Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/08/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 11:08 AM 8/3/1999 +0000, you wrote: >The most important cpu specification with Photoshop is MMX. Your celeron >does not have MMX. Uh, BD, why do you think this? Intel certainly believes that the Celeron includes MMX (see: http://www.intel.tm.za/design/celeron/index.htm#mmx). I upgraded from a P266 MMX: bought an Abit motherboard and a Celeron 333 for about $180 *total*. Over-clocked the Celeron to 504 mHz using Abit's software, and installed a couple of extra fans in the cabinet to keep the CPU temp down. Total cost not much more than $200. The cost of a PIII 500mHz chip *alone* is nearly three times that. The Celeron uses a different caching system than the Pentium, but I'm not sure how interesting the differences would be to Luggers. This set-up runs circles around the P266, and the added speed is dramatically noticeable during scanning, image processing, and printing, which place the main processing load on my system. I also added a two-year-old Matrox Millennium 10MB video card, which was a state-of-the-art 2D card when it was released. Cost new well over $400. I bought it on eBay for $50. I used the 3D card that I already have for the second monitor. Windows98/Adobe allow me to adjust the gamma separately for both monitors. A no-holds-barred system, in my view, would look like this: Dual 500+mHz processors 256 MB system RAM (minimum) 8+ gig HD, wide SCSI or UltraDMA IDE, 7200 RPM. 2 monitors/cards to suit one taste and budget, at least one of the combos *really* good for image editing. CD R/W (I have a first generation 2x write that works OK, but is slooooow.) Nikon LS-2000 or equivalent scanner. Other drives, devices to suit one particular needs. Printer of one's choice. I use an Epson Perfection 636 (USB) flatbed with a transparency adapter to scan 6x9 stuff. Here's where a fast/large hard disk is absolutely essential. An ordinary transparency scanned at full resolution at actual size generates a .tiff file of about +/- 30MB. A 6x9 scanned at the same resolution/size can generate an image file approaching a gig in size. Add PS's workspace requirements, and we're talking multiple gigs to process a single image. Suffice it to say, I can't work at this level on my present system (I scan 6x9cm at 35mm dimensions--with a subsequent loss in image quality), but I can imagine putting together a system that could . . . Chandos Chandos Michael Brown Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies College of William and Mary http://www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown