Hi, All,

My Computer: CPU - 1.2 GHz
RAM - 0.99 Mb
Video Card - 128 Mb

with these features Photoshop, Silkypix....work very slow. I wanna upgrade the most important parts of it because I don't really have much money.

So, what do you suggest. What should I upgrade: CPU, RAM or Video card. I was thinking about RAM and Video Card.

u?

Thanks.

RAM is your obvious bottleneck here (and I assume you mean 1GB, not 1Mb, otherwise it's no wonder your computer is slow ;) I think if you go to 2 or 4GB, you will see the most obvious difference.

hi, yeah, it's gb, not mb, sorry for that.
I searched online for compatibility and apparently my Motherboard (Epox EP - 8K3AE) is old and will not accept 2 gb RAM. Thus, I must change my motherboard. If I change my motherboard, I must change the CPU as well...a lot of money.. :)

Thank you.

John,

If money is an issue, as it always is in life, have you considered a second hand computer.

Something a few years old, such as a 2.4ghz or 3ghz P4, go very cheaply these days.

Bring the RAM up to 2gb and use the hard drive from your present computer as a scratch disc for Photoshop.

It would be a big improvement from what you're using and won't hurt your wallet.

Thanks a lot, Jeremy. I'll take it into consideration. The problem is that it is very hard to find good quality second hand computers. either they are really broken and people say they work fine, either you get lucky and find something good.
I'll try. I wanted to know what computer component makes PP work better and found out, it is RAM, well combined with a medium processor...
I already found the components I'd like to buy and it worths 300 $. Still, pretty expensive for me.
By the way can we open a forum cathegory like: Buy and Sell or something like this...? :)
Thanks all.

And, a second hard drive for Photoshop Scratch disc. Can be as small as 20gb or a partition on a larger second drive.

Excellent advice. Two decent hard drives, 2GB RAM and a fairly fast processor is all you need. if you tap into a local computer club, gaming geeks or somewhere else where bleeding edge folk crave the latest toys, you should be able to buy their cast-offs inexpensively.

Hi,

I have something to add to this thread:

1) What about the monitor. Is it true that Flat LCD monitor Screens are not so good for photographic work?
2) What kind of monitor is suitable to Photography?

Greetings,

And stay away from Vista..
I upgraded a year ago from a 1,26GHz, with 2 Gbytes of ram, but set up with raid 0. It worked well. Go for more ram.
I'm not that impressed with my new one, 4G ram, 3GHz, but no raid. Takes ages to save

John,

Maybe it's not a bad exercise to investigate what makes PS behave slow. Is RAM truly the bottleneck? Is PS only slow starting up, or during working with images? I would monitor disk io, ram and cpu usage while working with PS. Based on those observations, I would decide what to upgrade.

And why not install Linux and work with GImp? Hardware requirements are lower on that platform.

Best regards,
Joris.

I agree memory is the obvious choice, but given that with your low memory you will be doing a lot of disk swapping, it would be worthwhile to defragment your disk regularly. Also you can increase the size of the swap space.

Ernie

for multimedia, graphics and photography you must have:
cpu >= 2,3 Ghz, quad core
ram >= 4GB
video >= 512 Mb, better 1Gb
and with this CS4 work almost fine. :)
Best regards.

Whow man, do you mean this? That's a serious beast to put under your desk.
Over 4GB means your need a 64bit os that can use it (only some 32bit Windows Sever versions can use the PAE). Quad core cpu's need multi-threaded software to fully use multiple cpu's (or cores). I think CS4 will work fine with less.

Joris.

Sorry, go for an Apple Mac, a second hand G5 dual core or a new iMac, I run Photoshop CS4, Aperture 2; Lightroom and WINDOWS XP on an old G5 2Ghz Dual core, 1.7TB storage, 12GB RAM; Video GeForce 6600 256Mb - it flies.

RAM is the keyword. I'm not consent for an upgrading for old computers. Because when you upgrade one part, you should upgrade other parts as well, otherwise it doesn't really work and it costs more than buying a new system..

My old PC has only 512 MB RAM! And I'v lost many hairs and keyboards while editing pictures because of anger ;-)

1.2Ghz processor is slow too even if you add RAM because some task require more processing that memory especially in Photoshop and other graphic software..