Moose Loc: North Carolina

I'm thinking of buying a new PC and wonder what configuration would be best, especially for post processing of my photos? My current PC is pretty slow when in the editing mode.

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

Get the latest and greatest, because tomorrow it will be outdated.
For speed, a SSD (Solid State Drive) for the primary (boot drive), I'd suggest at least 256 gig or larger. A secondary drive a minimum of one TB.
A graphic card with on board memory of at least 2 gig and have the abilities of supporting dual monitors.
Main memory of at least 16 gig.

Some will suggest a MAC and there is nothing wrong with a MAC, but you did state buying a new PC.

Moose Loc: North Carolina

Thanks Traveler for the information. Any thoughts on the central processor configuration?

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

dual or quad processors. an gig's an gig's of memory.fast video card.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

Depending on your needs I might disagree with this statement. As a support tech I run into folks who process a few dozen photos here & there, and then do pretty mundane things like web surfing, word processing, etc... 6 years ago they spent $1,000+ on "the latest and greatest" Unless you're editing video, processing hundreds to thousands of photos on a regular basis or gaming I suggest folks make a careful purchase and spend around $400 to $500 and then plan to replace it in 3 or 4 years. In the long run you'll spend less and get an updated computer more often.

I haven't seen any difference in performance from my onboard graphics card compared to my sons high performance gaming video card (for photo editing). All that extra memory in the graphics card and monster processor are for rendering polygons when playing games. Could it make a tiny difference, possibly but I just haven't seen it happen.

Use http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to research the processor you are getting with any computer you buy - Mac or Windows doesn't matter, they've got them all tested and ranked with performance scores. Often you can spend just $100 more and get 4 times the performance...

traveler90712 Loc: Lake Worth, Fl.

Like I said, the latest and greatest.
I believe the Quad processor is the latest and best. Heavy graphics or photo work needs lots processor power and memory.
And it ain't gonna be cheap!

RocketScientist Loc: Littleton, Colorado

Unless you're also doing video, the difference between i5 and i7 will not affect you, even then it is questionable. Go with an i5, put the money you save on processor into RAM, Video card, or Solid State drive.

ioptfm Loc: Isle of Palms, SC

Get as much Ram and Storage as you can afford and as said above, get the latest and the greatest....Also make sure it has a built in SD card slot.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

Why not get a dual or quad socket motherboard so you would have 16 physical cores and 32 hyper threaded cores? That would be the latest and greatest...

It's all relative to what you need... and what you can afford and if this is for commercial work or casual home use. I'm in no way saying go cheap, I'm just saying "get the latest and greatest" is such a vague statement - what do you need the system to do?

Moose Loc: North Carolina

Thanks all for your input. I'm sure I can go overboard, but the budget won't allow it. Probably will have to go with something in the $400 to $700 range. I do want lots of ram and dasd, and a fast processor to handle photo editing. I'm not commercial, just what I shoot as a hobby.

Now I'll have to try and understand all the various suggestions, dual cores, physical cores, i5, i7, etc. I'm sure the techies at the stores will know.

Thanks again.

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

see what you find on overstock.com ebay they out there just gotta dig. o craigs list

altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

I tend to agree with you. The guys at slrLounge did a test comparing their apple laptops with their asus laptops and the asus was faster when processing stills because the i7 processor had a higher clock speed than the the i7 in the apple yet the apple beat the asus on video because it had 3gigs of graphics memory as opposed to 1.
you can see the video comparison here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meX6UxWtcW8
It seems to me that for still photography Postprocessing in lightroom a grunty processor and lots of ram are the way to go

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

it had an extra s in http
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meX6UxWtcW8

altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

They both work I just copied and pasted the address off the address bar

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

yup has done it to me too.