Expert: Bobbert - 9/5/2007

Question
QUESTION: Hi,

I'm looking to buy a new PC.  What do you recommend for something that will easily handle digital photography and videography.  I find that my current PC has trouble handling even mid-size projects in say, Windows Movie Maker, for example.

To be honest, my budget is capped at $1500 all in, including a good LCD monitor.

Thanks,
Don

ANSWER: Well, do you have specifications on your current PC? Unless you're doing huge projects with multi-GB clips of video and massive uncompressed audio files, I'm guessing its just showing its age, and most any new off the shelf system should be able to improve things greatly. I would also, quite honestly, suggest an upgrade from Windows Movie Maker, to a somewhat more advanced non-linear editing program, it'll increase your workflow and the finished quality of your projects. You dont neccisarily have to go as far as buying Avid professional solutions, or Matrox pro capture cards, but maybe a decent setup from Pinnacle Systems would be worth considering (it'll add $100-$300 to the price of the system, which should only cost around $600-$700).

I'd look at Dell, to be entirely honest, I'd look at the Inspiron 531 and Inspiron 530 (the 530 being the more expensive, faster solution, both include an LCD in price (530 is packaged with a 20") and decent amount of processing power). Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements are available as a package for $90 from Dell with the system, which will give you a nice improvement over MS' software. I wouldn't worry about the graphics card unless you intend on gaming on the system, you can add a TV tuner if you need analog capture ability, and I might consider upgrading the hard-drive from 320GB to something larger if you intend to store a lot of video on the system. Total price shouldn't be much more than $1400 including warranty, software, etc

-bob


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks for the advice.  I have an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73 MHz), with 512MB RAM and and 80 GB Hard Drive, running XP-SP2.  It has a GeForce2 MX400 64MB video card too.

Bought it in late 2002, so I guess it is getting a little long in the tooth.

Will 2 GB RAM be enough, or should I get more up front rather than adding later?

Much obliged,
Don

Answer
2GB of RAM is considered the practical limit presently, 32-bit operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista x32 (or 32-bit Edition), and older, etc) can't address 4GB of RAM correctly, they stop at between 3.25 and 3.5GB of RAM, 3GB of RAM is impractical due to needing a 4-DIMM configuration (a DIMM is a module RAM is packaged on, each one carries a certain amount, 2GB is achieved by 2x1024MB modules, 3GB is 2x1024MB and 2x512MB, as 1536MB modules aren't possible).

The reason 4-DIMMs is a problem has to do with how memory controllers handle the banks of DIMMs (more banks is more complexity, which usually impacts latency, not to mention the added cost of another 1GB of RAM).

On top of all of this, no software on the market presently can make use of more than 2-3GB of RAM, so while 3GB would be a more practical limit, it isn't due to commerical limitations, applications like Adobe Premier or Adobe Photoshop that need more storage will usually rely on a scratch disk, or a portion of a hard-drive that the application uses to store temporary data that isn't presently being used (which is beneficial).

Now, to the story of 64-bit OS', they can address much more than 2GB of RAM, and much more than 4GB of RAM, easily, however we come back to the price issue of 3-4GB of RAM, as well as the fact that no modern software will make use of it (if you were running a server this story would change, but thats an entirely different application load).

Generally, this reasoning leaves us with 2GB as the practical limit for RAM in a modern computer, more can always be added later, and it would be cheaper to add it later (1GB of RAM used to cost upwards of $150, only 2 or so years ago, now 2GB of RAM can be had for less than $100 in most cases).

-bob