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Thread ID: 72244	2006-09-05 11:06:00	What to upgrade? RAM or VIDcard?	bizzack (7739)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
482784	2006-09-05 11:06:00	Hi all, I'm looking to upgrade my pc a little and I'm not too sure which direction to go in as I'm on an extremely limited budget. Firstly my system is an AMD 2600, 768MB of RAM, and an ATI 9600 XT 128MB I mainly usemy pc for graphics programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. Unforortunalety no time for games :groan: So I was wondering what would be more helpful, more RAM or a new video card. I can get only one... I'm thinking more RAM may help, but everyones advice would be great! thanks!	bizzack (7739)
482785	2006-09-05 11:09:00	ram. unless you can find a high quality 2D card for such little money (slim chance of that!) progs like photoshop can make use of large amounts of ram. what cpu do have exactly?	tweak'e (69)
482786	2006-09-05 11:27:00	you'll prob feel your computer working more smoothly if you add ram.. prob won't feel that or won't be as obvious if you hav a new vcard ..i don't mind some more ram myself~	heni72847 (1166)
482787	2006-09-05 13:10:00	What's your current memory? What are you using? A video card can be used for intensive operations on images such as sharpening and will speed this up a bit. Extra memory will speed everything up if you have too little but will do nothing if you have too much. I would recommend 1GB as a decent amount, but check your total memory usage while running Photoshop with an open image and double it to get a better upper bound on your memory use.	TGoddard (7263)
482788	2006-09-05 15:57:00	What's your current memory? I think he said what he currently had in his message on the second line. Anyhow best to go with memory. If you MB can handle it then dual channel is the way to get the best speed increase. However with what you have got it is getting up there anyway. I currently have 1GB in all my PC's but one (which can only handle 512MB (P3 1GHz)) and it is plenty. Don't do much in the graphics stuff though and I know they do use memory for their buffers so more is better. At 128MB on the Gfx card it should be plenty unless you are doing things like heaps of anti-aliasing and stuff like that (games mostly)	Big John (551)
482789	2006-09-05 21:11:00	What's your hard drive situation? Photoshop likes to run a scatch disk and that is better as a seperate drive on another controller, other partition doesn't count.	PaulD (232)
482790	2006-09-06 03:42:00	my memory consists of a 512 and 256 pc3200 DDR, except i think the 256 is at a slower speed.. I only have one 80gig HD, I have been thinking to buy another one though, as they are pretty cheap now I guess. i think my MB can handle up to 3 gig. its a GA-7N400. As I've currently got a 512, should I just get another 512 or get a 1gig?	bizzack (7739)
482791	2006-09-06 03:56:00	Best to get a pair of dual channel RAM of the same brand and speed. Means they run at the same clock speed and you'll get much better performance out of them. Well, better anyway :) So if you want a gig, perhaps consider two 512s and sell your old one depending on its speed - or since you're doing heavy graphics stuff, consider splashing out and getting 2x 1gigs of dual channel memory - and enjoy :) Cheers, Mark	marksmayo (11099)
482792	2006-09-06 07:06:00	[QUOTE=bizzack;482833]Hi all, I'm looking to upgrade my pc a little and I'm not too sure which direction to go in as I'm on an extremely limited budget. Firstly my system is an AMD 2600, 768MB of RAM, and an ATI 9600 XT 128MB RAM....Photoshop especially loves as much as you can afford. Much more important than the graphics card for what you are doing. RAM is cheap these days.	fnphoto (2434)
482793	2006-09-07 00:10:00	I would also have to say RAM, I have 2Gb and I don't think that is enough for what I do :stare: Which is a little Photoshop, Video editing/converting and gaming... I am often running less than 10% free and the more RAM you have the faster things run and load, you will not notice much (if any) increase with a GFX card for what you do...	The_End_Of_Reality (334)
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