Computer Upgrade

My computer is under strain since I started using CS3, especially as I need to run Powerpoint and Adobe bridge at the same time.
Could anyone recommend a Processor, Graphics card and a suitable manufacturer.
I know there are lots out there but perhaps someone here has upgraded for the same reason and may be able to offer their experience.
Any advice really welcomed.
Tom

If you are running several programs at the same time, then the first thing to do is to make sure you have enough RAM.

If you only have 512MB, then another gigabyte might be all you need.

G

It might help if you told us what you have now.

Thanks so far.
Yes I do only have 512mb ram and know that this is one of my problems. I have been told that my processer and graphics card is too old and not up to it. obviously if it is only a ram problem I would be more than happy.

This is what I have;
Dell Dimension 2400 P4 2.8Ghz
512 Ram
Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller
Dell plug and play monitor
The max ram capacity is 1gb


Hope this helps.
Thanks so much again for your efforts to assist me.
Tom

1 GB of RAM will help enotmously. As soon as I installed more RAM the speed of everything just leapt forwards.

It's not expensive, so why not try that first?

I'd say you don't need a new PC, just more memory. For still image editing, the 'speed' of your graphics card is really not critical. The 'faster' cards are really designed for action games, video editing, and showing other types of moving image.

If your PC is slower than you remember it to be, you probably have a number of unnecessary programmes installed, and/or processes running. Take some time to have a look at your installed programmes and remove any that you don't need/use.

Anti-virus and anti-malware software is mostly likely to blame, or children downloading the odd game or three. I'm not suggesting you remove AV/AM software, but you might look at alternatives which are not so memory/cpu hungry.

The final remedy is to restore your PC to it's factory fresh condition with your recovery disks (EVERYTHING GETS WIPED, SO BACKUP FIRST), apply any necessary updates, then reload only the software you need/use. When that's done, keep the kids away from it.

Definately upgrade the RAM first should help a fair bit.

A really good anti virus software (possibly the best out) is NOD32. It's far less memory intensive (30K and almots 0 processor use) than say Norton or McAffe and is updated hourly rather than weekly like most.

www.nod32.com and costs £23.00 year 1 with renewall at about £18.00

Graphics cards can only be used for 3D work or games. There are a select few applications which can use them for other things but these are mostly scientific floating point apps. Video work on a GPU is done by a small dedicated encoder/decoder, which doesn't actually need the rest of the graphics card.

I am sure your board supports more than 1Gb RAM. If you have 512MB in there you can easily stick 2x1GB sticks inside.

Also, don't forgat to defragment the drive from time to time. This will tidy up your hard drive and speed things up. Before you do this you might also clear out all the temporary files.

You will find the tools needed under Programs>Accessories>System Tools

It doesn't.

G

I just looked it up!

Same for the 533MHz FSB version.

The existing RAM would have to be removed and 2x1GB added.

I agree that memory is your biggest bottleneck in that specs. If you cannot get enough memory in the motherboard, another option that is recommnded is to get a second hard disk fitted and use it exclusively for the swap file and adobe cache files.

I see that you can only have 1GB but in general if you are unsure as to how much memory or what specs you need I find the memory scanner and product lists at

http://www.crucial.com/

to be very helpfull.

I had a 32Mb Graphics card which was fine when using Photoshop Elements 2, but when I changed to Elements 4 everything ground to a halt. Fitting a new card with 256Mb of memory sped things right back up again, so presumably Adobe changed the way the screens were drawn (?) and so a better graphics card was needed.

Discussed here: https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2708

Have since upgraded my computer, so have that graphics card knocking about waiting to be ebayed if anyone's interested...

Dan

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