
Boot disk: Western Digital Raptor 74 GB, 10000 RPM, SATA
Other disks: 7200 RPM on various interfaces (SATA, IDE, USB-2)
Graphics card: don't know, don't care
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 173P LCD, 1280x1024.

For good performance, enough RAM is by far the most important. You need at least 1 GB.

Here we see the problem with old technology. The nice people at memorysuppliers.com just gave me a quote for 1 GB of memory for a Dimension 8200: $429. That's ECC; they don't even have non-ECC anymore. For the same money with current technology, you can get 1 GB of memory bundled with a new computer and 250 GB disk. Even for my Precision 360, 1 GB of ECC memory is under $100.

After RAM, performance is a mishmash of processor and disk. It is hard to know what matters more, and it varies from program to program.

For what you're doing, the graphics card will not affect speed. For gaming it does, because in gaming the graphics card can do a lot of math for 3D scene rendering. But for photo editing and especially for stacking, all the pixel manipulations are done by the cpu. The graphics card is just a place to put pixels so they get displayed.

I recommend to look around at new machines -- prices are probably good now with vendors competing for Christmas purchases. Or perhaps you can find somebody who will be getting a new high-end machine for Christmas and would let you have their old one for a good price.

--Rik

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

I have a Dell Dimension 9200 I bought earlier this year. It has an Intel dual core processor, 500Gig raid array hard disk and 4Gig of memory, plus is running Vista Home Premium.

What you will find if you upgrade to new computers and operating systems is you need more RAM just for the system itself. My computer uses 1Gig of RAM just to run itself and the OS, so basically 3Gig only is available for other tasks.

The chap who sorts out my computers for me, as I am largely computer illiterate, was a computer programmer and says the lower specification computer he built for his relation runs far faster than mine because it is running XP and not Vista. Also the major brands anti virus software slows modern machines down considerably, so he only uses some rudimentary free stuff off the Internet.

I don't know if you know it but Intel has a trial 80-core processor running at the moment for hopeful introduction in 8 years time, so multi core is now the way processors are going.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12892 ... ticle.html

The Pentium 4 core has now been largely abandoned by Intel because it ran too hot and was too power hungry. The core they are now using in their multi-core processors is a development of the Pentium 3 core that was improved by their Israeli plant for notebooks and laptops originally in order to provide lower heat generation and longer battery life.

Cores will be analogous to transistors in the future with every new processor containing more cores, the same as they used to increase the transistor number with every new processor. I doubt core speeds will increase much in future because that uses more power and increases heat. They will simply keep increasing the number of cores to get increased speed.

DaveW

Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

I am not much of a computer geek, sorry to say but before you go shelling out cash, you mentioned that your computer was slow when editing photographs. Is it also running slow with everyday stuff too? Have you cleaned and defragmented the hard drive lately? Maybe that might help a bit if you haven't. :-k

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

I'm a little squeamish about suggesting this, but another option is to buy memory on eBay or from some used-computer store.

I did a quick search on eBay for "PC800" and turned up a lot of ads for stuff at tolerable prices, that says it's sealed and guaranteed to work on Dimension 8200, from sellers with huge counts for positive feedback.

It's definitely more expensive than modern memory, but way less than memorysuppliers.com quoted -- like $65 for 512 MB as 2x256.

It would not be completely crazy to buy a package or two of that.

Even one package would bring you up to 640 MB, which is not ideal but I believe would do quite a bit of work OK under XP.

It's another option, anyway.

--Rik

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

I should have added, one of the problems when you upgrade your software, apart from the operating system, is this usually requires more disk space and memory to run effectively than the old versions, plus often with not much extra functionality gained.

Also when changing to Vista I found it tended to dislike anything other than the latest software versions optimised for it. With some you get a warning message it may cause a conflict, and with the odd one it will even refuse to run it because it because of a known conflict.

I don't know what is the real difference between Vista and XP, but most of the new software has to be coded as Vista compatible or Vista will tell you it is not!

My point previously was you cannot judge your memory requirements on new computers running Vista and new versions of software from what was adequate on older machines running XP, because so much more is now used by the computer itself. My computer chap was amazed to see mine assigning so much RAM for itself, because it was more RAM than his present system running XP had.

DaveW

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Dave's point is important. Vista is getting a lot of bad reports for both memory consumption and speed. I use XP Pro on all my machines, but will most likely be forced over to Vista at some point when I buy new systems. (It's interesting, though, that Dell is now back to selling new machines with XP pre-installed.)

For some articles on the controversy, see:

Windows XP Significantly Outperforms Vista, Tests Show

The XP alternative for Vista PCs

I have no personal experience with Vista. I am also profoundly distrustful of benchmarks because what you get for benchmark results depends very heavily on exactly what you compare.

For example, regarding the benchmark quoted in the first article linked above, I find it written elsewhere that "breakdown of the team's initial tests reveal that, although they used identical Dell computers, they actually compared Office 2007 performance on Vista to Office 2003 performance on XP".

The same article notes that when Office 2003 was installed on the Vista machine, it still ran a lot slower.

However, yet another article notes that those benchmarks were done on a laptop with only 1 GB of memory. That's not much more than the smallest configuration you can buy today, and at the price of today's memories, it would seem "penny-wise and pound-foolish" to buy a new machine with less than 2 GB to run Vista.

All in all, it's very confusing. But the bottom line is what Dave said -- when you upgrade software and hardware together, you're likely to need more hardware than you would guess from previous experience.

You should interpret my earlier postings in this thread as referring to XP.

--Rik

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Afraid it's always the case, when they speed up computers so they fly using the old operating system and software, they always bring out a new operating system and software to slow it down again, at least until computers are upgraded so they fly again, then the excercise is repeated to slow them! Hopefully, as Vista took the longest period before it's introduction after XP of any Microsoft operating system we will get a long period before the next one.

But I understand there is to be a new Service Pack for both Vista and XP out next year, so maybe that will slow things down even more!

What annoys me is firms like Adobe who don't make their new camera RAW converters backwards compatible. Meaning if you buy the latest camera you cannot use their RAW converter for it if the Adobe software is a version more than a couple of years old. You either have to purchase the latest upgrade of Photoshop or Elements, or use a third party converter and then transfer to Photoshop or Elements.

I cannot see why new Adobe RAW converters cannot be made to work with most of their older photo processing software because it does not change significantly version to version. Given that they bring out a new version of their processing software every 18 months or so it is an expensive luxury if Photoshop is only going to have an 18 month lifespan before an upgrade is required, should you buy the latest camera and want the Adobe Camera RAW plug-in for it.

DaveW

georgedingwall
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Post by georgedingwall »

Hi all,

Haven't contributed much of late, but I still lurk in the group from time to to time.

You may be interested in my recent experience with XP and Vista.

I have recently moved my working from a PC with XP Pro to a new computer with Vista Ultimate installed. I have Photoshop CS2 and CS3 installed on my older XP PC as well as on my new Vista PC.

XP Machine.

Dell 8300
3.4GHz Intel P4 processor
2GB DDR 400 Ram

Vista Machine

Dell 9200
Intel Dual Core E6700 Processor
4GB DDR2 667 MHz Ram

I have noticed that CS3 is much slower when opening files than was the case with CS2. This applies to XP and Vista. Running actions and scripts also seems to be slower on CS3 than CS2

Example.

open 10 X 17MB files from Bridge.

In CS2 - 30 secs in XP and 10 secs in Vista

In CS3 - 55 secs in XP and 25 secs in Vista.

Although both CS2 and CS3 perform more quickly in Vista, you can see from these timings CS3 is much slower on both platforms. Bearing in mind that the new computer has a much higher spec that the older XP PC, this convinces me that Photoshop may be as much to blame for the slowness being experienced and not just problems being created by Vista.

Now I can't test this on two identical computers, so the comparison may be a little suspect. However, in real life usage, CS3 is slower that CS2 on any platform.

I have had a number of problems with Vista, too many to go into here. If I had the chance to chose over again, I would have picked XP for the OS. It should be noted however, that a lot of programs seem to open and run faster in Vista than they did in XP how much of that is down to the higher spec on the new computer is not known.

So although CS3 was theoretically optimised for Vista, I see no real improvement. Unfortunately Adobe deny this strongly and have rejected all attempts by me and others to challenge them to explain why such a lot of the program seems to run better on XP than it does on Vista.

Bye for now.
George Dingwall

Invergordon, Scotland

http://www.georgedingwall.co.uk/

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

Rik, Dave, Ken and George thanks much for you help and thoughts!

Except for photo editing the old machines work fine for the other things I use them (text editing and calculation with excel and such alike)
And at the moment I don´t want to buy a new computer, you know there is my first DSLR on the letter to Santa already! :wink:

I am no computer geek either and had thought development had slowed down a bit... but of course they are always after our money... but hey, if there was no development we wouldn´t have all that information and the nice communication we have right now, so I shouldn´t complain to much!

However, a short look at ebay showed that this may be the most economic way to get to 1024 MB RDRAM. It´s offered for buy it now fo 109 Euro plus shipping. Is all what I have to look for to make sure it will fit that it is advertised as "RDRAM (Rambus) PC 800" ?

Then there is my laptop which is a bit newer. It´s a Dell Latitude D600, Pentium M 1.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows XP Professional. Should it be better to install my photo editing software on this and get more RAM for it? Would this do for the intended job? Though, thus far I have never opened a laptop to plug more RAM into it. :-k

Greetings,
Betty

georgedingwall
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Post by georgedingwall »

Hi Betty,

If you go this website it can tell you exactly what kind of memory you need for your computer.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/

I've bought memory from them in the past and it was always the right kind.

Hope this helps.
George Dingwall

Invergordon, Scotland

http://www.georgedingwall.co.uk/

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Planapo wrote:I am no computer geek either and had thought development had slowed down a bit...
Processor speed has definitely hit a plateau. In theory, performance for most types of data-intensive applications should continue to improve by exploiting multi-core processors. In practice, it is not so easy to make that actually work. ("Theoreticians think that theory and practice are quite similar. Practitioners disagree.") It will take a while for the software to catch up in that area.

In the meantime, memory size and disk capacities continue to grow exponentially as usual, and our software and computing practices have easily adapted to take advantage of that. 1 GB of file space on my local machine now costs $1 of capital investment, and that includes copies on two other removable hard drives for backup. The dominant cost of keeping a zillion images lying around is now my think-time needed to keep track of them! Bizarre -- I am still trying to make sense of the situation.
Is all what I have to look for to make sure it will fit that it is advertised as "RDRAM (Rambus) PC 800"?
I believe so. However, when I looked, there seemed to be many sellers stating a guarantee that their memory would work on a Dell Dimension 8200. As a confirmed skeptic, I would buy from one of those.
Then there is my laptop which is a bit newer. It´s a Dell Latitude D600, Pentium M 1.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows XP Professional. Should it be better to install my photo editing software on this and get more RAM for it? Would this do for the intended job? Though, thus far I have never opened a laptop to plug more RAM into it. :-k
This is a very attractive option. I assume you have a spare slot in that machine. Crucial.com is advertising 1 GB for $83 US right now. Installation has been trivial on every laptop I've done. For photo editing, you may wish to connect an external monitor. Laptop displays often do not have reliable colors.

--Rik

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

When I discussed buying a mult-core processor with a cactophile friend of mine, who is a Professor of Geometric Computing at a British university, he said he would not like to write the software for them!

It seems the software to be optimised needs to apportion the tasks between the different cores, if I have understood him correctly. So it may be the case most multi-core processors may never achieve their ultimate potential, because the software for them will always be trailing processor development.

As soon as we have proper dual core software, entry level will probably be four core and above, and if Intel plans 80 core in 8-10 years time the available software may never catch up with the processors potential before you upgrade to even more cores!

DaveW

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

Thanks for the additional information, guys!

And George, that link you provided is very helpful indeed, thanks!

Regards,
Betty :D

microcollector
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Post by microcollector »

I am using an HP computer with a 2.66 GHZ duo core processer and 4 GB of RAM. These most dramatic improvement over XP PRO on a 2 GB RAM machine with a 3.6 GHZ processor was in processing stacks with Combine ZM or Helicon Focus. The new machine is much faster. The other programs I use do not show such an improvement.
Doug
micro minerals - the the unseen beauty of the mineral kingdom
Canon T5i with Canon 70 - 200 mm f4L zoom as tube lens set at 200mm, StacK Shot rail, and Mitutoyo 5X or 10X M plan apo objectives.

My Mindat Mineral Photos
http://www.mindat.org/user-362.html#2

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