Specs for scanning 4x5 (V750)

[walter23]

I'm going to get a V750 this week, most likely, and I'm wondering how your computers are spec'd for this. I've got a ~3 year old athlon XP 2200+ and 1 GB of RAM, which serves me fine for processing 8 megapixel files (or stitches of two to several images) without much hassle (though of course it could be faster). I'm thinking I'll need to add some storage and memory, at the very minimum. Maybe a processor upgrade would be good, but I'd like to stick with the same motherboard.

What are your experiences? Anybody using a relatively underspec'd computer like mine for this?

[Ed Richards]

I was running a similiar computer scanning 4x5. Vuescan uses virtual memory and works fine, and I did not have memory limit problems with Silverfast. If you can add ram, do it. Do not waste time on a processor upgrade.

[Marko]

Walter,

I think your computer should be fast enough for this task, but I would recommend the following:

1. Add more RAM - memory is (relatively) cheap these days and you will definitely notice a solid performance boost by adding another GB. The more memory you have, the less your apps will swap to disk. There is a practical limit, but I can't quite remember it offhand for Windows systems - should be somewhere around 4GB if I'm not mistaken. Get as much as you can within this range.

2. Add a second physical HD, if you don't have it already and use it exclusively for Photoshop scratch disk, assuming you are using Photoshop. It doesn't have to be huge capacity at all, but if it is dedicated to the purpose, you will again notice a very definite speed gain.

These two upgrades shouldn't cost you too much and will together be much more efficient than the CPU upgrade.

[Rakesh Malik]

Walter,

1. Add more RAM - memory is (relatively) cheap these days and you will definitely notice a solid performance boost by adding another GB. The more memory you have, the less your apps will swap to disk. There is a practical limit, but I can't quite remember it offhand for Windows systems - should be somewhere around 4GB if I'm not mistaken. Get as much as you can within this range.

My experience thus far bears this out. I have 1 GB in my laptop with a 2.4 GHz Athlon64, and it does fine on scanning but it chokes when I try to edit the images (runs out of memory VERY quickly with the 4x5 scans). I'm getting a 2 GB upgrade (maxing out my laptop), and when it comes in I can let you know how it goes.

The AthlonXP is a 32-bit machine, so you're limited to 4GB, regardless of what OS you put on it.