Suggestions for Someone Building an Artist's PC?

albamuth asks: "A friend of mine recently handed me $1000 (in the form of her credit card) and asked me to put together the best artist-friendly PC possible. Though I enjoy reading system guide recommendations put out by the likes of Arstechnica and Sharkyextreme, it seems that most, if not all, of these guides are geared towards gaming purposes. My friend is an artist and was surprised when I approaced with a list of decidedly non-Apple recommendations. I countered that the lousiest new iMac would cost $999 and the reason why "all the other artists" use them is because of brand loyalty. However, now I'm tediously looking through motherboard and monitor reviews for things like Firewire ports and color accuracy, respectively. There's plenty of other things to think about as well: Photoshop vs. GIMP, [slide] scanners, video capture, etc. Though I'm pretty dogmatic on getting an AMD, I would like to hear opinions on hardware/software for a media/arts-oriented box."

Comments

Say no to Mac!

[JMZero]

When we brought in a new graphics guy here, he wanted a Mac. We gave him a PC. He noticed that PhotoShop 6 is pretty much the same either way (and he likes having more buttons on his mouse).

You should be able to get away with a 900 MHz P3 (go with Pentiums here, there are silly optimizations). You'll need about 256 megs of ram (someone might say you need more, but you'll survive with this).

The part that will screw you is the monitor - if she really needs color accuracy you can forget about $1000.00

I think you can do it. Depending on what you can get PhotoShop for (and you will have to buy PhotoShop, unless you steal it - it's much more entrenched than even Mac is in the graphic art world).. Do they have educational licenses? (WinXP educational licenses are certainly the way to go - no checks and 1/4 the price... though most likely you'll get it with the machine anywho.)