what are your specs...?

[Patton Art]

hey,
I'm building myself a new computer (you may have read that in a previous post). I've been thinking about what I need....
I'm goin to go with an Athlon processor. I was lookin at a 2.13 ghz and a 1.93 ghz one. the 1.93 is only .2 ghz slower, but it costs 135 bucs less!
1.93 should be plenty to get by, eh?
also, what type of video card do you use? I have people (non-artists) suggesting to get a GeForce902343209 that processes a trillion polygons a second (well not quite, but you know what I mean). I don't think I need a great one, since I'm only gonna be using photoshop and painter and don't play any games. But, does anyone have any experience with other video cards that work good with PS and painter? And do I need 128 megs of memory or will 64 be good?

Sorry about all this... just want to know about other peoples experience here.

[ZippZopp]

my specs are

AMD Athlon XP 2100+
MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard
512 megs of Kingmax PC2700 DDR
55 gigs of Hard drive space
ATI Radeon 8500
Dual 17 inch monitors
Wacom intuos2
WinXP Pro

if you can save the cash, do so now and wait for the AMD Opteron to come out, also known as ClawHammer. its 64bit, and coming out really soon. it'll be expensive, but i think it'll be worth it. Plus Microsofts newest OS, Longhorn, which is still in alpha stage is gonna be 64 bit. if you really need a system right now, you could probably build a decent one for pretty cheap, but once the Opteron comes out your motherboard and ram won't be of much use to use with that. i guess many would argue you could wait forever for the next best thing.

as for video card, the Radeon 8500 has 2 outputs so you can connect 2 monitors easily, and yes, dual montors are great, i can't go without it now! if you can, you might as well get the 128 megs of ram on the video card, it can only help.

anyway, i'm kinda blabbering about upcoming hardware.....seems likeyou are sold on buliding one now though, so i'd definatley save the cash and get the 1.93 ghz. oh, and one other tip...DON"T GET GENERIC RAM!!!! it only causes problems, ram is just as important as any other component so get some decent stuff. i had so many problems with my systems cause i was using that generic stuff. hope that was some help to ya

Cheers

[Sadclown]

Well here's what I run...

Athlon XP 1.45 Ghz proc.
512 MB of DDR memory
Geforce3 Ti/200 with 128 MB onboard RAM.

I've never had any problem running photoshop, and for the short time that I've used it, Painter either.

I'm not a computer expert, but I built the one I use and I ahve a bit of experience. IMHO I think a 1.93 Ghz processor is more than enough for most applications, including photshop and painter.

My advice would be to get a decent video card first off. The Geforce 4 has dropped immensely in price (I saw the ti/4200 for $178 a few days ago), so that may be the way to go. Just make sure you get the Titanium (Ti) series card and not the MX. The MXs are just rehashed Geforce2s.

Once you've found your video card load up on system memory, when working with large graphic files (2000 px and up), you'll definitely need it. Get at least 512, but if you can go for a full gig. And make sure you get name brand memory. I can't stress this enough. Alot of problems people have with their PCs can be traced back to cheap memory. Crucial, Mushkin, and several other companies make good memory. Yes it's more expensive, but it's totally worth it, trust me. Especially when building your own PC.

and finally on a side note, having nothing to do with graphics, make sure you get a good fan for your CPU. The stock fan/heatsink combo sucks big time, and an overheating processor is often the cause of intermittent lock-ups, machine failues etc.

Well this is a huge post but I hope it helped. :)

[mtw]

I suggest reading reviews of products at Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com). He compares products to other similar ones, and runs different benchmarks.