Photoshop hardware requirements 1

[Korach]

Hi everyone,

I need to buy a new PC and I want it to run photoshop well.
What about this:
MSI 915G intel chipset.
Pentium 4 3.0GHz LGA775.
Intel graphic media accelarator 900 on board, up to 224 MB.
512MB DDR400.
80GB HD s-ata 150.

What should I improve to get better performance?
1. Faster CPU?
2. Maybe AMD 64bit?
3. Graphic card AGP or PCI-Express? ATI, GeForce5 or GeForce6?
4. More memory?
5. Raid HD?
6. Anything else?

I'm not a pro in photoshop but I want to work a lot with it.

Thanks

 

[blueark]

More memory would be my first choice.

 

[Korach]

Thanks for your reply,

Do you know if this on board graphic card is enough? Is it matter if I'll buy an agp card?

Thanks

 

[blueark]

I've got an AGP card myself (can't remember what make) and it's fine. I don't think it makes as much difference to Photoshop as it does to games or video. The system requirements don't even mention it, as far as I can see.

The spec you've given is actually better than what I'm using at the moment (although I've about twice as much RAM). Besides memory, I'd probably look at getting a bigger monitor; obviously the video card has to be suitable to handle the extra information.

If you're really working with a lot of large files, maybe get a larger, or second, hard drive. I wouldn't get it at the start, though. Wait to see if you'll need it. Some people say you should use a second hard drive as your scratch disk, but personally I don't think the performance gains are significant unless you're doing video.

 

[Korach]

Thanks a lot!