TR Forums

Hey all,

I need a new Windows laptop for business but also powerfull enough to handle PS CS2 and RAW processing. All in all I want maximum performance for photo tasks. I more or less know what to look for:

I have $1300 max to burn. Most of the time I'll be hooking laptop to the dock station with an 19" LCD. So size and batteries aren't a huge priority. I'll need at least 1GB RAM, 60GB hard drive and a graphic card that can drive 19" monitor at 1280x1024 in 32 bit color.

I looked at Dell, HP, etc. offerings and it seems that I can cram this spec under $1300. What buffles me though is the alphabet soup of processor models from Intel and AMD (Duo, Solo, Turion, Sempron, etc.). Last time I was shopping for PC 3 years ago it all was much simpler.

How, for example, Intel Core Duo T2500 (2.0 GHz) stacks against AMD Turion 64 ML-40 (2.2GHz/1MB L2 Cache)? HP laptop with AMD is some $200 cheaper. Keeping PS CS2 in mind does it make sense to go with AMD (or in general slightly slower chip) but get extra memory? In general what laptop processor to look for in order to maximize performance?

Is 7200 RPM hard drive worth extra vs 5200 RPM drive?

Is 128MB ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M w/Hypermemory card sufficient to drive 19" LCD? What about 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400? Note, I'm interested just in fast photo editing not in video or games.

In general to get max performance for photo editing per limited money what piority you'll put on CPU, memory, hard drive and graphic card?
I'll greately appreciate any help and pointers.

Thanks!

I think the Turion is faster, and yes, get the 7200rpm. There's not much difference anyway.

Get the fastest hard drive you can and load the machine with as much memory as you can afford.

photoshop is multi threaded to get a core duo laptop they have them in the 1200-1300 range.

If you can fit it into your budget, I'd definitly go core duo for the multithreading aspects.

Get the 7200 hard drive. The 5400 will hurt when you are running batches on RAWs.

The 7400 is the better graphics choice, but the ati will definitly be able to drive your 19". My old roomate is a professional photographer, and he has come to the conclusion that aside from his desktop matrox cards, nvidia gives him the best image quality in general. If you are going to calibrate your screens, then just go with whatever is cheaper.

Core Duo is the one to get now. It's dual core power on the laptop!

2GB may be out of your price range, but you know PS loves RAM.

And yes, when PS decides to read from the disk, you will definitely wish you have a 7200rpm drive.

PS is 2D, so doesn't matter if you get a "lower grade" GPU.

torax wrote:

If you can fit it into your budget, I'd definitly go core duo for the multithreading aspects.

Get the 7200 hard drive. The 5400 will hurt when you are running batches on RAWs.

The 7400 is the better graphics choice, but the ati will definitly be able to drive your 19". My old roomate is a professional photographer, and he has come to the conclusion that aside from his desktop matrox cards, nvidia gives him the best image quality in general. If you are going to calibrate your screens, then just go with whatever is cheaper.

nVidia 6/7 series and ATI X*** and X1*** series were run through some home theatre standardized tests and the ATI cards seriously outscored the nVidia cards - it's pretty generally accepted that ATI has better image quality and output than nVidia cards do.

Moved to the Mobile Tech forum.

Kevin

I configured a Dell E1505 with Windows MCE (Pro costs more, so I did not pick that) with a Core Duo 1.83GHz, 2GB of RAM, 60GB 7200RPM drive, X1300 128MB HM, 15" WXGA and got somewhere around US$1351. If you can wait for coupons you should be able to bump up the components (like going to 2GHz and 100GB 7200RPM drive. So it is possible within your budget to have the basic requirements:
- Core Duo
- 2GB
- 7200RPM HDD

Unfortunately it will still not scream vs a desktop setup because you cannot use a separate HDD for I/O optimization, but this should go pretty far. I can't seem to post a link because Dell's site is using AJAX now, but you can try to reconfigure it yourself.

Flying Fox wrote:

I configured a Dell E1505 with Windows MCE (Pro costs more, so I did not pick that) with a Core Duo 1.83GHz, 2GB of RAM, 60GB 7200RPM drive, X1300 128MB HM, 15" WXGA and got somewhere around US$1351. If you can wait for coupons you should be able to bump up the components (like going to 2GHz and 100GB 7200RPM drive. So it is possible within your budget to have the basic requirements:
- Core Duo
- 2GB
- 7200RPM HDD

Unfortunately it will still not scream vs a desktop setup because you cannot use a separate HDD for I/O optimization, but this should go pretty far. I can't seem to post a link because Dell's site is using AJAX now, but you can try to reconfigure it yourself.

That's a config I was looking at on Dell site. Similar HP config may go for $100 less. I'll wait for cpuposn on Dell sice I trust it more (maybe incorrectly).

klopus wrote:

HP config may go for $100 less.

I have a hard time believing that Dell is more expensive. Seems odd to me.

Photoshop on a laptop?

I'm leery of doing photo editing on a platform that typically has very little colour and contrast calibration*.

Unless there are laptops with monitor calibration out there - anyone care to enlighten me?

EDIT: Re-read the OP and noticed he was going to hook it up to an external monitor. (re-enrolls in kindergarten reading skills class )

Voldenuit wrote:

Photoshop on a laptop?

I'm leery of doing photo editing on a platform that typically has very little colour and contrast calibration*.

Unless there are laptops with monitor calibration out there - anyone care to enlighten me?

You can color profile a decent laptop LCD with a hardware colorimter. I do this all the time with my Spyder 2. There's nothing prinicpally different from profiling standalone LCD or CRT. It's up to particular LCD driver to provide contrast, RGB and color temp controls. Brightness and gamma are always available.