A PC for RAW

I have just ventured into using RAW on my K-m and of course produce far better images when printing. However, my 5 year old (1.8GHz Sempron with 512MB PC2700 DDRSDRAM) PC is rather slow at processing RAW data. I would be grateful for recommendations for a minimum spec PC for this purpose please or would a straight memory upgrade suffice?

I am using the supplied Pentax editing software and also IrfanView on my XP machine and also looking for some Debian based Linux applications.

Well, I run Silkypix on my aging Toshiba M200 - which is (IIRC) a 1.6GHz Centrino. But it does have 1Gb RAM (and needs it!).
For the sake of £20 or so, I'd suggest having a go at upgrading the RAM.

It also depends on what you mean by rather slow Even on my high end quad core Xenon with 2Gb RAM processing from RAW does take a while! RAW processing is a relatively slow process - expect in the region of 20 to 60 seconds per image (depending on what processing options you apply).

Not sure if it's in the Pentax software, but the best approach is to tag all the images you want after tuning them, and then process the lot in a batch while you have a cup of tea

Matt

I agree with Matt a memory upgrade will help you, your motherboard will take up two 2GB of PC2700(1GB in each slot)

PS Don't forget you can increase your speed by clearing out any old files and software as well as a disk clean and defrag

Thanks both for your comments. I do have a more modern Acer laptop with 1GB of RAM but not a big HD so perhaps will try that. On my PC it perhaps takes around 30/40 seconds to process a 10MB RAW image.

I'm always cleaning up the HD and defragging However, I have ordered a 1GB module so will add it to one of my 250s and see what happens!

A faster processor would help as well, but you may not consider it worthwhile to upgrade that or the whole PC. So just go and make a cup of tea (or three-course meal!) while the computer churns away with your batch of pics.

The processor is the limiting factor on my computer now I have plenty of memory and fast hard drives. RAW conversion involves a lot of number crunching.

I would build another totally new PC if I could guarantee that my existing 200GB hard drive would work with it

The hard drive shouldn't be much of a concern. If your existing one is not compatible then you could replace it with a new one (and a much larger one) quite cheaply and copy all your data from the old one - using an external enclosure if necessary. Even better, have two (or three!) hard drives for extra speed and/or security.

Have you seen the prices of hard drives lately? Remarkably inexpensive for the capacity. See www.scan.co.uk

I know, it's ridiculous To think I paid 120 quid for a 1GB not that long ago and now they are half that for a terabyte

Think the progress and cost of computer items is staggering, my first true PC had a hard drive of 64k and cost about £1200.00 and we thought that was amazing and now I have a Flash drive that is 16gb cost £15 and is only as long as my little finger.

All modern motherboards should have both IDE and SATA connections, so your hard drive would work fine.

One word of caution, though, if you were to use your hard drive in a totally new PC then you would have to format it to reinstall Windows and all your programs (and backup your existing data).

Alternatively buy a new hard drive and install this one as a 2nd drive, and use it for backups.

Regards,
Adrian

If your HD's a few years old, it could be slowing everything down. Check it with some S.M.A.R.T. software. Modern drives re-allocate sectors without telling you and it really slows things down and there is a limited amount of space on the drive availabe for re-allocation. Scandisk doesn't actually show the bad sectors because it reads the re-allocated ones and shows them as good.

This is a good fast 320 GB drive for only £50, I bought one a few months back. link

Unless your doing video encoding you shouldn't need a faster computer.

shim

My HD is about two years old, a WD 200GB SATA and yes I could use it as a backup. But first I will try a memory upgrade in fact an email has just popped up telling me it's been despatched

Back in '96 I bought a P100 PC, with a massive 1GB HD, DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11, 16MB RAM all for £1911.73 pence

btw that's 1996

[/quote Back in '96 I bought a P100 PC, with a massive 1GB HD, DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11, 16MB RAM all for £1911.73 pence [/quote]Those were the days

Unless things have changed ram has to be upgraded in matched pairs, correct me if I'm wrong someone,

Yes and No, if your fitting more than 2gb or to a modern motherboard thay say it's best to fit a matched pair.