bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Hi all we are looking for computers for our new build art room, The specifications we have so far are as follows; Intel i5-2400 8GB Ram 250GB Minimum HDD Card Reader But we are unsure on what graphics cards, we have a budget of about £450 per machine, but a company will build them... this will alow us around £30 - £40 ex vat on a graphics card. any suggestions?
newpersn Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 May i asked whats wrong with the Intel HD Graphics card?
FN-GM Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Well what are you going to be doing with the machines? What software will you use? This is not a Windows 7 specific question so it should live in here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/
bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 were looking to be using the machines for art perpiouses such as photoshop, premier elements and maybe a bit of vidio editing so would like to ensure the machines are fully capiable of running all these programs at a decent speed
FN-GM Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 To be honest those apps wouldn't require anything special.
bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 plus the benifits of making it last for a couple of years...
newpersn Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Intel Card should be alright for all those needs. I got a an I3 Now with the HD card and it runs everything i need just fine. Using a DVI or HDMI Moniter will give you better picture quility on the screen than VGA cable. (17" and upwards) Edit: What part of gloucester are you?
glennda Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Personally we run out Photography room on I3's 4Gb ram with 64GB ssd's - you will get better performance from an SSD then the I5 and Extra ram. With the Intel Graphics adapters. We paid less then £300 per machine from stone (ex windows license). Use the extra money to buy nicer monitors and use HDMI/DVI you will get better performance. They use CS3 design suite. If anything go for a 120GB SSD.
bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 with the i5 and extra ram we are looking to keep them for a number of years, these specs we have came up with will help future proof the computers, i DO like the SSD's though!!! what ssd would you personaly recomend? were also using cs5
newpersn Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Classroom install + CS5 = Total size. Leave some free space on the drive. I would go for 64gb or 120gb. as someone said above
bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 the problem we may have with that is, that we have a universial image, this image is about 80-90gb at the moment and with windows update will be more, and the fact that you dont get the full 120gb... also the machines we have in the art rooms now are 4 years old and are being moved into music which we didnt think of when they were purchased back in 2008... so in a couple of years these machines may be put somewere else, so yes we could create a specific art image but one of the rooms will be able to be booked out for other subjects, so were a little stuck
localzuk Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Intel graphics will be fine. Higher power graphics cards are only any use for 3D work etc... A 128GB SSD is a good idea, I'd go for an intel one myself, based purely on stability and reliability.
glennda Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Ours are 5 year warrantied - the only thing i may end up doing is getting larger SSD's in them in around 3 years time. We have over 300 I3's/4Gb ram which are to last 5 years.
synaesthesia Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Wil confirm the above - the onboard (HD 3000 series) graphics are better than pretty much anything under £50 graphics card wise and are surprisingly good at even the higher end stuff - Solidworks for instance here is damned quick on it. I removed a GTX520 from my PC as the onboard was quicker. 1
chazzy2501 Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 if you buy a firegl card you'll get a 10bit colour option rather than the standard 8 bit colour. Also you could pair that with at least an IPS panel (normally 8 bit) (rather than a tn panel 6bit) or if you find the money a 10bit monitor with an extended colour gamut. Also a colourimeter for around a £100 would be useful for calibrating the screens colours.
bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 ok thanks for the advice, we have taken things into concideration and we have came up with keeping 8gb as they are soo cheap but using onboard graphics, the hard disks are as follows, using a 7200rpm drive - (Sata II) or (Sata III)?? or SSD (Sata III) the motherboards the company use at the moment dont have sata III ports so we will have to specifiy that they do which will add a little bit more on... Up for conciderations, any advice?
localzuk Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 (edited) if you buy a firegl card you'll get a 10bit colour option rather than the standard 8 bit colour. Also you could pair that with at least an IPS panel (normally 8 bit) (rather than a tn panel 6bit) or if you find the money a 10bit monitor with an extended colour gamut. Also a colourimeter for around a £100 would be useful for calibrating the screens colours. He said his budget was £450 per machine. A 10bit IPS monitor is £500+ or an 8bit IPS at around £250+, and a FireGL card is £200+... Not really suitable for a school! Edited February 22, 2012 by localzuk
bwestlake Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 ok thanks for the advice, we have taken things into concideration and we have came up with keeping 8gb as they are soo cheap but using onboard graphics, the hard disks are as follows, using a 7200rpm drive - (Sata II) or (Sata III)?? or SSD (Sata III) the motherboards the company use at the moment dont have sata III ports so we will have to specifiy that they do which will add a little bit more on... Up for conciderations, any advice?
chazzy2501 Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 (edited) He said his budget was £450 per machine. A 10bit IPS monitor is £500+, and a FireGL card is £200+... Not really suitable for a school! 10bit ips monitor for around £330 but I concede to your point. however a regular 8 bit ips panel is affordable and I hadn't seen that mentioned. a firgl can be bought for under £100. far better things to worry about rather than SSD. I'd lower the CPU specs & focus on the display technologies. RAM is super cheap, buy loads. Edited February 22, 2012 by chazzy2501
localzuk Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 10bit ips monitor for around £330 but I concede to your point. however a regular 8 bit ips panel is affordable and I hadn't seen that mentioned. a firgl can be bought for under £100. far better things to worry about rather than SSD. I'd lower the CPU specs & focus on the display technologies. RAM is super cheap, buy loads. For the level of work that schools engage in for art, the display technologies that come standard are more than adequate. We run photography courses here, along with Art, 3D Graphics and others and we use standard kit. An SSD is, in my view, the best purchase you can make when speccing a new machine - the hard disk is the slowest part of your computer, an SSD will improve application loading tremendously, which with large packages like Photoshop is hugely helpful.
Arthur Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Wil confirm the above - the onboard (HD 3000 series) graphics are better than pretty much anything under £50 graphics card wise and are surprisingly good at even the higher end stuff Intel's HD 4000 series graphics in some of the new 3rd gen Core i5/i7 processors is even more impressive. Considering these are out in April, I might be tempted to wait. Core i5-3570K Graphics 67% Faster Than Core i5-2500K, 36% Slower Than GeForce GT 240 « TechPowerUp
3s-gtech Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 Wil confirm the above - the onboard (HD 3000 series) graphics are better than pretty much anything under £50 graphics card wise I would completely and utterly disagree with this - for a start the i5 2400 has HD2000 graphics (it's the i5 2500K that has HD3000, plus the mobile stuff etc) - but almost any discrete graphics card will whup the onboard video. That's not to say it's not perfectly acceptable - it's much better than many older cards and anything previous from Intel. It's also well up to the OP's needs - discrete cards are needed for CAD etc and any GPU optimised applications (which Adobe CS should start to be).
chazzy2501 Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 The AMD apus are far faster than the Intels HD. if you are not going to spring for an external card (you really should) then get an AMD CPU with APU as it offers a better .
Arthur Posted February 22, 2012 Posted February 22, 2012 An SSD is, in my view, the best purchase you can make when speccing a new machine - the hard disk is the slowest part of your computer, an SSD will improve application loading tremendously, which with large packages like Photoshop is hugely helpful. ^ This! Our new Art PCs all have SSDs - 80GB Intel 320's since that's all we could afford at the time - and the difference they make is huge. It is like going from dial-up to broadband! I would go with Intel, Samsung or Crucial if you want reliable SSDs (the 320 Series, 830 and M4 respectively). To add to what 3s-gtech said about the Intel graphics. If you have any plans to upgrade to Premiere Pro CS5/CS6 in the future, it would be beneficial to get a discrete nVidia graphics card so you can take advantage of the Mercury Playback Engine.
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