On Sat, 12 May 2007 23:59:59 -0400, louise
wrote:

I've just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D40X) and I'm
shooting in RAW. I am using Capture NX to do intial
adjustments to the raw image and then saving it as a tiff.
I then open the tiff in CS3 and continue editing.

So, Capture NX, CS3, Outlook and Firefox are usually open.
And my computer is moving between Capture NX and CS3 very
very slowly, pictures are being drawn slowly and changes are
previewed....slowly. It is only slightly better if I close
Outlook and Firefox - it is still slow enough to be
frustrating for any quantity of work.

I want to emphasize that everything works, but it is slow
and I am constantly waiting for large files to open and to
adjust to changes. I find the transition from Capture NX to
opening the tiff in CS3 to be extremely slow.

I don't know whether I really need a new computer, or
whether it is simply that my graphics card isn't up to the
tasks I am now presenting to it. Here are the specs:

P4, 3.2 with 2 gig of ram and an Asus Motherboard. Large
seagate hard drive with plenty of space.

The video card is a Saphire Radeon 9600 Pro Atlantic with
128 meg of memory in the AGP 8x slot of an Asus P4C800E
Deluxe motherboard.

Do I need a new computer with a much faster processor, or is
the the video card the main bottleneck? If the video card
is the bottleneck, do I get another AGP 8X with 256 meg of
ram or do I get a regular PCI card and not use the AGP slot
at all? I do have an open PCI slot. What specs should I
look for in a card?

I am hoping that a new video card will take care of the
slowness for another year when I will feel more ready to buy
a new computer. But if not....then it will have to be sooner.

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., all very welcome.

TIA

Louise





My system, Win 2000, P4 @ 1.4Gig (yes really), I Gig memory and an
old Matrox video card , in PS CS2 will open a 30 meg TIFF file in
about 2 seconds. A 12 meg RAW from the camera takes about 15 seconds.

Your system should be faster than that.

Perhaps the only deifference is that I have all my system and program
files on a fast SCSI drive and all the data files (and PS swap files )
on separate ATA drives.

I don't think you need a new system, but perhaps a second hard drive.