Long term desktop configuration for digital painting art

[aidamilja]

Hi,

I am a professional artist and I am trying to find long term PC / Mac desktop configuration in order to do my digital paintings with the latest Photoshop CC.

I am mainly using

– most of the options that use a lot Photoshop's graphic card https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html

– oil painting on numerous layers

– 3D

– several Photoshop CC plugins

– numerous adjustment layers

I am looking for a configuration with

– a great CPU

– 16 - 32 Gb RAM

– sufficiently SSD

– a great graphic card reader with sufficient memory

I am thinking of buying a 4K 24 inches EIZO screen in order to work with two screens, I already have one from ASUS,

My total budget for the configuration should not go above 2500€ ...

I am looking forward to advices of this type of configurations and other screen options.

I would also like to know if it is true that "Adobe applications are particularly optimized for Nvidia cards" as mentioned in some forums ?

Thank you in advance,

AM

[aidamilja]

PS. The budget for the configuration does not include the screen.

[D Fosse]

aidamilja  wrote
I am thinking of buying a 4K 24 inches EIZO screen

Great choice

I just invested in a new monitor to replace a five-year old CX240. Not that it doesn't work perfectly, but I'd like a little more pixels to work with. I wrestled for a long time with myself over the 4K CG248 vs. the new CG2730 at 2560x1440.

It was an extremely close call, but in the end I settled for the 27, arriving any day now. I don't really need 4K. If I decide otherwise later on...well, I better not

Upside is I can take the CX to work and put it beside the CG246 there. They should make a nice couple.

[davidc1815]

You can also ask this question at the PC forum of the Digital Photography Review website where these hardware recommendations come up frequently.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/1004http://

[Trevor.Dennis]

I recently upgraded my six year old i7-3930K system that had 32Gb RAM, and a GTX970.  I spent a lot of money on the new system, which comprises an i9-7900X, 64Gb DDR4 memory, two 500Gb, NVMe drives, and I retained the GTX970.   I bumped several SSDs from the old system.

The new system feels snappy, and the 64Gb RAM has meant that I am less likely to use the Scratch space, but for a lot of things, I am seeing absolutely no advantage with the new system, because Photoshop does not use a lot of CPU cores and threads for most of its functions.  That means that CPU clock speed is more important than having 18 cores and 32 threads for most of what Photoshop does, and that the i7-8700K will tend to out perform my 7900X despite the latter costing three times as much, plus the motherboard for the 7900X will be more expensive than that for 8700K

Where the 8700K falls down, is its lack of PCIe lanes.  That means if you intend using multiple GPUs (not a good idea with Photoshop) or a lot of high end drives, you'll run short of lanes.

Check out the articles on Puget Systems for some real world test results with various content creation software and platforms.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_articles.php

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Puget-Systems-Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Benchmark-1132/

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Photoshop-CC-2017-1-1-CPU-Performance-Core-i7-8700K-i5-86...

There are heaps more articles, and they are as good as they come.

[davescm]

Hi

Just a couple of comments to add :

1. Multiple screens work well in Photoshop but make sure you run then from a single GPU card. Photoshop does not play nicely with multiple GPUs.

2. Allow something in your budget for a hardware device to calibrate and profile your screen. The best screen in the world is still only as good as its profile.

Dave

[D Fosse]

davescm  wrote

2. Allow something in your budget for a hardware device to calibrate and profile your screen. The best screen in the world is still only as good as its profile.

Not necessary with the Eizo CG's, Dave - it's built in. There's a sensor hidden in the bezel, and at the magic word it pops up and does its thing...now, if I could only remember what the secret word was...abracadsomething...

It's a pretty good and expensive sensor too, made by Konica-Minolta. It's so small that at first I couldn't take it seriously, but it easily outperforms an i1 Display 3 (I've compared, I have both). And what a relief it is to not have to dangle a thing on a wire too.

[davescm]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse  wrote

Not necessary with the Eizo CG's, Dave - it's built in.

Wow , I didn't know that!

Dave

[D Fosse]

Here you go. This is the CG246 I have in front of me now:

[davescm]

They must be very confident in their panel uniformity to take the calibration from near the edge. But I suppose that is what you are paying for.

Dave

[D Fosse]

Yep, that's what you pay for. They could have put the sensor way out in a corner for that matter.

You can even schedule this thing to auto-calibrate at regular intervals, and get this: the monitor doesn't even have to be turned on or connected. Just leave the power cord plugged and it doesn't miss a beat.

Warm-up time is now down to three minutes. And that's carefully measured, it really is stable after three minutes.

I'm expecting the new 27 incher later today or tomorrow.