You guys are all waiting for the...

[zdobson]

...NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and it's driving some of you mad but what exactly is wrong with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT???

First of all, you have to note that many people on here like to spend lots of money to max out their machines whether they actually need it or not. Yes, I realize that many people on this forum are pros and do actually need it, but it can be a little misleading for those of us who don't.

That being said, there are a lot of people like myself who don't need the 8800 and are very happy with their 2600. I have had no problems whatsoever with my 2.8 octo. I am a pro photographer and I don't game, so the 8800 is a waste for me. Personally, I wanted the $200 in my pocket instead of in my machine. I do understand why a lot of people are willing to spend the money, though.

Don't get too caught up in the frenzy. Evaluate what you really need. Reading these forums, I was convinced that I needed at least 8GB of RAM, but for my use, so far I haven't topped 1.3GB of active RAM.

 

[kem]

After ordering my new machine I regretted not getting the 8800, so I planned on getting it in a few months, and I still might. However the 2600XT is WAY better than I expected. I really only play one game on PC and thats GTR2, which imo is a game that is not very optimized and can really tax your system. My old PC had a 7600GT AGP, which was probably held back by AGP but I had to run the game 1024x768, no AA or AF and low settings to achieve a playable framerate.

Now the on 8core 2.8, I run 1280x1024, 2xAA 4x AF, high settings and get 60fps. Not that bad for a low-end card imo. Admittedly $200 for the upgraded card is pretty cheap and worth it for anyone who plans on gaming.

 

[kem]

How is that possible? If your in photoshop working on high res photos it's bound to make full use of your 8gb of ram. And yes I know Photoshop can only allocate 4gb of ram, but after that it sends to your swap disk, however in CS3 the system will take what photoshop would normally send to swap and send it to the extra RAM in your system, thus greatly boosting performance.

I've seen more than 1.3GB of active RAM just using mundane desktop apps, not even using any of my pro apps.

Don't get too caught up in the frenzy. Evaluate what you really need. Reading these forums, I was convinced that I needed at least 8GB of RAM, but for my use, so far I haven't topped 1.3GB of active RAM.

 

[echoout]

I haven't run into anything yet that has made me regret getting the ATI. Most of the work I've done has been in After Effects, Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro and Motion. Great so far.

 

[zdobson]

How is that possible? If your in photoshop working on high res photos it's bound to make full use of your 8gb of ram. And yes I know Photoshop can only allocate 4gb of ram, but after that it sends to your swap disk, however in CS3 the system will take what photoshop would normally send to swap and send it to the extra RAM in your system, thus greatly boosting performance.

I've seen more than 1.3GB of active RAM just using mundane desktop apps, not even using any of my pro apps.

I wondered the same thing. I expected it to use much, much more. I have the Photoshop preferences set to allow 1.5 GB, but PS itself hasn't used much over a gig. Granted, the files I've been working with lately are jpegs (converted from RAW), not tiffs and are only 7-9MB. Maybe because I'm coming from using a PowerBook G4, I'm still being conservative in my usage.

I have a wedding I'm about to edit for the next couple days. I took 1750 shots. Obviously I won't be processing all of them, but I'll watch usage as I work. Another thing might be that I tend not do more than levels adjustments and sharpening in PS. That doesn't use much RAM. And RAW conversions and batch processes are mostly using the CPU. I don't do much with layers b/c I'm a photojournalist and don't want to alter the original content of the image.

 

[Macinposh]

I wondered the same thing. I expected it to use much, much more. I have the Photoshop preferences set to allow 1.5 GB, but PS itself hasn't used much over a gig. Granted, the files I've been working with lately are jpegs (converted from RAW), not tiffs and are only 7-9MB.

A bit off topic, but same here!

Tried to ask about the memory allocation few months ago,but didnt get any definite answers.

I have 2GB of memory and it has never gone above 1.4GB.
Programs shows that 1.4GB used, 600MB free.
I can have 20x72mb TIFFs open,lightroom open,whatever open and it never,never,ever takes that 600MB free memory to use.

It doesnt matter if I have allocated 60% or 100% to photoshop.

Dont know if it is the Menumeter program that shows the allocation incorrectly or is it that the OS X keeps the 600mb´s reserved for something...that never has shown up?

Post it up if you happen to know the answer!