Building a photo-editing rig, need advice

[yaoxing]

Will be assembling a photo-editing rig soon, need to clarify some doubts I have:

Using Windows XP Professional:

1) Do dualies perform significantly better than uniprocs for the same CPU specs?
Eg: Does dual 1GHz perform much better than uniproc 1GHz?

2) Does the answer to above depend on the software being used?

3) Will it make much difference to the performance if I have two HDDs in the system (on separate channels of a PCI SATA card), with one HDD storing all the photos, while the other storing everything else (i.e. OS, software, etc)

4) Performance-wise is 1.5 GB much better than 1 GB? How often do you see a difference in performance between these two, other things being equal?

5) Which is better as a photo-editing rig: Dualie P-III 1 GHz with 1.5 GB PC133 SDRAM on VIA chipset, or Uniproc P4 1.8 GHz with 1.5 GB PC133 SDRAM on Intel 845 chipset, other things being equal?

 

[Bobo]

Will be assembling a photo-editing rig soon, need to clarify some doubts I have:

Using Windows XP Professional:

1) Do dualies perform significantly better than uniprocs for the same CPU specs?
Eg: Does dual 1GHz perform much better than uniproc 1GHz?

Ans: Technically yes, dual processor performs better than a single processor. But the newer P4 are HT(hyper threading), meaning its working like a dual processor CPU. Its faster than a non HT CPU.

2) Does the answer to above depend on the software being used?

Ans: Yes. XP has version for single and dual processor usage. Now adays XP Professional should support dual prossors.

3) Will it make much difference to the performance if I have two HDDs in the system (on separate channels of a PCI SATA card), with one HDD storing all the photos, while the other storing everything else (i.e. OS, software, etc)?

Ans : Yes and No. Its safer to store your data/photo in another drive (secondary dirve) we call it. Or you can partition it (split the drive into two) so that during a software/OS corruption, and you cannot boot up and you need to reformat the whole drive, your data/photo are still safe in another partition or drive.
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4) Performance-wise is 1.5 GB much better than 1 GB? How often do you see a difference in performance between these two, other things being equal?

Ans: Performance wise will definately be a bit faster.

5) Which is better as a photo-editing rig: Dualie P-III 1 GHz with 1.5 GB PC133 SDRAM on VIA chipset, or Uniproc P4 1.8 GHz with 1.5 GB PC133 SDRAM on Intel 845 chipset, other things being equal?

Ans: A P4 1.8 is better and a dual P3. P4 is cooler different architecture.
From my point of view, a photo editing rig is less demanding than a Video editing rig. Also don't forget to get those Geforce/Readon graphics card. Those ranging from $100-$200 is good enough

My 2 cents...

 

[yaoxing]

Ans: Technically yes, dual processor performs better than a single processor. But the newer P4 are HT(hyper threading), meaning its working like a dual processor CPU. Its faster than a non HT CPU.

I know that they work like dual processor CPUs but can the performance really match a dual CPU system? This is one of my concerns because HT have occasionally been remarked as being overhyped.

Ans: Yes. XP has version for single and dual processor usage. Now adays XP Professional should support dual prossors.

I mean the photo-editing software, such as Adobe photoshop CS. Is it optimised for SMP or does it leave its resource management to the OS? I don't expect software like ArcSoft Photostudio to behave this way, but I wonder whether software in general are designed to take full advantage of the hardware architecture.

Ans : Yes and No. Its safer to store your data/photo in another drive (secondary dirve) we call it. Or you can partition it (split the drive into two) so that during a software/OS corruption, and you cannot boot up and you need to reformat the whole drive, your data/photo are still safe in another partition or drive.

Thanks.

Ans: Performance wise will definately be a bit faster.

A bit only arh..... :what: ok..... ;p

Ans: A P4 1.8 is better and a dual P3. P4 is cooler different architecture.
From my point of view, a photo editing rig is less demanding than a Video editing rig. Also don't forget to get those Geforce/Readon graphics card. Those ranging from $100-$200 is good enough

I already have some hardware, just want to fine tune the hardware combination before building the rig. Thanks for your recommendations!