CPUs for Photoshop: Quad or Duo?

[reidthaler]

I had always thought that quad was the way to go for a new build, but these charts for CS3 don't seem to give a huge advantage to the quad core, at least for RAW processing. The quads look better for filter results:

http://www.hothardware.com/art...es/Item1142/cs3raw.png

www.hothardware.com/articleimages/Item1142/cs3filter.png

Maybe CS4 is better optimized, and that will make a difference, but I'm looking at theses costs:

E8400 $155
Q6600 $190
Q9300 $255

I guess the future is pointing to quad and CS will continue to improve quad utilization.

What's your experience? Thoughts? Recommendations?

Thanks!

Reid

 

[exar333]

I have had the opportunity to use both recent quad and dual-core processors with CS3 (haven't tried anything with CS4 yet) and they work pretty similarly. The big difference is if you have other background tasks going or not. If you ONLY do photoshop and NOTHING else, the dual would suffice, but the quad provides some headroom for other applications to run and not steal as much CPU power.

My advice - go with a quad and plenty of RAM and you will be set for the time being.

 

[dbcooper1]

Go for highest clock speed; most Photoshop operations are barely even cache sensitive and only some of the filters are multithreaded. Most of the benchmarks lead me to believe top clock speed, plenty of RAM and multiple physical hard drives for apps, OS, swap, and scratch is the way to go.

 

[DefRef]

With CS4 coming really soon, I'd wait for some tests especially if they leverage CUDA as has been rumored.