Photoshop performance and CPU question.

[carlharsch]

I have an E8400 CoreDuo in an Asus P5K-E motherboard populated with 8GB OCZ Platinum DDR2 memory. The board will accept quad core processors. I use Photoshop and Lightroom for photo editing. Would there be any significant advantage to upgrading the processor to a quad or is this a case where the juice isn't really worth the squeeze and I'd be better off just waiting until I decide to build another computer with an entirely different motherboard, cpu, memory? I don't overclock now and the computer runs fine.

Photoshop and Lightroom (Windows 7 64bit platform) are my only real concerns. I'm not a gamer, so that aspect isn't an issue for me.

 

[classy]

In Photoshop a quad core will be significantly faster. A 9550 will be way faster than that F8400.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

I use Photoshop CS4 to process very large Astronomy photographs. i7 and 8GB of RAM in Windows7 work great.

 

[richierich1212]

In Photoshop a quad core will be significantly faster. A 9550 will be way faster than that F8400.

+1

 

[carlharsch]

Thanks ... haven't decided if I want to go the i7 route yet. If I can see significant gains with a quad, I may just look for a good price somewhere and stay with the board I have now.

 

[ydnas7]

if photoshop can use the cache in a smart fashion in Sandybridge, then perhaps wait for that (both sandybridge and photoshop to know how to use sandybridge)

 

[richierich1212]

if photoshop can use the cache in a smart fashion in Sandybridge, then perhaps wait for that (both sandybridge and photoshop to know how to use sandybridge)

?????

 

[heyheybooboo]

For the most part, not worth it in PS === there aren’t that many tasks that take advantage of 4 cores.

Unless you know that your specific plug-ins/filters (that you use a substantial majority of the time) are multi-threaded it is not worth the investment in a C2Q.

A fast dual-core (which you have), plenty of RAMs (check) and fast disk I/O (assuming you have set up some scratch disks) will run PS just 'dandy'.

You might get a slight boost in LR depending upon the 'scale' of you tasks (but you still tend to be more I/O bound and no way will you peg 4 cores)





--

 

[Lorne]

If you work through a network make sure the serverside/storage can move the data quick enough, I find that to be the most discouraging loading/Saving using Photoshop and LR.

 

[dbcooper1]

In more cases than not, a faster clocked dual core will outperform a slower clocked quad core in my experience. A few filters are exceptions as well as changing RGB to CMYK etc. but for most everyday editing, I'll take a higher clocked core2duo. It typically doesn't even max the two cores except occasionally

 

[Edrick]

I upgraded to a Q9450 from a E8400 just to use more cores for Photoshop CS4. As it turns out (I found out after) that a lot of tasks within PS only use 1 core. (Liquidfy Tool is a perfect example)

I would now wait until SandyBridge before upgrading again.

 

[fastman]

Quad core yes. You didn't say what your OS was, but my buddy just updated his system to Win7 64 bit from WinXP 32 bit and he said his rendering times in Premeire went from 3 hrs to 1.