[Liser Studios]

hello
i was just wondering what everyone thinks would be good specs for a computer that would mainly be used for graphics. nothing 3d, all 2d (photoshop and painter).
i have a gateway performance 500...
i have 500 mhz, 128 MB ram, and 20 gig HD.
Pat Shettlesworth says 600 mhz and 256 minumum, and that those figures would be more over time... so are they still the same or should my PC be even better?
i was thinkin about upgrading. my friend goes to vo-tech for building and networking computers, and he's put together 2 computers of his own at home and however many at school. He said he could upgrade it to 1.5 ghz and 500-something MB ram for 300 or 400.
do you think i need 1.5, or is that too fast? would 256 be allright or should i get 500-someoddnumber?
thanks

[Dr. Bang]

256 would NOT be alright. I suggest 512 or more.

[gArGOyLe^]

I have 128 MB RAM.. and I only use Photoshop.. but its a pain while smuging big pics.. becomes very slow

I'll get some ram and install it

[Snakebyte]

No such thing as too fast, only not fast enough. If you can get 1.5 and ram, and $300-400 isn’t too much for you than do it. Ram is you best friend, get as much as you can afford. I have 1500 MB ram and I’m pretty happy, but can use more. (I work with LARGE files)

[[Shizo]]

Whateva white boy. You dont NEED a fast computer, you just need an OK computer to do things. So get something closer to top notch but not top notch, because price goes up exponentially.


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[AndrewMyers]

I've come to the conclusion that the better a system you can get, the happier an artist you'll be, and then therefore the more productive an artist you'll be. I have a 500mhz p3 at home with 2 geforce2 mx/400s and 2 viewsonics (17/19"). It's not a bad setup, and I have a lot of room with which to work in, but that's a lot of space in which I can see I need to be faster. At work, I have a p4 1.7 ghz, but only one monitor. It's fast, so PS6 is much more responsive, and I don't get slowdown in 3dsmax as easily, but I'm always cramped for screen space.

So mix those two setups, and add in the necessary wacom tablet, 1 gig ram (RDRAM for a p4, which is still expensive unfortunately), and at least 40 gigs (well, i work with uncompressed video a lot, so that takes up mucho space) - which I set up with several partitions, and one spare gigabyte partition for Photoshop swap files - and that's pretty much my dream setup. Oh, and a million dollars and huge pectoral muscles, too.

-Andrew