I bought a commercial version of Photoshop CS3 for $170. You can always buy a slightly worse version then upgrade it to the most recent one, although it won't be much of a savings. I bought that Photoshop because GIMP did some things rather annoying like how its layers work.
To OP, if you really want to eek out performance there are 3 possible upgrades. Just if you wan't these aren't necessary. You can get an SSD. Intel X25, OCZ Vertex, OCZ Collusus, or OCZ Z-Drive are good ones depending on your price range. You can get a discrete sound card. Pretty much the only current choice is ASUS since they have bought up CMedia and most of the other 3rd party Sound Card developers no longer get driver updates. You can get a Network Interface Card. There are alot of good picks here. I recomend Intel, Cisco, Linksys, or VisionTek that 3rd parties KillerNIC.
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I bought a commercial version of Photoshop CS3 for $170. You can always buy a slightly worse version then upgrade it to the most recent one, although it won't be much of a savings. I bought that Photoshop because GIMP did some things rather annoying like how its layers work.
To OP, if you really want to eek out performance there are 3 possible upgrades. Just if you wan't these aren't necessary. You can get an SSD. Intel X25, OCZ Vertex, OCZ Collusus, or OCZ Z-Drive are good ones depending on your price range. You can get a discrete sound card. Pretty much the only current choice is ASUS since they have bought up CMedia and most of the other 3rd party Sound Card developers no longer get driver updates. You can get a Network Interface Card. There are alot of good picks here. I recomend Intel, Cisco, Linksys, or VisionTek that 3rd parties KillerNIC.