i just got a d3 and have switched over to shooting raw full time now, and my current pc (p4, 2gb ram, etc) is just not up to the task. i'm looking around for a new pc and found a really well loaded up amd phenom 940 machine (8gb ram, atx 4870 video, 1tb raid hd, etc) that looks interesting. i'm concerned about performance relative to an i7 machine however. if my primary task is manipulating large raw image files will i see a big difference in performance between the two processors? the amd machine obviously has a price advantage, but if it will take 50% longer to perform tasks it won't be worth saving the money. thanks!
yes it's only 12mp...but my pc does not handle them well, a p4 with 2gb ram. huge difference between how it handles raw and jpeg files. i could try increasing ram i guess, but my wife hasn't liked this pc to begin with, so i think i am going to update our speed....also, some day i'll have even bigger files!
Sorry, I wasn't sufficiently clear. I'm suggesting that the AMD Phenom II X940 based computer you're contemplating should handle the files well as long as there is sufficient memory in the system, and 8 gb is sufficient. Sure, the i7 will be faster but not by all that much, I shouldn't think.
There are a lot of variables that can affect speed in file handling so it's very difficult to compare different systems on paper only.
I have a system based on an i7 and 12 gb of memory and it handles the files from my Canon 5D Mark II easily. However, if I have Lightroom, Bridge, Photoshop CS4, Firefox and email open, I've seen the system use 10 gb on occasion.
As I mentioned earlier, any reasonably fast modern processor with plenty of memory available will be fine.
