[Mordecai]

Hey everybody.....i guess im being de-virginized here considering this is my first post on Sijun....wooohoo!!...ummm...Im going away this fall to college (2nd year transfer)...I am a Graphic Design/Illustration Major, I currently own a Dell Dimension Xps R Pentium 2 processor, 400 Mhz computer with Scanner/and a USB Wacom Intuos Graphics Tablet (12x12) w/ 384 MB of ram....Programs i use are mainly Quark (yuck)/ Photoshop/Illustrator/Painter 6/ 3d studio max. and basically any other graphics program i can get my hands on.

I have been saving up money to purchase a new computer for school. I understand Mac's are "the best for the graphics industry"....but i do prefer PC's :-)

So i was just wondering if anyone could suggest what type of computer i should get regarding the Operating System/Monitor/Processor Type and Speed/ Amount of RAM/ Type of Hard Drive/ Video Card....and basically anything else i forgot to mention....id really appreciate many responses if you have the time....

thanks again!

[Svanur]

It all depends on how much you want to spend.
You could go for that Athlon Thunderbird 1.2 ghz with raid motherboard and two 45+gb hard drives.

If you are running on Windows 2k make sure you get yourself a lot of ram.
For 3D work I guess Geforce 3 is going to be sweet but expensive (399$ on Ebworld)

I, myself, am using an Athlon Thunderbird 900 with 384mb ram, one 10gb and one 40gb harddrives, TNT2 32mb(it's sufficient until I get a geforce3) and 19" screen. This all is sufficient for me at the moment, but as you probably know, these things get obsolete rather quickly.

[Ysg]

I've heard on alot of sites that a Geforce 2 GTS has better response than a proffesional 3d card costing $700. NT has better performance on 3d than 2000. From my use of the G4's at my school, they are pretty similar to pc's, if you have the extra cash and aren't going to do any 3d work a mac would be groovy. I've got a Thunderbird 950 with 512mb of RAM (won a 256mb piece at a computer show) Big 19" monitor is a must! I wasn't able to bring mine to the dorms and I'm stuck with my horrible 15", nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!