[Ko]

Hi Guys

My gf finaly got her PC today, and...

I can, (following my best judgement), recommed AMD processors for use with Painter.
I tested it using a 700MHz Duron with 128MB RAM and a TNT2 32MB gfx card, running Win98SE. I painted with oil brushes and water based brushes on a 2000x2000 image, with no problems. Other less demanding tools such as markers, airbrush and chalk were just flying, even with quite large brushes.

I got good/acceptable performance from oil (camel hair) brushes sized 50 and the broad water brush sized 40. This was with the standard settings. The oil/water brushes are not really designed to go above a certain size, the camel hair brush, as an example, becomes square above a certain size, but you probably already know this. I think that the brush sizes mentioned above are more than enough for me. But I rarely have the need for oversized/BIG brushes due to the way I work, so it really depends on preference/style and perhaps more importantly how fast you prefer to stroke... hmmn paint Finally you can optimize Painter's brushes quite alot by doing variants of the presets. It pays off to read the section of the manual dealing with brush setup.

So... a 1GHz thunderbird processor will probably kick booty. Also the resource management under Win98 is far inferior compared to WinNT/2000. So a Thunderbird with at least 256MB RAM is a really good bet for a nice system. With the prices on memory today, why not go for a minimum of 512MB RAM.
On a side note... the IBM Deskstar 45GB discs are cheap and toast most competition, except fast SCSI/RAID, I just got myself 2 of those beauties

Aaaargle.... enough!

Happy Painting

Ko

[quaternius]

Thanks Ko -
It's great to know that Painter AMD performance is up there as well - how 'bout photoshop on AMD?

For Liquid! - I went back to Loki's site and saw he recommends the Formac Proformance cards for the mac. Should work on a G3.

I've asked around and should have some answers back in a week or so on recommended 2D systems for mac and pc - optimized for photoshop and painter. In the meantime, one hardware engineer I've spoken to said lots of fast video ram is probably more important than RAMDAC speed on today's computers,(all else being equal, I guess).
Another friend said his game company uses 2 graphics cards in all their pc computers and 3dlabs cards for their 2d work - they've... um... outlawed macs at their company.

I've also just come across MATROX G450 cards which are optimized for 2d performance (they gave up trying to compete with NVidia on 3D). These babies have a 360 MHz RAMDAC, 32 megs of DDR Ram and are standard dual-head cards - meaning you can run two monitors off the one card -- primary RAMDAC 360 MHz, secondary RAMDAC 230 MHz - integrated. Very highly rated for 2D work.

More soon -

Q

[Ko]

I haven't tested Photoshop yet, but will do so very soon though...

I'm very interested in hearing other peoples opinions on AMD, as well!

I'm a die hard DUAL P3 fan myself... but that might change in the future.

Food for thought:
Did you know that Photoshop utilizes BOTH processors for it's brush engine?! Something worth considering!....

Ko

[BooMSticK]

thanks Ko, Thats what I've wanted to hear. Cant wait to get my hands on the 1ghz thunderbird. You're right about the prizes on ram at the moment. I might just get myself a couple of more blocks.

Can't wait 'till the dual athlon motherboards comes out. That will be the end of Intel (well, then again - most likely not )

Yeah, the performace of the new IDE100 is pretty cool. Most likely you'll have to upgrade your motherboard to get full speed though...(like me)
,Boom

[Liquid!]

Thanks guys!! I really appreciate the info. I'll post more later, when I get a bit more time, however, again, THANKS!! for the info!

-c

[Rhythmeen]

I just recently built an AMD machine to relieve my intel machine of some of it's tasks...although my previous use was gaming or 3D modeling, i have recently been attempting to "Paint".
The Intel is a dual 450 with 256, ata66, and a 32mg Nvidia Geforce2.(NT 4.0 SP6). This machine runs Phsp and Painter well, although in painter it does get sluggish when you increase the size of some brushes, (as stated in the earlier post). I've never had an issue in Pshop, other than extremely large files loading slowly.

The AMD is an 850 T-Bird, 512, ata100 (Asus A7V motherboard) with a 3DLabs 32mg Oxygen card.(it came bundled with my SGI 1600sw flatscreen).(W2K SP1)
This machine seem to have no limits - large images load quickly in Pshop, and although maxing the size of the waterbrush in Painter gets sluggish, sizes unusable on the Intel machine (in painter)work well on the AMD.

Although this comparison isn't Apples to Oranges, (ram and HD speed being doubled on the AMD) it does attest to the performance of
AMD's 200mhz Front Side Bus.

Bottom line: Don't let the performance of AMD's past chips fool you. The T-bird kicks ass. It is equal if not better than an Intel.
although, ram and graphic cards do make an enormous difference, if you skimp on these, your performance will be less than stellar.

Check out www.tomshardware.com for some interesting reviews on CPU's and Graphic cards.

[This message has been edited by Rhythmeen (edited February 01, 2001).]

[Liquid!]

Don Seegmiller wrote :

Liquid,
When I demonstrating Painter 6 at the conferences last year I was on a Mac and had no problem. I do not know what the configuration of the machine was. At work here I have a G4 450 Mac that does not have any problem with Painter. I usually work on a PC though. Good luck

Don

---------

I'm officially confused. Maybe it really is as simple as using a different video card...

-c

[hawgey]

I had the same problem and when I downloaded the free upgrade to 6.1.All the problems were gone.Give it a shot if you have'nt already.although now i am having problems loading brushes from my painter 6 wow book I bought with the book(mr.seeg-miller any sssuggestions).I am running on win me w/393mbram and intel 500 pro.Any suggestions would be appreciated,thanks.