4x5: which design of desktop the most suitable ?

[Larry Gebhardt]

I have an older Raptor (160GB) and tested it against a new 1TB drive I bought for backup. Across the whole platter the 1TB bargain drive was faster than the Raptor in transfer speeds, which for photo loading is what you need. So see if you can get ahold of some real test results before sinking big bucks in Velociraptors. I bet a 2TB single platter drive will give you better bang for the buck.

I am very happy with my new quad core Mac Pro for editing 4x5 images (usually drum scanned at 4000dpi). Sadly the Mac version of Photoshop will only use 3GB of RAM, but so far this hasn't been much of an issue for me.

[40moses]

ASPECT OF THE QUESTION remaining :
Video Card

Any suggestions ?
------------------------------

with regard that the main aspect of 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 should be the perpetuating of quality of the original world in a common plastic second world

question: exist certain pitfalls in the choice of video cards for the ambition to install best possible monitors ? eg Quato 26" monitors or others.
(resolution, colour rendition power, gray rendition)
Remember: What I can not see on Monitor as quality is lost (with risk of alteration by further steps).

[oris642]

I'm in a similar situation, looking for a machine to Photoshop 4x5's and also the 6x17's out of my Gaoersi. I've just spent the weekend building a Mac Pro "clone" made possible by this device that fools PC hardware into thinking it's a Mac:

www.efi-x.com

I bought the motherboard and and EFIX chip from www.expresshd.com

For $1,600 I built a machine optimized for Photoshop as per this article: www.macperformanceguide.com

Intel Quad-core Xeon running at 3.4 GHZ
8 GB RAM (can go to 16 GB for $400 more)
6 hard drives:
1- 640GB for storing applications only (Adobe CS4, Aperture)
4- 500GB in a RAID 0 array for speed
1- 1 TB for Time Machine backup
a 3-bay hard drive hot-swap array
Blu-Ray burner - make backups or copies up to 50 GB!
Card reader
nVidia 9800GT graphics card for dual monitors

A comparable Mac Pro (adding after-market Blu-Ray burner and additional 3 hard drives to make the comparison fair) = $3789

If I had to do it again I could do it all in 4-6 hours instead of three days, but

1) I had no teenaged son to show me how,
2) I have never built a computer before,
3) I had to learn a few new swear words to expedite the process. : )

I haven't run benchmarks yet but will do do this week.

[40moses]

I'm in a similar situation, looking for a machine to Photoshop 4x5's and also the 6x17's out of my Gaoersi. I've just spent the weekend building a Mac Pro "clone" made possible by this device that fools PC hardware into thinking it's a Mac:

www.efi-x.com

I bought the motherboard and and EFIX chip from www.expresshd.com

For $1,600 I built a machine optimized for Photoshop as per this article: www.macperformanceguide.com

Intel Quad-core Xeon running at 3.4 GHZ
8 GB RAM (can go to 16 GB for $400 more)
6 hard drives:
1- 640GB for storing applications only (Adobe CS4, Aperture)
4- 500GB in a RAID 0 array for speed
1- 1 TB for Time Machine backup
a 3-bay hard drive hot-swap array
Blu-Ray burner - make backups or copies up to 50 GB!
Card reader
nVidia 9800GT graphics card for dual monitors

A comparable Mac Pro (adding after-market Blu-Ray burner and additional 3 hard drives to make the comparison fair) = $3789

If I had to do it again I could do it all in 4-6 hours instead of three days, but

1) I had no teenaged son to show me how,
2) I have never built a computer before,
3) I had to learn a few new swear words to expedite the process. : )

I haven't run benchmarks yet but will do do this week.

******************

Thank you very much Mr oris 642

This is of great interest for me to analyze further.

Any hints are of great interest