hi everybody
so I've reached that point, which seems to be right around that 3-3.5 year mark, where my computer starts to feel really slow. I'm a pro photog, and I do a lot of retouching. wether it's that the file sizes keep getting bigger and bigger (it's not uncommon that I'm working on 1-2 *GIG* files) or whether it's just perceptual, or some combination of both - I dont know. but regardless, lately my machine has been feeling painfully slow in photoshop.
I'm hesitant to get a new system yet - it seems like at this point I might as well wait until the final CS3 comes out in case they bump mac pros before then. also, I ran the retouch artists speed test in CS2 and CS3beta and my score was not THAT much slower than people have been getting on current mac pros (I was pulling about 1:23 to others' :40-:50 on mac pros). so in the meantime, I'm looking to see what I might do to supercharge my machine for its grand fanale.
it's a rev A G5 2x2, with 7gigs of ram, and the radeon 9800 pro graphics card. I've got the original 160gb internal, with about 25 gigs free, and a second 400 gig seagate 7200 rpm internat that's basically empty (used as the scratch disk).
I'm wondering where I might be able to pump up the performance. will a better graphics card make much difference? I'm not really having issues with screen redraw and such, so I dont know that better graphics would do much. I'm close to max on ram, so I doubt I'd see much improvement from 1 extra gig. I'm thinking of swapping out one or maybe even both drives for 10,000 rpm raptors. is it possible to raid both internals in this machine? would, say, 2 150 gig raptors in raid 0 work? what would get better speed, 2 drives in a raid, or 2 separate where one has the OS and apps and the other is just a scratch disk?
any other ideas?
thanks for any advice!
so I've reached that point, which seems to be right around that 3-3.5 year mark, where my computer starts to feel really slow. I'm a pro photog, and I do a lot of retouching. wether it's that the file sizes keep getting bigger and bigger (it's not uncommon that I'm working on 1-2 *GIG* files) or whether it's just perceptual, or some combination of both - I dont know. but regardless, lately my machine has been feeling painfully slow in photoshop.
I'm hesitant to get a new system yet - it seems like at this point I might as well wait until the final CS3 comes out in case they bump mac pros before then. also, I ran the retouch artists speed test in CS2 and CS3beta and my score was not THAT much slower than people have been getting on current mac pros (I was pulling about 1:23 to others' :40-:50 on mac pros). so in the meantime, I'm looking to see what I might do to supercharge my machine for its grand fanale.
it's a rev A G5 2x2, with 7gigs of ram, and the radeon 9800 pro graphics card. I've got the original 160gb internal, with about 25 gigs free, and a second 400 gig seagate 7200 rpm internat that's basically empty (used as the scratch disk).
I'm wondering where I might be able to pump up the performance. will a better graphics card make much difference? I'm not really having issues with screen redraw and such, so I dont know that better graphics would do much. I'm close to max on ram, so I doubt I'd see much improvement from 1 extra gig. I'm thinking of swapping out one or maybe even both drives for 10,000 rpm raptors. is it possible to raid both internals in this machine? would, say, 2 150 gig raptors in raid 0 work? what would get better speed, 2 drives in a raid, or 2 separate where one has the OS and apps and the other is just a scratch disk?
any other ideas?
thanks for any advice!