Hardware Recommendations for Photoshop?

Processors: Intel Core i7-940 Processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.93GHz)


Memory: 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs


I'm looking at getting my wife a new computer.





She mostly dose photo editing with photoshop (not sure which version)


mostly like avatar images and the moving kind nothing really over 500x500 but I know she can get up to 100 layers (I'm so just pulling this out of thin air from what conversations we have about her photoshoping lol)





Anyways, I love my wife so what I'm really looking for is someone that knows the inner workings of photoshop and what parts of the hardware are more critical than others, as it stands I'm looking at getting the low range i7 chip with 9GB of ram and at least a second HDD for a ';scrachdisk'; for photoshop. Anything else I should look at? Or any recommendations on how to set up this ';scrachdisk'; like would a Raid0 scrachdisk be better or will a 32bg SSD work better in place of a raid setup? I've hand build my rigs so don't be afraid to throw in computer gargon in your answer I can keep up.





as you can see I'm not really looking for hardware recommendation as much as I'm looking for good answers on what I should be looking for in my hardware selection.





This is what I'm looking at getting her:





Keyboard: Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 Keyboard and Mouse - Arctic Silver


Monitor: 21.5 inch Dell S2209W Full HD Widescreen Monitor


Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB


Hard Drives: 500GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache


Floppy Drive or Media Card Reader: Dell Media Card Reader included in Dell Bluetooth Package


Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista庐 Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit


Mouse: Mouse included in Dell Bluetooth Package


Network Card: Integrated 10/1000 Ethernet


Modem (External): No Modem Option


Adobe Software: Adobe庐 Acrobat庐 Reader 9.0 Multi-Language


Optical Drives: Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability


Sound Card: Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio


Speaker: Dell AX510PA 10W Attached Speaker for Dell Flat Panel Monitors


Network: Dell 1505 WLAN PCIe card with11n mini-Card and external antenna


Office Productivity Software (Pre-Installed): No Productivity software pre-installed


Second Hard Drive: 500GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB CacheHardware Recommendations for Photoshop?
It sounds good -- more than enough to run Photoshop well. If you're trying to get the absolute best performance out of it, and money isn't an issue, get two high-performance SSDs and put them in RAID-0 for use as a scratch disk. Or try a VelociRaptor hard drive (better yet, two in RAID-0). SSDs are generally faster than HDDs.





You should consider building your own computer instead of buying it from Dell. That way, you will have far more control over your hardware, have the ability to overclock, and will end up paying less for more performance.Hardware Recommendations for Photoshop?
As long as you have plenty of space and it runs fast and smooth, it should be fine. If anything, Macs would run more nicely with it than PC's, and a tablet would always be nice (I recommend wacom)
I have not heard that Adobe has accepted 64-bit and developed their programs to take advantage of this. Investigate this more closely or find out if you can work in a 32-bit mode if necessary.