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PC Hardware, What have you got
djellison
post Jun 21 2006, 03:20 PM
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Thinking out loud here...project 'SHOFFICE' kicks off in July - the Shed that will turn into my little office and official UMSF HQ....

Come early winter, I'll be upgrading my PC, as I need more power for the bigger mosaics I'm working on...

Currently my two machiens are..

3.2G P4, 2048Mb DDR3200, WD Raptor 72Gb System disk, and then various 7200RPM SATA and IDE drives for other purposes, and a 19" tft ( 1280 x 1024 )

My laptop's a 1.83 Ghz Centrino thing with 2048Mb of DDR2 and a 100gb 7200 RPM drive, with a 1920 x 1200 17" screen.

My plans will probably be for a mid-range Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB DDR2, the 72Gb Raptor as the system disk, but a pair of 500 GB Segates in mirrored Raid as the main storage for 'live' projects, with hopefully, one of those cunning two drive NAS's again in mirrored raid for archived data etc. My current desktop machine will then become a little slave in the corner, doing things like forum backups at 2am when my ISP isn't counting the bandwidth etc smile.gif

I was lusting after the 30" Apple and Dell displays - but realisticly they're a bit too pricey - so I'll probably stretch to the 24" Dell 2407 display, possibly with the 19" tft as a second screen....not sure yet though.

Storage is the real pain though - becasue obviously, every ounce has to be replicated for backup, but buy using a Raid array, one eliminates a single-drive-failure nightmare arrising.

Anyway - thought I'd open up a thread to do comparisons...perhaps we could even set up a PTGUI project as an UMSF system benchmark?

Doug
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paxdan
post Jun 21 2006, 03:38 PM
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mmm how d'you like them Apples?

I have a dinky 12" 1Ghz G4 PowerBook.

Methinks you should get a Dual Booting 17" MacBook Pro

Then again I do like them Apples smile.gif
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Borek
post Jun 21 2006, 03:43 PM
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I've recently upgraded my system to 1 GB RAM just to be able to make large image stitch jobs with PTGui/Enblend combo, but here we're talking a different level really ohmy.gif

Borek
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DEChengst
post Jun 21 2006, 03:50 PM
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My collection as it was two years ago:

http://paranoid.dechengst.nl/geekporn/serv...om/img_0558.jpg

In the mean time an AS4100 and two DECstations were added. The white PC under the left side of the table is the box that is the webserver that's hosting the picture. The black one on the right side is my workstation. It's a P4 2.4 GHz, 768 MB RAM, 120 GB Seagate IDE and a Matrox G450. Plans to upgrade ?? None I won't spend any money on a PC until the current one breaks down.


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angel1801
post Jun 21 2006, 04:02 PM
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I have a Intel™ Celeron™ D-330 running at 2.666Ghz with 256MB or RAM with a CD-RW drive.

Windows XP Pro pre-installed.

I have a 1500K download/256K internet connection.


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Nix
post Jun 21 2006, 04:10 PM
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I'm upgrading in a few months. FWIW, I was thinking of trying AMD cpu (AM2 Athlon 64 X2 5000+) but I'm not sure yet.

What I am starting to be pretty sure about is display. I've been reading a lot of reviews lately and found the Apple's do frequently show color-shifting (which, IMO, will drive us CRAZY for matching histograms manually)

I was dying for this one;

http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/S2410W/index.asp

turns out though quite some of them have ..-color shifting mad.gif
their 21" ColorEdge seems to be a very pleasing display, which is in the same league as the Lacie 321 or its 'parent-panel'; the NEC 2180UX which is the exact same lcd for about $ 500 less. (at least so they say)

money, money, money -if I had some more I'd go for a NEC Spectraview 22" rolleyes.gif

I'm not about to invest too much in a display though since Canon and a few other companies have something new for 2007. First should be television, then pc displays.

http://www.canon.com/technology/display/
here's similar technology reviewed;

http://www.thetechzone.com/?m=show&id=384&page=1

I remember reading something about a display consisting entirely of led's which can take values 0-1 perfectly, resulting in contrast ratios of 100000:1 !!! ohmy.gif

Nico


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Nix
post Jun 21 2006, 04:18 PM
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Forgot; going up from 1 gig of memory to 2 does not make a very spectacular difference for stitching purposes.

I have 3 now, and plan to go up to 4 as Doug intends to do but I'm not expecting a world of difference.

Of course multi-tasking is sweet.
Better results of upgrading memory might be possible with latencies of 2-2.5 probably, I'm not sure.

Nico


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djellison
post Jun 21 2006, 04:25 PM
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I'm thinking of starting at 2 ( really fast DDR2 can be £100 a gig or more ) and then seing if another 2 might make sense at a later date smile.gif

Doug
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Nix
post Jun 21 2006, 05:03 PM
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Yup, fast is pricey.

I should add my memory 'runs' at 400 Mhz so it's definitely not the fastest around.

Nico


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djellison
post Jun 21 2006, 05:07 PM
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Part of me thinks I should go for a dual core S939 CPU, because top end ddr ram is so much cheaper than ddr2 and I have 2gb of it that I could split to begin with...still not quite decided really
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Nix
post Jun 21 2006, 06:34 PM
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It's not a bad idea to invest in better ddr than 'standard' ddr2.

I'm having a lot of doubts too, yet I have plenty of time to decide before I can start buying tongue.gif
And then I'm drooling over some new lenses for the camera too blink.gif

Nico


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Bob Shaw
post Jun 21 2006, 11:03 PM
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I always advise my clients to steer clear of whatever is latest and most sexy unless they want to play the latest games; models which were cutting edge a year ago are now highly affordable. I also tell them to, in most cases, ignore the spec and buy on price - there's *always* a faster machine out there.

As regards memory - invest in strips which make most sense in terms of upgrades, so that you don't end up populating all your slots too early.

As for RAID, internal IDE is OK, but an external RAID box is best - or a dedicated Network Attached Storage box. In any case, buy a good UPS, and populate the RAID array with identical drives - then buy a spare HD. Remember that a single drive will normally be faster than a RAID array, so for image crunching you're still committed to a big local HD.

Now, as to backup, I'd avoid tape under almost any circumstances - I just don't think it's either reliable or practical. Removeable HD caddies are the single best bet.

Bob Shaw


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lyford
post Jun 21 2006, 11:48 PM
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Here you go, Doug. biggrin.gif

And ditto Bob Shaw's good advice. I have been burned before with tape backup. mad.gif


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jamescanvin
post Jun 22 2006, 12:42 AM
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I do all my processing on a 1.67GHz G4 Apple PowerBook with 1Gb RAM - It's slow for big mosics, but gets there in the end. smile.gif

James


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djellison
post Jun 22 2006, 12:49 AM
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I must admit - the Mac Book Pro is very VERY enticing....what's the score w.r.t. pan software on OS X, particularly given the intel switch?
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