Performance test of Photoshop CS

[tommykjensen]

Does anybody have suggestions for some good tests I can run in photoshop to measure performance?

Reason is my 4 year old pc died this weekend - rest in peace - and I had to buy a new one today. I did have a spare pc on which I run Photoshop but it is slow.

The new pc will be dedicated for photo editing and maybe video editing and would like to try some test to compare the 2 pc's.

Here's the specs for the new pc:

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe 865PE motherboard
P4 3200 MHz 800 FSB
2 x 512 MB DDR ram PC3200 mounted so dual channel is used
A simple videocard - will probably buy a better at a later stage 256 MB Daytona FX 5500
2 x 120 GB Seagate 7200 rpm 8 MB (not setup in raid - did not buy a floppy which is required to install windows 2000 on a raid array but will do this later)
A 400 watt powersupply.
And last but not least a builtin memory card reader.

The pc is very silent ;-)

[CyberDyneSystems]

Simple really..

Write an action.. or download one.. the longer and more complicated the better.. and run it on the most enormous image you have!

Then time the action... usually guasian blur on a hge file is a real CPU sucker... also try a noise plug, they allways slow things down...

[maderito]

I recently upgraded a 4 year old system to one with specs similar to yours. Virtually all the standard Photoshop filters and adjustments run so fast, I don't even think about timing. However, some of the sketch filters (e.g. charcoal) take a couple of seconds. You could create an action to run several sketch filters multiple times.

As CDS suggests, some noise reduction plugins still poke along - much faster, but now measured in seconds rather than minutes. If you don't have them, download trial copies of Neat Image (http://www.neatimage.com/) or Noise Ninja (http://www.picturecode.com/). One or both use complex math operations (so-called wavlet transforms which use trigonometric functions) that are very CPU intensive.

Report back. :)

[Scottes]

One of the things that I do for a living is testing of computer hardware performing CPU-intensive (and somewhat disk-intensive) security apps. And I don't agree with either CDS or Maderito on this one.

Test by doing what you do. A lot. Testing things that you don't do is not as inidicative.

Start recording an action, and then open a sample image and process it. Do what you normally do - curves, levels, color adjust, USM, whatever. Save it, save it as JPG. Close it. Stop the action.

Now run that action against a directory of files, and time it. That will give you your day-to-day test.

If you occasionally make a 20x30 print, record another action for that, and that will give you a worst-case test.

But why test things you don't do? That will just tell you that the PC is fast doing something you'll never do.

[robh]

Tommy,

Have recently had a new PC built. It uses the same ASUS motherboard you mention, P4 2.8 Prescott Processor, with 1Gb RAM in dual channel mode, SATA HDD etc. At present I m running an ATI 9600 graphics card while waiting for my PC dealer to get a Matrox. I couldn't be happier.

PS CS runs extremely fast (certainly compared with my 3 year old PC). I don't think you will be dissapointed.

...Rob

[tommykjensen]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Scottes, I agree testing things that I would never use is kind of pointless.

I haven't had much time yet to test but sofar I can see following things run faster:

- start PS CS, 3 or 4 times faster than the old pc
- open a raw, faster
- convert raw, faster

I am disappointed about one thing and that is when I have the file browser open and open a raw when I move the mouse around the screen off and on the different windows the cursor takes a few seconds to change shape (arrow to cross etc) that is almost as slow as on the old pc.... I guess I should avoid the file browser completely.

I know this isn't a test of PS but I just tried converting 10 raws with FVU:

old pc: 1 minute 42 seconds
new pc: 1 minutes 44 seconds :? Strange and the raws was on one disk and the output saved on a seconds disk.

[Scottes]

You're bumming me out.

I was working on a large print last night. 4800x7200, 202-meg 16-bit TIFF. Then I ran PhotoKit Sharpener on it which added 3 layers, and saved that as PSD. 655 MB.

The system is a P4 1.8G which is fine, but I only have 512 megs, and at $1200 a gig I'll probably get a new computer first... But I kinda can't afford that right now, either. I could, but I shouldn't.

:( :( :(

[tommykjensen]

Well if I have had a choice I would not have bought the pc now. I had to take money from the savings for my upcoming vacation in september where I hopefully goto Florida. My plan was to go via New York and pay a visit to B&H to buy a lense or two but now I can't afford to do that :cry: :cry: :cry: