How much CPU do you need for PS?

I know you need the ram, 1 to 4 gig. But how much CPU do you need?

 

Thanks,

Rick

You need MORE. No matter how fast it is, you need MORE. The 3 ghz machine I use now is SO much better than the old 1 ghz unit I used before, but I'm still waiting around far too much, IMO. I find 1 gig of RAM to be enough for what I do, but if you are the type to use multiple layers of large image files, more RAM would be nice too.

Our 200Mhz PPro units with win2000 and 512meg of ram can rotate a 90meg file in 9 seconds. If you dump the entire gross national product; you can get the same file rotated in millaseconds. What is your time worth; ie the masive 9 second bog?

Yes, Kelly, that's it! You *do* feel my pain. I hate those 9 seconds. :)

 

Actually, I find running some filters more the problem. That, and batch processing.

With a batch operation; you want a shooting star several GHZ box that rocks. For retouching; it doenst matter much. The "newere" healing brush is abit of a hog; some other operations add a bog too. For scanning the requirements are very low. One of our Piii with 600Mhz and 768megs of rame; usb 2.0 and firewire is about 10 to 17 percent during the usage with any of our film or flatbed scanners.... In one experiment we declocked abd debusses a 200Mhz PPro with 512megs ram down to 120Mhz; and still had the same scan times using win2000. It boots up like darn slow; but still scans with the task manager at idle.

In an older box the bog can be the I/o to the HDA; either the HDA and or controller.

A one with a lot of cache would help!

I'm successfully processing 11 MP images (30MB) on a 1GHz 512MB pc...

 

Are you running a pro shop, where you need the thruput? Then get the most powerful system available today.

I have worked in IT for the past 7 years, before that in Prepress, mostly working with Macs.

One thing that I've always advised people on when buying a computer is to buy the most

that you can afford at the time. You are not only buying for now but for as long as you

plan on keeping the system that you buy. What's adequate today will be inadequate in a

year, maybe less. If you buy the least that you can get by with now you will be sorry next

year. That is unless you plan on getting rid on the one you buy now in a year or so.

Just always keep in mind that your "cpu needs" will be ever changing. You can almost

always get by with what you have but it gets pretty painful at a certain point.

The bottleneck in alot of folks systems in often not the cpu at all. For batch work it is almost always the case. <b> Many folks get a fast modern CPU; and then spend their money on a gamers card; instead of extra ram. </b> The salemen often get a better commision pushing video cards; then ram. Many friends I have locally have "office box store digital dream machines" that have cost upward of a grand. They have a fast AMD or P4 CPU; high buck 256meg plus gamers card; and often just 128megs of ram on the mother board; in two 64 meg sticks; a slow 5400rpm HDA. The cool decals say UDMA ULTRA disk drive on the box; which means in can be about any disc drive of ancient 33UDMA class or higher; from say 1997 on. Our old boxes from circa 1996 with ungraded controllers and 7200rpm drives read/write alot faster that these ill designed "office box store digital dream machines" many times. I know; I bought one by mistake; and found out it was slow as paint drying for Photoshop; with its slow controller and HDA. You want alot of ram sot the box has enought work space to handle files; and not use the HDA as scratch like a mixmaster.

In our print shop; time is money. Many older "once state of the art" Photoshop boxes are just used in applications were the CPU speed doesnt really matter; ie scanning; retouching; storage station; burning CD and DVD. One old box is from 1996; and has dual 333Mhz Pii overdrives; 1 gig of ram; and has a modern 133UDMA controller with many 7200rpm 80 and 160 gig HDA's. I have 9 of these boxes of the same motherboard. Some jsut have on 200Mhz PPro and PS 7.0' and 512meg ram; and win2000; work well for retouching and scanning stations. A "modern" P4 is not faster.; just a waste of a businesses capital.

If you get into ripping video; you want a blazing fast CPU. If you do batch operations; you wnat a fast CPU. For scanning CPU requirements are nil; the scanner is the bottleneck; and or interface. For retouching; the healing brush and newer stuff bogs abit. Unless you figure out what ehat you are doing with PS; there is really no answer to <i> "But how much CPU do you need?" </i>. If starting out; just get a fast modern box with a decent amount of ram. A decade ago this was a 90Mhz pentium with 16 megs of ram; 17" crt; 4x CD read only; for a discount price of 3 grand. The 16meg of memory alone was over 600 bucks; a standard system was 2 or 4 megs. 16megs was considered absurd in late 1994' "you will never need that much ram" !:)

That's like asking how many legs you need to walk - two is sufficient (and more won't really help). All modern Pentium class CPU's are limited by RAM, then bus-speed, then hard-drive, etc.

 

Doubling your CPU clock speed will at best reduce task time taken by a half (often much less). If waiting 1 second (or 90 seconds) seems too long, then upgrade. The main benefit will be reduced frustration, rather than much extra work in a given time period.

 

This might sound obvious, but it is a bit like rushing to get somewhere, purely to be 30 seconds ahead of your neighbour. Often re-planning the task will be better than raw CPU-power. Using fewer undo-levels, less bit-depth, and workflow changes can all make a difference.

If I can't be at least 30 seconds faster than my neighbor, I don't want to go. Give me a faster CPU. :)

With 2 GB of RAM on my box the biggest bottleneck and what causes Photoshop to freeze up is disk access. I have an Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8 GHz) and it is fast enough, but the disk access to the Photoshop scratch disk will cause Photoshop to freeze up while working on stitching an image (roughly 200 MB final file size including layer masks for the stitches). A faster CPU would do nothing there. With batches even, at this speed for a 5 MP image, disk is a bigger bottleneck than the CPU. But if you run certain filters in batches (noise reduction is a good example), then a faster CPU would be nice. But since 90% or more of my wait time is disk access, my next performance upgrade is going to be a RAID 0 array for the Photoshop scratch file. And in truth, when running batches one can always just have a cup of coffee and do something else (paperwork, clean your desk, go to lunch, ...). PS CS2 will actually use the OS disk caching if you have 6 GB or more RAM, but a system that will support that much is currently more expensive than building a cheap RAID array.

I use PSP 9.0 and sometimes NeatImage, but still feel your pain. My old 200Mhz Pentium was fast enough for most things, but noise filtration would bring it to its knees. It took NeatImage 800 seconds to regenerate the image from a 5MP camera. I just bought an inexpensive Athlon64 3500+ machine that will regen the same image in under 13 seconds. That's 62X faster, even though the clock speed is only about 10X. Everything else is near to instant. If you go with the Athlon64 processor, be sure it's a 939 socket. That supports dual channel memory mode and future dual core processor upgrades. Then be sure to buy memory in matched pairs so it continues to run the fast dual channel mode. Integrated video usually shares memory, so an advertised box with 512MB will instantly lose 128MB. After the OS gets through, you don't have much left. I bought a 512MB machine and added two 512MB modules (to keep the dual channel thing going). When the video is subtracted and the OS is done, I have just over 1GB to play with, and that seems fine for any reasonable editing I want to do. If processing speed became a problem, then I'd upgrade to something like an FX-55, but the chip would cost more than the whole rest of the computer!

Sean re <i>With 2 GB of RAM on my box the biggest bottleneck and what causes Photoshop to freeze up is disk access.</i><BR><BR>I agree this is true with many with many boxes that folks have.<BR><BR>Here I spent alot of time with HDA's of several brands; futzing with added !133UDMA controllers to my older boxes. A brand new HP box P4 2.5 Ghz we got 2 years ago came with a bum controller chip; and no setting would read write faster than 5 megs a second; it was stuck in 1996:). All the UDMA settings were adjusted; and still the read wrote was way worse than our older 200Mhz boxes 2 with new controllers! HP used a slow WD 5400 drive; with a moderate transfer rate; about 1/2 one from any offic box store. We lived with the grief for many months; then bought a new ASUS board with a working controller; and a more moder 7200rpm drive with a quicker transfer rate. <BR><BR>I would'nt assume that any "dream machine" set up by the majors is working ok; or is using modern HDAs. <BR><BR>The server web sites have HDA transfer rate tests; that give clues as to snappier HDAs. The actual transfer rate is usually way less that the controller spec; the only thing most publish!<BR><BR>In a web connected box or communal box; crud and clutter often rob resources. Most of my boxes have PCI or AGP cards for video; but they are just moderate old ones. Task Manager in NT/2000/XP and the processor usage in Win95/98/98SE/ME can be monitored; to see if you really "are running out of CPU". In a dual CPU box; both graphs can be turned on with NT and above. In batch the CPU will max out usually; with an save file; the HDA is the bottleneck often; as Sean mentioned.