by
genevh » Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:45 pm
HP Pavilion: what model number?
AMD Athlon XP 2800: an older 32 bit processor. A bit slow by today's standards but adequate. I used to use one similar to this. I found mine to be a decent performer, but the more I got into photography and processing my pictures, I wanted more performance. I hate waiting forever for things to happen and some photo processing can be processor intensive, especially with larger files. Plus, I do have a game that I like to play from time to time and I needed the power to drive the game.
2.08 GHz : processor speed. Again, by today's standards, this is a bit slow. This still being a 32 bit processor that runs a 333 Mhz bus is a bottle neck.
1.00 GB of RAM: If your HP can handle it, I would get more RAM installed. That is the cheapest performance boost you can get.
NVIDIA GeForce 6200: an older model card no longer available. According to its
tech specs, the maximum resolution it can support is 2048 × 1536 at an 85Hz dsplay refresh rate. (My monitor refreshes at 60Hz and the maximum my card can support is 2048x1536 32 bit at 60 Hz.) However, your overall performance will be limited by how fast the system can feed it video data. Video memory also plays a part. To see what your card has and is capable of, right click the desktop, choose Properties -> Settings ->Advanced. In the window that then opens, find the Adapter tab and click it. There you will also find your adapter model and some information about it, including memory. Click the List All Modes button on that tab and it will show you all the resolutions at the various bit depths and refresh rates that card is capable of. When you are done looking, hit Cancel until you exit out of the windows so no changes are made.
Now, where does this leave us after all that? To me, you have a machine that is capable, yet is going to be slow. It can handle what you plan on doing, but will not be fast at doing it. You may get frustrated waiting for things to happen during your editing process. Me, being a bit of a performance junkie, agree with John in that ultimately, a faster machine would be much better. But you would have to balance what you would like to have with what is affordable to you. I don't have the fastest of everything either, and probably never will. For my needs, I don't require that (although it would be nice) and I really don't want to spend really big $$$ on pieces parts at any given time. I'd rather spend that money on my camera gear.
I also build my own systems, so I have the benefit of being able to upgrade the exact part of the machine I may want to at the time, although this tends to be a bit more expensive than buying an off the shelf machine. If I wanted the biggest, baddest processor my motherboard can handle, I could spend as much on that as some complete systems cost. There are trade-offs everywhere, I guess.
As an FYI, this is what I am running now:
AMD 64 X2 Dual Core, 5400+ at 2.8 Ghz
4 Gb of RAM, 3.25G recognized (a limitation of XP)
Nvidia 8600 GTS w/512M of RAM installed (soon to be discontinued if not already)
WinXP Pro, SP3, LR2.2, CS3, FF, TB
Hope this helps!