Discussion in 'General Technical Discussion' started by Steve S, Apr 24, 2005.
I just spent 12 hrs setting up my Reznick-made puter, and I have to say, this thing screams! Yes, it was Very expensive too, but I'm very pleased with it's built quality and, of course, it's blazing fast speed. No longer does my puter slow down to a crawl when working with multiple files and mulitple applications. Mojor kudos to Ron and his awesome engineering ability!
So, my printing question: Lately, I've been shooting in (Nikon)sRGB, and I'd like to ask if it's necessary to do a conversion in PS to standard sRGB before sending the file to print. I calibrated my monitor (twice), and am using the Ilford Printer profile specific to their Smooth Pearl I use, but think my prints are coming out a little bit darker than what I'm seeing on my Sony CRT monitor. I didn't notice this difference on my old puter's setup, and as far as I know, everything's set up exactly the same, but I almost always converted over to the standard sRGB colorspace before doing a final save for print. Dunno if I somehow goofed on my monitor's Spyder-calibration, or if it's something else? Anybody got an opinion?
One little thing I'm doing different this time is I'm using the "Professional" preset brightness level on the Sony, where before I used the "Standard". The Pro level is actually a bit dimmer than the "Standard", so that doesn't make sense that that would make my prints come out darker. Pics look perfect on the monitor, but a little too dark in print.
Bearing in mind my issues with color, none-the-less, I have gotten flatter primary colors when printing sRGB instead of adobeRGB. Reds usually look ok, but green and blue shift toward brown when I print from my eMac with a 'gray match' calibrated CRT onto an Epson 820.
I use Thinkpads and Optical Spyder with Epson 1270 and 2200.
all Thinkpads screens calibrated all was well.
Then I got a 21.3 ViewSonic- Their icm and my calibration matched.
R,G,B, contrast etc on the ViewSonic until it matched the print.
Walla- now all screens match what the printers produce.
Well at least to my eyes.
Well, what did he build you?
It a dual processor top of the line (Opturon?) AMD setup with 2 internal SCSI drives. 2 GB ECC DDR RAM. CD Rom, 2-250GB External Firewire drives, 1 for Archiving, the other for off site backup.`In the little time I've spend with it so far, I can honestly say it's THE fastest puter I have ever seen. It's doesn't seem to get bogged down with multiple files, and running multiple apps simultaneously. I typically run Thumbs, View, Capture, Outlook Express, a couple browsers, and Windows Media Player, all without so much as a hiccup.
Which operton processors and motherboard did you get on your RR pc? I'm currently trying to decide whether or not to go with AMD or stick with what I know works Xeon.
I didn't know there were different ones.
I would install SiSoftware Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/) and do some testing. You will see that AMD is just blowing Intel out. AMD64 3500 (2.2GHz) will rock your world is overclocked a bit. Get AMD64 4000 or AMD FX and you will not look back.
After letting the prints thoroughly dry, and more importantly, viewing them in good light, vs the darkish room I edit in, the prints look fantastic, and the client is extremely pleased.
We went with 246s and a Tyan Tiger (bang for the buck). We opted to work with top-grade matched sticks of RAM and SCSI-based (Cheetah) system and workflow drives. If Steve needs internal overflow drives later he's all set to load up to four SATA Raptors. We made a few decisions to reduce system cost initially, but still maintain optimum performance.
He's right... that puppy is a screaming beast in disguise.
Excellent Ron, I have been looking at the 252's. Still though, Xeon looks really good to me. I have never been happy with previous AMD systems. I may just have to give it a try.
Any idea how single Opterons compare to the latest Athlon 64s? Say the Wichester or Venice core at around the same speed 2 - 2.4 gz?
I am trying to decide if I want to move to dual CPUs or a single A64.
I figure one of the Tyan PCIe or the new Asus NForce pro based board if Opteron.
I care more about the speed of a single process, ie the thing I am currently doing, vs. concurrency. I have a pretty good idea what multiple processors buy you (I am a software engineer), though not necessarily in the Windows world.
The way cache is addressed and RAM transfers are both superior on the Opteron, plus of course you get multithreading (as you know). The A-64 CPUs are quite good in standard operations, and they are at essential parity with regards to processing speed for a given clock rate, but peripheral CPU requirements such as instruction-set addressing and system RAM pulls are quicker on the Opteron. When you add to that the advantage given in file I/O operations (the OS multithreads file I/O) and any advantages in software multithreading, plus the fact that in some configurations the RAM can be both shared between dual CPUs and cross-accessed as well, the dual Opteron offers enough advantages to make it well worthwhile in a workstation.