[filmscanners] Building PC system for image editing

["Alex Zabrovsky" <alexz@zoran.co.il>]

Hi all.
Preparing to acquire IV ED within few weeks I've started to consider the PC
system to handle post-processing and image achivating.
Currently my regular system is quite old Compaq laptop running on
333 MHz Celeron + 192 MB memory. I realize that it will be probably quite
hard - nearly impossible to run image editing software on 35 MB files
expecting for reasonable performance from that machine, however
laptop can still be used as scanner's host for download.

I'm considering constructing myself the PC system (have previous experience
doing that about 5 years ago though), however, it seems I'm
out of date of the PC technology being confused by the choices of the parts.
I rely on the List helping me out to clarify that and to understand what
really I need.

1. Memory. I understand this is the most important resource for image
processing. I'm planning to start from 512 MB right from the beginning,
however the DRAM types seem to be overwhelming: SDRAM, DDR, RDRAM,
DDR ECC (not talking about EDO which are probably out of questions though).
I'm familiar with SDRAM technology, but others sounds to be
quite new and unknown (for me, at least).
I paid attention the DDR and RDRAM types are considerably more expensive
then SDRAM.
The question is whether this is really justified ?
What is the benefits of those DDR and RDRAM against SDRAM ?
Will I gain real life performance with those new types compared to SDRAM ?
Finally, your opinion about DDR/RDRAM price/performance compared to SDRAM
(let's say SDRAM 133 MHz) ?

2. Processor. I think I would opt for something like P4 1.6-1.7 GHz
which sounds to be enough given there will be no serious constraints on the
memory amount. What about AMD Ahtlon ?

3. As about HDD I think there is no too much choices to contemplate about.
   The bigger, faster and reliable is better. Depends on the local market
offerings. BTW, should I pay more for SCSI interface ?
What is RAID ? Any opinions about it ?

4. Display card. Which one would you recommend ? (not necessarily to be the
most expensive though...)

5. CD-RW. Are there DVD-RW available for PC installation ?
   Are they worth the expense ?

Well, other parts are non-brainers which doesn't really relates to image
processing performance, so I'll not clatter the query by those.

Would really appreciate any responses with clarifications.
Links to the helpful sites are welcome as well.


Regards,
Alex Z

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