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AMD 64 and Photoshop

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Charles L. Mims

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I just built an AMD 64 3000+ , a Gigabyte MotherBoard and Western Digital Serial ATA Drives. This combination has been rock steady with 1.5 gig of ram and XP Pro. I was able to build it for less than $2000 with four drives and Two DVD burners and One fast CD burner. My image conversion is very fast and I can burn two disks at once with Nero. I am updating to CS soon and it will really take off as it uses the 64 bit pathway. I work on as many as a 1000 images from an "event" at a time and this speed really helps. I use two 19 inch Glass tube Trinitron monitors. I have been amazed that the processor never even gets warm. I have the alarm set to 60% centagrade and it never goes off. I put it in a gaming case from Chieftec just to add color to my work area. I like to open about 30 full size camera files at once and work on them one at a time.

I know not everyone has the experience needed to build there own machine, but this combo works I tried two others that did not. Just thought I would save some a lot of trouble. By the way only use PC3200 memory that is grade 1 like from Ultra(512 meg per chip) . The Chip has a 1600 FSB. I just cant afford good enough LCD panels yet. I really like the color qaulity of .20 dot pitch glass tubes.

I added two USB cards, this avoids needing a hub. The Mohterboard supports Firewire and I added a plain Suzzi card for the HP scanner and the Nikon film scanner.

It is nice to see the printer not slow down while I work on images in Photoshop. I am going to convert to a RAW NEF workflow and I will really need the power and all of the hard drives. My D70 now that it is fixed, really shoots RAW very fast. My D100 is ok as long as you have a lot of compact flsh cards. CLM
--
charleslmims
 
Dont you just love the power of AMD? It simply rocks.

Thats all I use, and my graphics work station will be getting upgraded in the near future. I am looking into a setup close to yours. Have you looked into dual CPU setups? I am not sure at this point if I will go there, but I am researching into the benefits and drawbacks, if any besides cost.
Vaughn
Charles L. Mims said:
I just built an AMD 64 3000+ , a Gigabyte MotherBoard and Western
Digital Serial ATA Drives. This combination has been rock steady
with 1.5 gig of ram and XP Pro. I was able to build it for less
than $2000 with four drives and Two DVD burners and One fast CD
burner. My image conversion is very fast and I can burn two disks
at once with Nero. I am updating to CS soon and it will really take
off as it uses the 64 bit pathway. I work on as many as a 1000
images from an "event" at a time and this speed really helps. I use
two 19 inch Glass tube Trinitron monitors. I have been amazed that
the processor never even gets warm. I have the alarm set to 60%
centagrade and it never goes off. I put it in a gaming case from
Chieftec just to add color to my work area. I like to open about 30
full size camera files at once and work on them one at a time.
I know not everyone has the experience needed to build there own
machine, but this combo works I tried two others that did not. Just
thought I would save some a lot of trouble. By the way only use
PC3200 memory that is grade 1 like from Ultra(512 meg per chip) .
The Chip has a 1600 FSB. I just cant afford good enough LCD panels
yet. I really like the color qaulity of .20 dot pitch glass tubes.
I added two USB cards, this avoids needing a hub. The Mohterboard
supports Firewire and I added a plain Suzzi card for the HP scanner
and the Nikon film scanner.
It is nice to see the printer not slow down while I work on images
in Photoshop. I am going to convert to a RAW NEF workflow and I
will really need the power and all of the hard drives. My D70 now
that it is fixed, really shoots RAW very fast. My D100 is ok as
long as you have a lot of compact flsh cards. CLM
--
charleslmims
Click to expand...
--
Vaughn T. Winfree
Friends Don't Let Friends Shoot Film :)

pBase supporter http://www.pBase.com/vaughn
 
Charles L. Mims said:
I am updating to CS soon and it will really take off as it uses the 64 bit
pathway.
Click to expand...
I too am a big fan of Opteron/Athlon64, but the above statement is not correct. All versions of Photoshop use as much memory bandwidth as the chips have (more or less). None of them, including CS, use the long mode (64-bit) instruction set.

One expects a future version of Photoshop will support Win64 on AMD64 since Intel has announced they will be supporting AMD64. (No, Intel doesn't call their 64-bit x86 extension "AMD64", but it is the same instruction set with very minor variations.)

Thus AMD64 hardware bought today has a bright future.

-Z-
 
I am in the process of specing out a new system also. I would like to go AMD 64-bit. What is the real difference between FX-53 and Opteron 1xx? They use the same motherboards and I know the Opteron is positioned as a server chip, but I don't really understand the difference. Is there a resource that explains this? I work with really big images to drive my Epson 7600. I gotta believe that the next version of PS will utilize 64-bit and thus have significant performance improvements.
--
BillG
 
I actually have almost the same setup, but mine has been a total mess. Western Digital Drives, AMD 3000, 1GB RAM, 4 total drives raided, memory card adaptor, DVD burner, CD burner (from an older machine), all in a black Coolermaster case. Should be all good right? Well, no.

My buddy built it for me, and for awhile it was awesome. Nikon Capture NEVER worked right, and just constantly crashed. Then, one day, the machine died and would not boot the OS. My buddy worked on it for 3 days, and it turned out to be some bad RAM. So, he got it straight. Well, sitting here tonight, the machine went down twice, when I wasn't even WORKING on it. As such, next time I think I'll go in a different direction.

More than anything else, I think that I am saying that when you decide to go in this direction, make sure you are patient, and really understanding everything that you are doing. At this point, I lost the majority of my image files when the machine went down, and I now work exclusively on my Powerbook (which has been excellent btw...no issues). I am planning to sell the machine soon b/c all of the parts are awesome, and anyone who knows the ins and outs of this amount of power could make great use of it. I'll buy a G5 or something at a later date.

Any takers?
 
Ejoy said:
I actually have almost the same setup, but mine has been a total
mess. Western Digital Drives, AMD 3000, 1GB RAM, 4 total drives
raided, memory card adaptor, DVD burner, CD burner (from an older
machine), all in a black Coolermaster case. Should be all good
right? Well, no.

My buddy built it for me, and for awhile it was awesome. Nikon
Capture NEVER worked right, and just constantly crashed. Then, one
day, the machine died and would not boot the OS. My buddy worked
on it for 3 days, and it turned out to be some bad RAM. So, he got
it straight. Well, sitting here tonight, the machine went down
twice, when I wasn't even WORKING on it. As such, next time I
think I'll go in a different direction.

More than anything else, I think that I am saying that when you
decide to go in this direction, make sure you are patient, and
really understanding everything that you are doing. At this point,
I lost the majority of my image files when the machine went down,
and I now work exclusively on my Powerbook (which has been
excellent btw...no issues). I am planning to sell the machine soon
b/c all of the parts are awesome, and anyone who knows the ins and
outs of this amount of power could make great use of it. I'll buy
a G5 or something at a later date.

Any takers?
Click to expand...
--
I'm not a Troll, I'm a Hobbit!!!
.--- .--- -.. . .--- --- -. --.
 
Bill Gilbertson said:
I am in the process of specing out a new system also. I would like
to go AMD 64-bit. What is the real difference between FX-53 and
Opteron 1xx? They use the same motherboards and I know the Opteron
is positioned as a server chip, but I don't really understand the
difference. Is there a resource that explains this? I work with
really big images to drive my Epson 7600. I gotta believe that the
next version of PS will utilize 64-bit and thus have significant
performance improvements.
Click to expand...
Hi Bill

On AMDs home page in the Technical Support Resources section scroll down to technical support There is a Proccesor Suport Formums link. a lot of great stuff to read and you can get a lot of feedback on any questions you might have.

AMDs hompage link.

http://www.amd.com

Link straight to the Proccesor Support Forums

http://forums.amd.com/

hope this helps
--
Norm
 
--
Norm
 
Ejoy said:
I actually have almost the same setup, but mine has been a total
mess. Western Digital Drives, AMD 3000, 1GB RAM, 4 total drives
raided, memory card adaptor, DVD burner, CD burner (from an older
machine), all in a black Coolermaster case. Should be all good
right? Well, no.

My buddy built it for me, and for awhile it was awesome. Nikon
Capture NEVER worked right, and just constantly crashed. Then, one
day, the machine died and would not boot the OS. My buddy worked
on it for 3 days, and it turned out to be some bad RAM. So, he got
it straight. Well, sitting here tonight, the machine went down
twice, when I wasn't even WORKING on it. As such, next time I
think I'll go in a different direction.

More than anything else, I think that I am saying that when you
decide to go in this direction, make sure you are patient, and
really understanding everything that you are doing. At this point,
I lost the majority of my image files when the machine went down,
and I now work exclusively on my Powerbook (which has been
excellent btw...no issues). I am planning to sell the machine soon
b/c all of the parts are awesome, and anyone who knows the ins and
outs of this amount of power could make great use of it. I'll buy
a G5 or something at a later date.

Any takers?
Click to expand...
 
Vaughn T.Winfree said:
Dont you just love the power of AMD? It simply rocks.
Thats all I use, and my graphics work station will be getting
upgraded in the near future. I am looking into a setup close to
yours. Have you looked into dual CPU setups? I am not sure at this
point if I will go there, but I am researching into the benefits
and drawbacks, if any besides cost.
Vaughn
Click to expand...
Hi Vaughn

Here is a link to a dual opterain workstation Tony Boone built and posted in the PC Tools forum a couple months ago. Some nice pictures of his system and a lot of nice info to read in all the messages in this thread.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=8113714

--
Norm
 
Ejoy said:
I actually have almost the same setup, but mine has been a total
mess. Western Digital Drives, AMD 3000, 1GB RAM, 4 total drives
raided, memory card adaptor, DVD burner, CD burner (from an older
machine), all in a black Coolermaster case. Should be all good
right? Well, no.

My buddy built it for me, and for awhile it was awesome. Nikon
Capture NEVER worked right, and just constantly crashed. Then, one
day, the machine died and would not boot the OS. My buddy worked
on it for 3 days, and it turned out to be some bad RAM. So, he got
it straight. Well, sitting here tonight, the machine went down
twice, when I wasn't even WORKING on it. As such, next time I
think I'll go in a different direction.

More than anything else, I think that I am saying that when you
decide to go in this direction, make sure you are patient, and
really understanding everything that you are doing. At this point,
I lost the majority of my image files when the machine went down,
and I now work exclusively on my Powerbook (which has been
excellent btw...no issues). I am planning to sell the machine soon
b/c all of the parts are awesome, and anyone who knows the ins and
outs of this amount of power could make great use of it. I'll buy
a G5 or something at a later date.

Any takers?
Click to expand...
--

I said I had problems. This was the third incarnation. The most important part was the Ultra 512 PC3200 Ram. Any less than this cannot take the 1600 FSB. Whith regards to CS and the Amd 64, I read in PEI that the new version would take advantage of the pathway.

I had several false starts. I found the Gigabyte board localy in San Antonio from Altex.com. The memory and chip came from Tiger Direct. The Soyo MB I tried does not support more than 1 Gig of PC 3200 Ram.

The Memory is a killer on this chip. Spend the money for the best available. Serial ATA drives are a little hard as you must get the driver on a floppy disk to instal during the XP load. They load lke lightning one you get them to work. Ilike the dual raid set up on the gigabyte board as, there are enough for 6 IDE devices and two Serial ATA Drives, thats 8 devices.
charleslmims
 
Sarajean said:
Ejoy said:
I actually have almost the same setup, but mine has been a total
mess. Western Digital Drives, AMD 3000, 1GB RAM, 4 total drives
raided, memory card adaptor, DVD burner, CD burner (from an older
machine), all in a black Coolermaster case. Should be all good
right? Well, no.

My buddy built it for me, and for awhile it was awesome. Nikon
Capture NEVER worked right, and just constantly crashed. Then, one
day, the machine died and would not boot the OS. My buddy worked
on it for 3 days, and it turned out to be some bad RAM. So, he got
it straight. Well, sitting here tonight, the machine went down
twice, when I wasn't even WORKING on it. As such, next time I
think I'll go in a different direction.

More than anything else, I think that I am saying that when you
decide to go in this direction, make sure you are patient, and
really understanding everything that you are doing. At this point,
I lost the majority of my image files when the machine went down,
and I now work exclusively on my Powerbook (which has been
excellent btw...no issues). I am planning to sell the machine soon
b/c all of the parts are awesome, and anyone who knows the ins and
outs of this amount of power could make great use of it. I'll buy
a G5 or something at a later date.

Any takers?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
I would put a 540 Antec Power supply, and that should fix it along with good memeory.
--
charleslmims
 
Charles L. Mims said:
important part was the Ultra 512 PC3200 Ram. Any less than this
cannot take the 1600 FSB.
Click to expand...
That is not quite true.. The bus speed within the CPU/HyperTransport is 1600... the speed from memory and mainboard is still 200/400FSB. Therefore any PC3200 Registered Dimms will work fine. Now, where you can run into problems is the memory timings... Better memory= better timings.. You may have been trying to run your "cheaper" memory at too fast of timings in the BIOS or stock timings were to tight. Hlaf the companies out there do NOT even sell Ultra series ram.. this is nothing more then a marketing term or gimic for fast timings in most cases. Kinda like the Dual Channel Memory packs or ram.. so much more $$ for the pair versus buying pair seperately of each other.. when there really is no difference. 99.9% of all memory if purchase same brand and same model will run in dual channel mode without spending extra $$ for kit.

It is not even as much the brand name of memory sticks that allow the speeds either.. it is more the actual IC (the little chips on the memory boards) brand and model that matters. Winbond ICs are always a good thing ;)
--
We are all just Plagiarists of a real Artist, and her name is Mother Nature.
 
Hi Charles, sounds good, do you think you could give me the full spec of your machine, mobo type etc, as I am getting close to an upgrade.
Thanks. Kev.
 
UK-Kev said:
Hi Charles, sounds good, do you think you could give me the full
spec of your machine, mobo type etc, as I am getting close to an
upgrade.
Thanks. Kev.
Click to expand...
There is only one Gigabyte board that has Serial hard drives and raid for the AMD 64. I used the 3000+ chip my son says the next one up is faster and they just lowered the price, figures. Just use good memory the PC 3200 Ultra works ok and that is what my son used in his machine with a Soyo MB. I like the serial ATA drive but it is trickey on the install. I have only had good luck with Nividia chipset video boards. The unidriver makes it easy to chage vidoeo cards. Put a really good and powerfull Power Supply , all the AMD64 boards I saw had to have the extra 12 volt square plug. so get at least a 400 watt ps, i got a 540 truepower Antic. Just get a power supply checker as a new Power Supply fried two hard drives recently. CLM
--
charleslmims
 
I hope the group will bear with me but I am having an AMD 64 PS CS rig built by a reputable firm here in Canada but the fact is I know little about whether the parts selected are going to work together well and give me a long lived, smooth running machine. Can anyone comment on the following specs being offered to me.

AMD Ahtlon 3400+ CPU
Asus SK8V Via K8T800 chipset motherboard.

I gb Kingston KVR400X72RC3AK2/1 G PC 3200 Registered ECC DDR DIMM (2 512 mb DIMMs)
Asus v9570 nVidia GFX-5700 128 mb DDR AGP 8x graphics card
2 Maxtor 6Y 120MO 120 gb 7200rpm 8mb cache Serial-ATA hard drives
Plextor PX-712A burner
Antec Performance Plus 1080 AMG full tower case with 430w Truepower power supply

There are other components as well but my real question is whether this combination of CPU, motherboard, memory and case/power supply a good combination likely to provide satisfactory service for heavy Photoshop/Illustrator useage? No gaming is forseen for this computer. Also the memory specified seems very expensive-- $625 Canadian-- for 1gb.

Any comments would be gratefully received.

Fred
Z (is real) said:
Charles L. Mims said:
I am updating to CS soon and it will really take off as it uses the 64 bit
pathway.
Click to expand...
I too am a big fan of Opteron/Athlon64, but the above statement is
not correct. All versions of Photoshop use as much memory bandwidth
as the chips have (more or less). None of them, including CS, use
the long mode (64-bit) instruction set.

One expects a future version of Photoshop will support Win64 on
AMD64 since Intel has announced they will be supporting AMD64. (No,
Intel doesn't call their 64-bit x86 extension "AMD64", but it is
the same instruction set with very minor variations.)

Thus AMD64 hardware bought today has a bright future.

-Z-
Click to expand...
 
Fred Phillips said:
I hope the group will bear with me but I am having an AMD 64 PS CS
rig built by a reputable firm here in Canada but the fact is I know
little about whether the parts selected are going to work together
well and give me a long lived, smooth running machine. Can anyone
comment on the following specs being offered to me.

AMD Ahtlon 3400+ CPU
Asus SK8V Via K8T800 chipset motherboard.
I gb Kingston KVR400X72RC3AK2/1 G PC 3200 Registered ECC DDR DIMM
(2 512 mb DIMMs)
Asus v9570 nVidia GFX-5700 128 mb DDR AGP 8x graphics card
2 Maxtor 6Y 120MO 120 gb 7200rpm 8mb cache Serial-ATA hard drives
Plextor PX-712A burner
Antec Performance Plus 1080 AMG full tower case with 430w Truepower
power supply

There are other components as well but my real question is whether
this combination of CPU, motherboard, memory and case/power supply
a good combination likely to provide satisfactory service for heavy
Photoshop/Illustrator useage? No gaming is forseen for this
computer. Also the memory specified seems very expensive-- $625
Canadian-- for 1gb.

Any comments would be gratefully received.

Fred
Click to expand...
Hi Fred

On AMDs home page in the Technical Support Resources section scroll down to technical support There is a Proccesor Suport Formums link. a lot of great stuff to read and you can get a lot of feedback on any questions you might have. The people in these forums are real helpfull.

AMDs hompage link.

http://www.amd.com

Link straight to the Proccesor Support Forums

http://forums.amd.com/

hope this helps
--
Norm
 
Hi Norm

Many thanks for the suggestion. I checked the AMD site and I see that I will be doing a lot of reading in the days to come to get up to speed on my new purchase. It's interesting that the discussions are aimed extensively at gamers though not surprising as I guess gaming makes the heaviest demands on computer facitlities. So I guess the philosophy I will have to follow is, whatever is good for gaming must also be good for lesser uses such as image editing/Photoshop etc. What I was really hoping to avoid was overkill in my hardware selections while still ensuring good performance for three to four years after purchase. For example, is the Athlon 3400+ overkill in my image editing context compared to the cheaper 3000 or 3200 or will I be glad a few years hence that I chose the highest specified CPU I could get at the present time.

Cheers

Fred
Norm Neely said:
Fred Phillips said:
I hope the group will bear with me but I am having an AMD 64 PS CS
rig built by a reputable firm here in Canada but the fact is I know
little about whether the parts selected are going to work together
well and give me a long lived, smooth running machine. Can anyone
comment on the following specs being offered to me.

AMD Ahtlon 3400+ CPU
Asus SK8V Via K8T800 chipset motherboard.
I gb Kingston KVR400X72RC3AK2/1 G PC 3200 Registered ECC DDR DIMM
(2 512 mb DIMMs)
Asus v9570 nVidia GFX-5700 128 mb DDR AGP 8x graphics card
2 Maxtor 6Y 120MO 120 gb 7200rpm 8mb cache Serial-ATA hard drives
Plextor PX-712A burner
Antec Performance Plus 1080 AMG full tower case with 430w Truepower
power supply

There are other components as well but my real question is whether
this combination of CPU, motherboard, memory and case/power supply
a good combination likely to provide satisfactory service for heavy
Photoshop/Illustrator useage? No gaming is forseen for this
computer. Also the memory specified seems very expensive-- $625
Canadian-- for 1gb.

Any comments would be gratefully received.

Fred
Click to expand...
Hi Fred

On AMDs home page in the Technical Support Resources section scroll
down to technical support There is a Proccesor Suport Formums link.
a lot of great stuff to read and you can get a lot of feedback on
any questions you might have. The people in these forums are real
helpfull.

AMDs hompage link.

http://www.amd.com

Link straight to the Proccesor Support Forums

http://forums.amd.com/

hope this helps
--
Norm
Click to expand...
 
Fred Phillips said:
I hope the group will bear with me but I am having an AMD 64 PS CS
rig built by a reputable firm here in Canada but the fact is I know
little about whether the parts selected are going to work together
well and give me a long lived, smooth running machine. Can anyone
comment on the following specs being offered to me.

AMD Ahtlon 3400+ CPU
Asus SK8V Via K8T800 chipset motherboard.
I gb Kingston KVR400X72RC3AK2/1 G PC 3200 Registered ECC DDR DIMM
(2 512 mb DIMMs)
Asus v9570 nVidia GFX-5700 128 mb DDR AGP 8x graphics card
2 Maxtor 6Y 120MO 120 gb 7200rpm 8mb cache Serial-ATA hard drives
Plextor PX-712A burner
Antec Performance Plus 1080 AMG full tower case with 430w Truepower
power supply
Click to expand...
I think Ultra 512 3200 Memory from Tiger Direct is less than $250 for two sticks. The 3000+ Processor is only $225. The 3000+ has 512 of cache and the next one has a gig of cache. For photoshop these processors are very powerful. The higher end AMD 64 are for servers with a many operations running at once(I read this on a flyer from AMD). I believe in spending enough, but not too much. If money is a concern I would look at the 3000+ or the next one up and I have three sticks of 512 Ultra in a Gigabyte Mptherboard. Your video and is fine, but I would up your drives to at least 200-250 gig. I have 2 serial ata and two regular ide drives and three CD/DVD dirves. I cd burner and a 4x (cheap) and an 8 x DVD Burner. The 4x burner is great for music and watching moviies. I burn all my mp3's onto DVD as mine are all legal and burned at high sampling ratios.
--
charleslmims
 
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