Core 2 Duo or Quad Core for photoshop?

[sandpiper]

I have decided to upgrade my aging computers to speed up workflow in Photoshop and lightroom.

I've bought the laptop (Core 2 Duo, 2Ghz with 2Gb of DDR2 RAM) so that's sorted. I want to sort out the PC now and that requires a little more thought, I am not a computer whizz and not a techie by any means. My first thought was to just go for the most speed I could afford, so I was thinking of a Quad Core with 4Gb of RAM. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, who does know a bit about computers, and his advice was to get a fast Duo rather than a Quad.

His reason was that very few applications can make use of four cores as they don't support enough threads. Therefore, if they can only use one or two cores, two fast ones are better (not to mention cheaper).

The PC is intended almost entirely for Photoshop use, I may do a little gaming on it (but rarely) and this isn't a priority.

As I say, I know very little about the techie side of computers so I welcome any advice as to specification (apart from 'buy a mac' ;)). I understand that RAM is the most important thing with PS, so I am looking at 4Gb of DDR2 RAM. I also understand that Core 2 Duo is significantly faster than the same size 'Dual Core' so will be going with that.

The main question I have is whether photoshop / lightroom will be able to make full use of the quad core. Although my friend knows a bit about computers, he doesn't know anything about PS, so can't help me out there. Does anyone know if these can use 4 threads and take advantage of the Quad, or would I get a better result from a faster Duo?

Thanks.

[blonde]

i use a fast core 2 due and PS just flies on my computer. however, with the recent drop in quad core prices, i would go with the quad even if the advantage is not that big. at least this way, you are ready when new software starts to take advantage and what is the point of buying a new item that is already almost obsolete (i am not saying that the core 2 due doesn't rock but i am saying that quad is where things are heading)

[EOS Man]

Get a quad core pc. I have a Core2 Duo one and sometimes I feel that it's a bit slow. I think blonde is right about quad core being where things are leading. Personally, I feel my pc with dual core is out-of-date and obsolete now... cause even 8-cores are starting to appear :eek: !

[sandpiper]

i use a fast core 2 due and PS just flies on my computer. however, with the recent drop in quad core prices, i would go with the quad even if the advantage is not that big. at least this way, you are ready when new software starts to take advantage and what is the point of buying a new item that is already almost obsolete (i am not saying that the core 2 due doesn't rock but i am saying that quad is where things are heading)

Yes, that was my initial thought. However, I will be loading CS3 and Lightroom when I get it and not planning on upgrading to newer software for quite some time. I don't want to update every time a new version of PS comes out and will not be using the computer for much else.

Because of this, taking advantage of future software is less important than running quickly on what I have now. If CS3 / LR can use all four cores, then that is the way I will go, but if they can only use two cores the Quad will likely be slower for the foreseeable future (as I understand it). In that instance, I would rather have something fast now, rather than wait two years until I get a version of PS that uses quad core properly.

[DavidW]

Certainly Photoshop is written to use as many cores as you have - but there are a significant number of applications that have to be run sequentially, so only one core can be used. Further, Photoshop is a memory bandwidth hog - you can run out of the capacity to move bits around your system before you run out of processor time to allocate.

Nevertheless, I think quad core is worth a go. If nothing else, it means that Photoshop can hog as many cores as it wants, whilst other stuff going on as you use your computer, such as servicing interrupts, has a spare core to execute on.


Software engineers know that we're not going to see the huge rise in processor speed we once did - rather, we're going to see more and more cores. As a result, as much as possible is being written to be multi-threaded.


Putting it another way - if you go quad core, what's the drop in processor speed over dual core?



David

[metalsaber]

I suggest you wait. Intel is coming out with it's next gen chips (45nm) this summer. That will drive down current prices on current chips. Personally I'd wait on the quad cores since most software does not take advantage of it.

This is coming from a computer geek.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/21/intel_intros_3-series_chipsets_with_fsb1333_and_ddr3/

[sandpiper]

Further, Photoshop is a memory bandwidth hog - you can run out of the capacity to move bits around your system before you run out of processor time to allocate.




That would be down to the amount of RAM would it? Would fitting 8Gb, rather than 4Gb, make a significant difference to operating speed?

[ed.]

Have a read of this article and be the judge yourself.
http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/general/basics/the-photoshop-computer.html

[blonde]

That would be down to the amount of RAM would it? Would fitting 8Gb, rather than 4Gb, make a significant difference to operating speed?

considering the fact that PS can only use 2 gb of ram in 32bit OS and 3.5gb of ram with 64 bit OS, i would say that 8GB would be useless...

[DavidW]

You can get Photoshop up to 3GB of RAM in Windows XP Professional SP2 - boot Windows with the /3GB flag. I'm not sure if this is supported on 32 bit Vista.

It is true, though, that more than 4GB of RAM is only really useful for caching files and similar at the moment.



David

[sandpiper]

Have a read of this article and be the judge yourself.
http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/general/basics/the-photoshop-computer.html

Many thanks for that Ed, very useful and answered my questions nicely.

Metalsaber, thanks for the tip about waiting until the new chipsets come out to save some money. That will be a big help as this year is getting very expensive!

Thanks too to everybody else for all the advice and suggestions, you have all been extremely helpful, cheers.

Thanks again,
Graham

:D:D

[Tsmith]

I just built a new rig using the E6700 Core 2 Duo chip + 2 gigs of Corsair XMS RAM and this thing screams through CS3. In most reviews the Quad Core 2.66 GHz is about 15% faster on average.

[ethan592]

photoshop is not written to take advantage of more than 2 cores. A fast core 2 duo will be plenty of horsepower. Spend the money you have on the fastest ram you can find (sometimes the fastest clock speed isnt the fastest ram btw) and make sure you have at least a 7200rpm hard drive. A dedicated hard drive for the swap/page file can also help quite a bit.

[Jared555]

Another thing to consider (hopefully this isn't in that article), even if photoshop only uses 2 cores, there is usually other software besides photoshop running. (antivirus, depending on the person music and all kinds of other programs in the background)

It is kind of like the speed advantage you notice when you would buy a dual core when everything you used only supported one core, if one program is running and starts accessing files that program can have one core and the antivirus can have another.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Though four cores are clearly better than two, right now the Quad cores (unless they have changed recently) are not true quad cores.
They are a pair of Dual Cores stuck on a single PCB,.. the PCB board introduces similar speed hits to the processors internal communication that a mother board would impose,.
It's not a huge deal, but the point is simply that this was a stop gap measure so Intel could get a Quad core out there before AMD did,. (they did the same bogus move with the first Dual Cores a few years back)
The use of two dual cores as opposed to a single monolithic die with true quad cores increases cost, power demand, and as mentioned slows things a bit from optimum.

By Fall, expect to see real Monolithic single die Quad cores that will out perform and be more cost effective than the current "Dual Dual Cores on a stick" solution.

In the meantime unless 4 cores are absolutely required, it might be worth getting a more affordable dual core and then grabbing one of the real Quad Cores when they fianlly hit the shelves.

[CyberDyneSystems]

photoshop is not written to take advantage of more than 2 cores. A fast core 2 duo will be plenty of horsepower. Spend the money you have on the fastest ram you can find (sometimes the fastest clock speed isnt the fastest ram btw) and make sure you have at least a 7200rpm hard drive. A dedicated hard drive for the swap/page file can also help quite a bit.

This is simply not true, I run PSCS,. yes PS version *, not PSCS2 or PSCS3,. and it takes full advantage of all 4 cores on my system (two Dual Core Opterons)

Now if PSCS3 had just let us use more than 3GB of ram, it would not be so damn "last year" grrr..

Also as mentioned, even with apps that use only a single core, the OS itself is amazingly effective at doling out duties to different procs,. so if BreezeBrowser is sucking 100% of one core (it's not multithreaded) XP/Vista will make sure no other app touches that core, and will divvy things up very well.

[In2Photos]

Nobody has mentioned anything about scratch disks yet, but the most popular choice seems to be WD Raptor 10,000RPM drives.

[rmford]

15k scsi'd be the uberbest, but it really does depend on how much money you're wanting to drop on a big box.

I'd even look into setting up a raid array, using either scsi (not 100% sure if this is doable) or sata, and using that as your scratch disk.

Again, it all depends on monetary constraints - i'd love a 3x2 raid array with 15k rpm scsi's - one pair for os, one pair for scratch, and one pair for pictures, but i'm shy of that budget, by about the GDP of africa.

[CyberDyneSystems]

If were going to up the anti to 15K UWSCSI, then let's not forget the the Zarathustra of Scratch Disks,. a Solid State RAMDisk :) ;)

For a while there was even an affordable solution in the GigaByte Brand Ram Card,. but it's been taken off the market as it had a lot of dated limitations (4GB total RAM, old style of DIMM, and Sata 150)

Don't confuse this with the Flash Drives that are available now at great prices, the flash drives are not as fast as a Raptor.. this used DIMM's for virtually instantaneous drive writes and reads.

[Tsmith]

Nobody has mentioned anything about scratch disks yet, but the most popular choice seems to be WD Raptor 10,000RPM drives.

Now that you mention it I have a 150 gig Raptor for OS & Apps then 74 gig Raptor for Scratch Disk & Page File in separate partition then a 250 gig SATA II drive for data storage. Not to mention the two backup hard drives.

[chris.bailey]

Unless you are doing a lot of CPU intensive operations like lighting effects and liquidise I really doubt you will notice much beyond a decent core 2 duo with 2GB of 533 and a 10,000 HD preferably dedicated to PS scratch use. I just spent a bit on upgrading from 533 to 667 RAM (on a compatible motherboard) and though Autocad runs a bit quicker, with Photoshop its hard to tell the difference short of resorting to measurebating. You will save a fortune too.

[Sathi]

Getting a quad core right now for photoshopping doesn't make any sense to me. You will double your price. Which means if you buy a dual now, you can buy a quad in a year for the same price and have two computers instead of one for the same money. Unless you needed that speed right now it just doesn't make sense. Maybe you do as I don't know what what kind of editing you do, but for the photoshopping I do with my core2 system I couldn't imagine needing it go any faster. Another thing is the core 2 dou is VERY easily overclockable. I got my core2 E6400 up to 3.6ghz and my friend's core2 to 3.3ghz using the stock cooler. I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if the overclocked core2s outperform the quad cores by quite a bit. Although I have no idea how overclockable the quads are for comparison.... But yeah, get a core2, save your money and buy a lens instead.

[Quad]

Ok I want to chime in about scratch disks. I have two raptors in a stripe RAID, and they do not TOUCH my Gigabyte i-RAM drive as a scratch disk. It is only 4 GB though and would not be economical at all unless you have some DDR memory laying about (which I luckily did) but if you have some old memory check them out. They just released an updated version that is not slot mounted but fits in a 5 inch drive bay (slot mounted only gets power from the slot not memory transfers). That is one excellent scratch disk. Close to having more memory installed.

As to core 2 quad I would get the one that is priced right with the best speed. Only certain filters use multicores but then those are the filters/processes in photoshop that really need the speed. Still quad core is not bad but I do not like the thermals (twice that of the core 2's, funny how that works out).

Windows XP/Vista does suck when it comes to memory use and it is mostly an issue with liscencing with microsoft. Technically it could use more memory since windows server has no problems and the OS cores are very similar. So in this Mac does the right thing for photoshop users but only the top end macs have the hardware support for gobs of memory. Gobs being defined as 6 GB plus. Above 4 gb up to 8 gb photoshop only uses that memory as a scratch disk (but a fast scratch disk) and cannot use more than 8 (all according to adobe at least). That was CS2 and only applies to Macs as adobe sets lower limits on the windows software (at least Adobe say they do but I still think windows sets those limits) I am not sure if this has been improved in CS3.

One this I have noticed though is CS3 uses way more memory than CS2 and is not entirely stable when my scratch files get over about 10 GB. CS2 rarely used more than 4GB scratch files for me.

[CyberDyneSystems]

...Gigabyte i-RAM ...They just released an updated version that is not slot mounted but fits in a 5 inch drive bay (slot mounted only gets power from the slot not memory transfers). That is one excellent scratch disk. Close to having more memory installed.

I've been waiting for this, where? Is it for sale yet?

Off to Newegg to search now :)

[sandpiper]

Many thanks again, for the tips that are coming. I was planning on a separate hard drive solely for use as the scratch disk, looking at the above comments I have pencilled that in as being a 74Gb Raptor 10,000 RPM.

I am happy now that a quad core will be as quick as / slightly quicker than a dual, but that a dual is also perfectly up to the task. As such it will come down to what prices I can find. I will probably get a straight E6600 Core 2 Duo, but may go for the quad if not too much more to allow for future uses that may warrant it.

There are some budget constraints as I want a really nice monitor for working on my images, that is currently pencilled in as the Dell 2407 WFP (24" widescreen LCD) so will add a significant chunk to the cost.

Obviously, the more I can keep the cost down without too much compromise on performance the better. It leaves more money towards the next new lens ;)

Thanks again to all who have given advice, it is very much appreciated.

[ToddPh]

I'm seeing a pretty common misconception about multiprocessor computing in this thread. More cores does not equal more speed.

More cores means you can process more things at the same time. In practical human terms, this is interpreted as being faster because we get our tasks done sooner. But strictly speaking a quad core is not faster than a dual core of the same gigahertz. It ust works on twice as many things simutaneously.

It is correct to point out the Photoshop is multithreaded and that it will benefit from dual cores, I believe (but may be wrong) that it is limited to two threads of execution, meaning it won't benefit from 4 cores more than from 2. BUT, your computer will not be running just Photoshop. The operating system will be using at least one core. Do you listen to music on your PC while working in Photoshop? Add another core for that. You can of course do all of this on a single processor core, dual cores means less bottleneck in the processor. Quad cores means even less bottleneck. The benefit you receive depends heavily on how you use your computer.

I've just recently built a new PC for myself, and chose the Q6600 Core 2 Quad processor. It's less money (by nearly half) than the faster quad cores, but still a lot of money. I mostly use my PC to game, process photos in either Photoshop or Lightroom, and to write. But I also needed to support multiple virtual computers running simultaneously, hence the driving reason behind 4 cores. If I dropped the virtual computer requirement, I would have saved around $250 and bought a Core 2 Duo. Your mileage may vary, and I hope this ramble helped at least a bit. :)

[r.morales]

If you go with the 4 core - you might be able to run both Photoshop and lightroom at same time . You could be doing 2 jobs at once , if you wanted - I think . Otherwise there aren't that many programs that will even look for another core . I think to start something else to start happening you would have to stop PS and then tell it to do it . Right now PS doesn't even know 4 cores exist . Go where ever you are buying computer and try both side by side , but you would probably have to install PS in both . Store will probably tell you to go away .
I'm on a mac and do run 2 programs all the time . Just add another monitor and card and go back and forth .
To be honest - I " play " with pictures in photo shop and illustrator while deleting my great sky , ceiling , floor and parking lot cars and tires . I have a few of the inside of my bag also .

[Quad]

I've been waiting for this, where? Is it for sale yet?

Off to Newegg to search now :)

I have not seen the new ones on the shelf yet. I just read about it, the old one has been around for a while. I guess it will hold me over until solid state drives get around and if they have 0 ms access time and are fast enough. They don't make a lot of them as I guess not many people realise what they can do. Hopefully you can find a slot one in stock, the rev 1.3 works in apple's as well.

[ethan592]

cyberdyne, so your ps runs FOUR threads? The only way it is taking advantage of all four cores is if it is running 4 separate processor threads.

[DavidW]

cyberdyne, so your ps runs FOUR threads? The only way it is taking advantage of all four cores is if it is running 4 separate processor threads.
That's not the case. As has been said earlier in the thread, don't forget operating system threads and similar (anti-virus software, perhaps). Even if Photoshop is only using 1 or 2 threads, if there's other cores for the operating system threads to run, that means the cores that Photoshop are using can be dedicated to it.

It is a case of diminishing returns - a lot of what Photoshop does can't be run in parallel, though there are notable gains in some particularly optimised code (Noise Ninja Pro plugin can certainly use two cores - it might take advantage of more than two).



David

[philmar]

however, with the recent drop in quad core prices, i would go with the quad even if the advantage is not that big. at least this way, you are ready when new software starts to take advantage and what is the point of buying a new item that is already almost obsolete

But what is the point of buying an item before it is ready to be used? Programmes don't take advantage of quad core now, so paying more for this technology when it can't be used extensively is a waste. When the programs mature to take advantage of quad cores, the quad core you buy today will be cheaper. Currently the core duos offer the best bang for buck. Buy the quad core later and cheaper and when it's power can be fully utilised. My 2 cents.

[philmar]

I suggest you wait. Intel is coming out with it's next gen chips (45nm) this summer. That will drive down current prices on current chips. Personally I'd wait on the quad cores since most software does not take advantage of it.


of course one could wait even longer until the next generation of chips after the 45mn comes out. Perhaps even until the generation after that.
Think how cheap current technology will be then!!:confused:

[ekie]

the quad core (Q6600) should drop to about $266 when they have the Q3 price drop. tempting! :D

[philmar]

If you go with the 4 core - you might be able to run both Photoshop and lightroom at same time . You could be doing 2 jobs at once , if you wanted - I think

With a quad core PC one is still limited by RAM and disk i/o. These are bigger bottlenecks that CPU power. Yes you could use LR and CS3 but quad core would allow you to be bottlenecked in 2 programmes, rather than 1. Not much of an advantage....but if you are listening to internet radio and running resourse hogging anti-virus, spyware software it is a plus. Personally I'd go with a duo core and only do digital imaging when I am not online allowing you to turn off the anti-virus, spyware, firewall ect. And then turn on your radio or sound system. Save the money for a better lens or future quad core build.

[metalsaber]

of course one could wait even longer until the next generation of chips after the 45mn comes out. Perhaps even until the generation after that.
Think how cheap current technology will be then!!:confused:

Please your argument is flawed. Current Quad Core tech...is NOT being utilized. You are wasting your money on it right now.

However by waiting until true quad cores come out (not 2 dual cores slapped together) and at 45nm (more power efficient which run cooler) there "maybe" more utilization for them.