System for Professional Photoshop User

[deep82]

Profession: Graphic/Web Designer
Software to use: Photoshop/ Coreldraw
Other Tasks: Video converting, TV Recording/Ripping
Budget: 25k to 30k
Already have: 23" Monitor, mouse, keyword, optical drive, speakers, UPS

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1. What is the purpose of the computer? What all applications and games are you going to run? (Stupid answers like 'gaming' or 'office work' will not work. Be exact. Which games? Which applications? Avoid the word 'et cetera.')
Ans: Photoshopping. Graphic work. Love to multitask with lots of browser screen open and multiple photoshop documents open. Other important task is TV recording and video converting (converting raw video to small size video files)

2. What is your overall budget? If you can extend a bit for a more balanced configuration, then mention this too.
Ans: 25k to 30k

3. Planning to overclock?
Ans: Is it required for my work?

4. Which Operating System are you planning to use?
Ans: Win XP or Win 7

5. How much hard drive space is needed?
Ans: 1TB minimum

6. Do you want to buy a monitor? If yes, please mention which screen size and resolution do you want. If you already have a monitor and want to reuse it, again mention the size and resolution of monitor you have.
Ans: No, already have 23" LG Full HD Monitor

7. Which components you DON'T want to buy or which components you already have and plan on reusing?
Ans:Monitor, mouse, keyword, optical drive, speakers, UPS

8. When are you planning to buy the system?
Ans: new year

9. Have you ever built a desktop before or will this be done by an assembler?
Ans: assembler

10. Where do you live? Are you buying locally? Are you open to buying stuff from online shops if you don't get locally?
Ans: flipkart

11. Anything else which you would like to say?
Ans: help me!

 

[Cilus]

Get the following:-

AMD FX 8350 @ 12.6K
Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 @ 5.4K
G-SKill RipjawX 1600 MHz DDR3 4GB @ 1.5K
MSI HD 6670 1GB GDDR5 @ 5.2K
WD Caviar Green 1TB SATA 6 Gbps with 64 MB Cache @ 4.3K
Corsair CX 430V2 @ 2.6K

Total: 31.6K

 

[vickybat]

^^ I think a 7750 can be squeezed in there. Its a better buy than 6670 at a marginally higher price.
Besides, photoshop's recently included opencl acceleration might take a better advantage of the GCN architecture.
And finally 7750 offers better gaming performance consuming even lesser power.

This should be good enough:

MSI AMD R7750-PMD1GD5/OC 1 GB GDDR5 Graphics Card | Graphics Card | Flipkart.com

 

[singh_dd93]

Get the following:-

AMD FX 8350 @ 12.6K
Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 @ 5.4K
G-SKill RipjawX 1600 MHz DDR3 4GB @ 1.5K
MSI HD 6670 1GB GDDR5 @ 5.2K
WD Caviar Green 1TB SATA 6 Gbps with 64 MB Cache @ 4.3K
Corsair CX 430V2 @ 2.6K

Total: 31.6K

the GA970A-DS3 does not support processor above FX8120. It just reboots after first screen with 8150 with latest BIOS. The procssor works fine on other boards.
So go with GA970A-UD3. It has full support for Piledriver. Price 6.2k approx

 

[rayfire]

No Pen Tablet?

 

[vkl]

You can go with fx8350 or i5 3450/70+h77.
Fx8350 has advantage over i5 3450/70 in functions which are processed solely on CPU and can use more threads.
Once the discrete GPU comes in action there won't be anything in favor of fx8350 in the GPU accelerated functions.
Where fx8350 would have advantage is ray-tracing in photoshop cs6.For most of the video encoding applications,in CPU mode fx8350 would be simply much faster than the i5.
But in applications which can make use of quick sync for video encoding the i5 3450/3470 simply have no competition from FX.For that though one needs a board with logix virtu to be able to use quick sync.
As far as GPU is concerned pick atleast hd7750.Would be handy in compute tasks also handy in case of applications like handbrake for encoding with OpenCL path.
So pick according to your requirements.

 

[deep82]

Thank You all for your replies. Few questions/requests

1) Please also give intel i5 based rig.
2) Please give motherboard, processor & GPU direct flipkart link. I don't want to order something incompatible.
3) Would 8GB RAM be useful in photoshop work?
4) pen tablet is not required.
5) Also need a cabinet to hold the new rig.

6) Also do I also need a cooler separately if I go with AMD processor?

 

[vkl]

For Intel i5 rig
i5 3450/3470 - 11.3k/11.7k
ASRock H77 Pro4/MV-6.8k or Asus P8H77-M LE-7.6k
GIGABYTE GV-R775OC-1GI
G.Skill RipjawsX(F3-12800CL9S-4GBXL) 4GB*2 -3k

Take 8GB RAM.High resolution images would take more RAM,also it would be handy if you have too many processes running at background while doing RAM intensive things.
For cabinet look for Nzxt source 210 elite or cm elite 311plus,both are near 2.6-2.8k.

If you go with with fx8350 you won't need another cooler unless you plan to overclock the system.FX processors run a lot cooler than ivy/sandy bridge i5s.
For cooler look for Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO Cooler@1.4k or CM hyper 212 evo@2.1k.

For FX8350 look for Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 -6k or Asus M5A97 -6.8k as motherboards.
Try to buy products from local market and try sources like primeabgb and smcinternational.Not everything is available in flipkart and many are out of stock too.

As far as Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 is concerned there is no mention of fx8150/8350/8320 in the official support list of the motherboard in any of the revisions available as of now.
There are lot of sales bundle of fx8150 with Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 in amazon,ebay and other sites though.
Another board Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 also don't have fx8150 in its support list in it's first 3 releases viz. rev. 1.0/1.1,rev. 1.2,rev. 1.3.
After rev 1.4 it(Gigabyte GA-970A-D3) has fx8150/fx8350/fx8320 in its support list.
Check this thread:AMD FX 8150 w/ Gigabyte ga-970a-d3 = Freezing under load in games and prime95. Not a temp issue. - Page 3
So for those looking for fx8150/fx8350/fx8320 it would be better to avoid GA-970A-DS3 unless the manufacturer releases some newer revisions of the motherboard with support for those processors.

 

[Cilus]

Vkl, quicksync does not offer any professional level Video editing and converting. Most of the encoding apps, supporting Quicksync are basic Video converters for portable devices with almost no or very little custom setings. On the other hand, CPU based and OpenCL accelerated Video Encoders like Handbrake, MediaCoder, Tmpgenc Express, Mainconcept Reference Encoder 2.1, AVIDemux etc offer far better customization settings whic are required for a professional level video encoding. The quality of CPU based Encoders are also better.

Once the discrete GPU comes in action there won't be anything in favor of fx8350 in the GPU accelerated functions.

Not entirely true. There is a difference between OpenCL apps and OpenCL accelerated apps. The former will only run at GPU, keeping CPU idle whereas the later will use both CPU and GPU concurrently to speed up the process.

 

[vkl]

Cilus,I just referred quick sync as an option.The thing is where the details of the encoded videos are not very critical,quick sync is quite a good option as it is considerably faster compared to others.Moreover quick sync has evolved quite a bit from sandy to ivy-bridge.At this stage quick sync gives faster and better quality output than both AMD's VCE and Nvidia's NVENC output provided by the mid-range cards.There are fewer artifacts in case of quick-sync than with the latter two.Also with driver releases quick sync now have modes(high performance vs high quality) in applications like media expresso to set up balance between image quality and performance(speed).
Though CPU based encoding would still give better output in most cases.
OP mentioned that he wants to convert files into smaller sizes,how small and for what purpose is upto his requirements.So he has the options.He can pick as per his requirements.

As far as OpenCL with CPU and CPU+GPU is concerned,I think you didn't get me properly.
For photoshop CS6 in GPU-accelerated functions the CPU+GPU combination of i5 3470+dGPU would be either as fast or faster than fx8350+dGPU in OpenCL accelerated GPU functions.
Hence,I said "Once the discrete GPU comes in action there won't be anything in favor of fx8350 in the "GPU accelerated functions".
In photoshop CS6 most of the important functions except ray-tracing are GPU-accelerated.

Below image clearly shows that.GTX 680 was the GPU for the test.
*i.imgur.com/FNFQB.png?1

Another thing to keep in mind is not all functions in photoshop CS6 can use all 8 cores,in such cases where the core-usage would be less i5 3470 would be faster.
Unless something like some heavy filters are applied which can use much cores the fx8350 would be slower than i5 3470 in processes which don't require that much core-usage.
Simple editing or some manipulation of 10-20Megapixel image won't use that many cores.
As said earlier,in photoshop CS6 fx8350 would have have a definite advantage over i5 3470 in ray-tracing.

In things like OpenCL based 3D-rendering,fx8350+hd7750 would be better than i5 3570k+hd7750,because fx8350 would be able to assist in computing more than i5 3570k can in such situations.But here also if the card is something like hd7970/50,most probably none of the two processors with hd7970/50 would be faster than hd7970/50 alone.
In such cases they are better off feeding the data to the GPU than to assist in compute.Processors like i7 3770k,i7 3960X would be able to assist in compute considerably in such situations.
I think it is clear now.

 

[deep82]

Thank You for detailed discussion. I defiantly didn't know all the hardware stuff and what Photoshop uses backend and it has given me great knowledge. Coming back to my rig, I am summarizing it as under ( I am still confused about which to choose FX or i5)

Processor: AMD FX 8350 OR i5 3450/3470
MoBo: Gigabyte GA970A-UD3 or ASRock H77 Pro4/MV or Asus P8H77-M LE
GPU: MSI 7750 OR GIGABYTE GV-R775OC-1GI
Ram: G.Skill RipjawsX(F3-12800CL9S-4GBXL) 4GB*2
Cabinet: Nzxt source 210 elite or cm elite 311plus
HDD: WD Caviar Green 1TB SATA 6 Gbps with 64 MB Cache (infact can upgrade to 2GB, please suggest)
PSU: Corsair CX 430V2

Please help me finalize this rig.

Infact kindly using summarization above, give exact rig for both FX and i5 sepratly.

 

[vkl]

Most of the things have been discussed.Pick according to your usage.
i5 based config has already been given.CX430v2 is fine.
If you pick up fx8350 then look for Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3@6k or Asus M5A97@6.8 for motherboard,rest remain same.
For 2TB HDD you can look for WD Caviar Green 2TB@5.9k or Seagate Barracuda 2 TB@6k.

 

[Cilus]

Vkl, thanks for sharing the information. But I was not comparing quick Sync with AMD or Nvidia's GPU based converters, I was comparing it with CPU only converters like Handbrake, AVIDemux, Tmpgenc, Mainconcept Reference etc. Quick sync is just for converting your video files to one format to another when quality does not matter more and that goes true for most of the GPU based encoders supporting Nvidia and AMD cards. On the other hand, CPU based Encoders will definitely take higher time than GPU based encoders but they offer far more advanced settings which actually requires for professional level encoding. An in those applications, FX-8350 will flex its mussels as most of them are heavily multi-threaded in nature.

Another thing which should be mentioned here is the better instruction set support in Piledriver, it has both FMA4 and FMA3 as well as AMD XOP (SSE 5.1 based Vector Instructions) which might be very useful in future applications, supporting those.

 

[vkl]

^^A good CPU based video encoding would be much better.Mate,I suggested Quick sync just an option as OP's requirement was "converting raw video to small size video files",which doesn't speak about resolution(high/low).In CPU-based video encoding fx8350 is without doubt lot better than i5 3xxx.