I need a new computer, one that can handle several Adobe products open at the same time

Report · Dec 17, 2016

I need a new computer and I need some advice about what to get in a computer. Please do not reply if you’re not familiar any of these products and the computer resources they use.

I have had some friends say that it is all in the graphics processor you get and others says its computer processor and memory. I need someone that really knows what they’re talking about and uses these programs to offer advice.

First off, I do not want and Apple, I want a PC and I want Windows 7 professional.

I need a computer that will handle running these products, Adobe photoshop, Illistrator, Indesign, Acrobat, word, and excel. I will have three or four of these products open at the same time. I need a machine that will be able to handle a majority of these products open at the same time and not be slow or sluggish. I would rather it be a laptop so that I can travel with it but I might consider a desktop.

I currently have a laptop that works with this but when I get into some real intensive work on Photshop or Indesign it really starts getting very sluggish. Here are my current specs.

Intel® Core™ i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.20 GHz = Processor

16.0 GB (15.9 GB usable) = Installed memory

64-bit Operating System

Can someone that is very familiar with this, please offer advice on what I need to get?

Report · Jan 26, 2018

First of all, I'd avoid a gaming video card in the GeForce series. The drivers are optimized for the latest and hottest games, but are full of bugs in Photoshop. Slow performance is a frequent result of driver bugs, along with more obvious glitches.

The NVidia Quadro series, OTOH, is optimized for CAD, 3D and graphics applications. Quadros have their own dedicated driver. The entry-level Quadros cost no more than a GeForce 1060.

Also - there are new rules for disk drives now.

SSD is fine, but the old SATA interface is pretty slow. The new PCIe M.2 SSDs plug directly into the motherboard in a dedicated slot. These have read/write speeds previously unheard of - around 2000-3000 MB/s.

With SSDs, you get the best Photoshop scratch disk performance by having everything on the system drive (but your working files/archive obviously elsewhere). Just make sure you have enough capacity, at least 500GB, preferably 1TB. You don't get the read/write conflicts you formerly had with spinning drives and physically moving heads.

With such a setup, PS scratch is no longer a major bottleneck, and amount of RAM isn't as critical.

Report · Jan 26, 2018

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse wrote
First of all, I'd avoid a gaming video card in the GeForce series.

Don't let the Premiere Pro Hardware forum guys hear you saying that. They specifically recommend GTX video cards, if you can get hold of a high spec one right now. Gaming systems are all about moving lots of pixels as quickly as possible. Sounds about right to me. It's a pity Noel is not still posting, because he'd have something to say about it as well. He is leveraging the power of GPUs in his astrophotography apps. He recons a decent GPU can work it out 100 times faster than the CPU (he did not specify which one).

The whole reason there is a shortage of GPUs is bitcoin mining. Guess what sort of cards they are using? Here's a clue... it isn't Quadro cards.

Report · Jan 26, 2018

Trevor, I don't doubt for a nanosecond that these cards are lightning fast...when they work. The problem I'm referring to is buggy drivers.