Any high speed cpu will do. Be it a core duo or i7, difference between an e5200 and i7 will be marginal if you use PS for files of average size. Get as much ram as you can and at least 2 hard disks, so you can put your scratch disk on a separate physical drive. Any certified/tested graphics card will do, many untested  cards also work just fine. If you intend to use 3D however, I suggest you get a decent card.

Maybe Mark works for Apple now.

Reynolds (Mark) wrote:

 

With Windows 7, its possible now to imagine...

 

 

Imagining is all that you can do because you do not use Windows and can never make any sort of intelligent comparison.

Why are you now backpedaling on your previous criticism of Apple? These comments do not seem like you really trust them.

Reynolds (Mark) wrote:

 

...Snow Leopard seems to have a whole lot of problems...every day I try and use this damn new re-coded Operating System something new pisses me off. 

 

I've no idea what in the hell they are doing at Apple to have released something so obviously incomplete. 

Mark is certainly a fine advocate of Apple. 

Which 'honest recommendation' from Mark are we supposed to trust?

Reynolds (Mark) wrote:

 

With Windows 7, its possible now to imagine that a few years down the the line, there may indeed be a more equal playing field.

 

Is the reason why you want to look a few years down the line because you expect Apple to patch their 'damn new re-coded Operating System' (as you put it)? Snow Leopard was released 2 months prior to Windows 7 so it seems like they are already on an equal playing field. You can compare right now unless your Mac is too bonked to work right.

(I'm no platform bigot - - - I just like making fun of those that are too nearsighted.)

Ivaharis - For photo editing, Photoshop Standard has everything you will need. Extended is more for video, 3D and what they call "Interactive" design.

I've no idea what in the hell they are doing at Apple to have released something so obviously incomplete.

When I made that post, I was extremely angry having to sort out, and get used to a new Operating system. Where I also had to manage a team of 3 other retouchers also struggling with the same issues. What angered me is that on impossible deadlines, and brand new macs, we seemed to be FORCED to use the new 10.6 - when Leopard was perfect, and frankly a little more efficient for everything we needed to do.

I don't give a toss about what platform I'm on, I just pick whatever system seems to work the best at that moment in time.

Right now, I have yet to see anything that would make me switch to mac.

Reynolds (Mark) wrote:

 

When I made that post, I was extremely angry having to sort out, and get used to a new Operating system.

Imagine the utter insanity of suggesting that someone here on the Windows forum should move to Mac when even a long time Mac user like Mark needs to 'get used to a new OS'.

Ivaharas, please excuse the Mac diversion. Mark entertains, always.

Simply buy as much as you can afford with emphasis on processor speed, RAM and a 2nd internal hard drive to use as scratch... as noted in post #3.

We all do 'a lot of photo work' so we're still uncertain of what you specifically need to do. Odds are that Extended is not necessary. You can always download the trial to explore the features.

Ivaharas

I found the information on this site very useful when researching my own build.  You could also use it as a shopping guide for a commercial PC.

http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/141/Build+a+powerful+PC+fo r+Photoshop+and+other+imaging+applications

Sandboxie is a very interesting concept too!

Just a different thought...

I've actually had good luck getting powerful machines inexpensively by buying just off cutting-edge Dell workstations from eBay.  Such a machine, with some brand new drives, can really zip along and so far all mine have been very reliable.

-Noel

Comparitively a Mac is not going to be "better" in an of itself to run Photoshop (CS5). Additionally its going to cost several times more to build a Moster Photoshop Mac, and a Monster Photoshop PC, components, specs, and price matter, the Mac brand just sounds good. They stopped specializing in components years ago.

I get into major details in my article here http://robertoblake.com/blog/2011/07/building-a-photoshop-cs5-computer /

Bottom line is the "bottom line"...

A Quad to Hexa Core Processor 3.2GHz +

16GB of DDR3 Ram

2X 1.5TB Hard Drive

1X 1TB Hard Drive

1X 90GB Solid State Drive

1X 1GB 256Bit Open GL4.1 Graphics Card

1X Blu Ray Burner

PC= Less than $1500 Mac PRO= Over $5000

And thats, thats. There is not going to be a way to qualify over $3000 in price, performance wise Mac to PC at those specs.

The only difference in Photoshop performance on Mac vs PC in Mac's favor is when you are not operating in a 64Bit environment, but why wouldn't you in the first place? If you don't you can't use more than 3GB RAM on the entire system and most computers come with that or more by default now.

Actually the way my setup goes is that you use the 90GB Solid State Drive as the Scratch Disk rather than for the OS or what I refer to as the Application Level. You're right about it being a bit small if you were going to go that route, well relatively speaking anyway. For the Application level I would just use one of the 1-2TB Hard Drives and partition it. The partitions would only really be for my personal "Hidden Partitions" and for what I consider "Dump Space" the space for dumps from USB flash drives, SD cards from cameras and so on.

The SSD would be for the Scratch disk and for a small increase in price it could be 2 of them or more runnin in RAID0.

Sorry, do not just give you a link. I mean here is this laptop.

Another question. Which is better? AMD or Intell? ATI Radeon or Geforse?

In particular, AMD Phenom II Quad-Core 1800MHz Champlain (N960), or better Intell i3 or i5.

And at the expense of HDD. Strongly depends on whether the work with photoshop on the speed of HDD.

Maybe it makes sense to buy a SSD hard disk?

Thank you for your attention.

And how much you have a laptop with similar configuration as mine? (model I mentioned above) I bought it for $ 800 US.
I certainly understand that for Russia and for Europe, America makes quite a different quality laptops.

Sorry for offtopic