How many cores are YOU?

[BaumannPhotography]

Hey guys, I have a quick question on today's latest processor's.

I working on building a cs4 computer and I am a little confused from reading and the amount of different processors out there.

At one point I read that 2 cores is better than 4 for photoshop. Any truth?

My current ideas for a build are as follows:
64 bit OS
Xenon quad core
8-12 gigs ram
dual dvi video card with 256 mb memory
74GB WD raptor HDD for apps or scratch disk?

this is just the basics. - I do video and the computer I have now is really limiting.

Would the Xenon quad be a good choice? or would a Xenon dual be better and use the money and dispurse it elsewhere? There is always the Dual Xenon quad's?

Also, is it better to have the Application HDD faster, such as a WD raptor, or have the faster drive for a scratch disk?

Your help is much appreciated, I have been removed from putting computers together for a long time and would like some good info from the guru's out there. Thanks again.

Adam

[Pete]

As far as I'm aware, Photoshop will only address 4Gb of ram (I stand to be corrected on that, however).

Yes, having more processors/cores and faster drives will help out to some extent.

Realistically speaking though, you need to consider whether it's worth spending hundreds of dollars more for slightly faster photoshop processing or not. It's probably better to spend what you can comfortably afford and put up with usable performance rather than spending lots of money on performance resources that you only get the benefit from on an occasional basis.

[BaumannPhotography]

As far as I'm aware, Photoshop will only address 4Gb of ram (I stand to be corrected on that, however).

Yes, having more processors/cores and faster drives will help out to some extent.

Realistically speaking though, you need to consider whether it's worth spending hundreds of dollars more for slightly faster photoshop processing or not. It's probably better to spend what you can comfortably afford and put up with usable performance rather than spending lots of money on performance resources that you only get the benefit from on an occasional basis.


CS4 is now 64-bit compatible which will allow it to access more than 4 gigs of ram.

The more I think about it is the slightly faster much more expensive machine worth it...prolly not. But it would be nice to have a machine that will take what I can throw at it..video, lots of batch processing, and the usual photoshop stuff, for years to come.

[Pete]

Another consideration is how long you'll be keeping the computer. The chances are that it won't be more than a couple of years, so a cost-effective choice at this time will save you money. In a couple of years time, processing power will be more powerful and less expensive, making an upgrade a reasonable path regardless of whether you buy a cheap or expensive computer now. You may as well save money on the hardware and put your saved money into something else (maybe a backup solution?)

[tim]

Definitely quad, usually you pay a lot more to get a little more performance, so go mainstream. I'm personally waiting for the Nelham core to arrive in early 09 before I upgrade, as I only upgrade every 3-4 years and I might as well be on the latest generation for a while. I want 8 core but will probably settle for 4.

[dlpasco]

I just built a quad core with 4GB Ram. The problem is that I'm running Ubuntu and PS won't run on it. There are some decent open source packages available but, so far, I'm still using CS2 on XP. My next PS platform will be a Mac Book Pro (January/Feb). I love Ubuntu BTW - too bad Adobe hasn't discovered it yet.

[Moppie]

The more cores you can afford to throw at Photoshop the happier it will be :cool:

In Vista, under the task manager, you can turn off cores. I did this last year, running a test on 1-4 cores. It definitely ran faster with all 4 cores working than it did with only 2.

[BaumannPhotography]

sounds good...how about the speed of the HDD, where do you want the speed. The app HDD or the scratch disk?

[tim]

With 12GB of RAM the scratch disk won't be so important. I wouldn't bother with Raptor drives either, just get high capacity Seagate Barracuda drives, they have very high data density so the throughput is very good. Also (touch wood) i've not had a failure YET, and i've been using them for a decade. I will have a failure one day, but I have backups, so make sure you take that into account when you plan your storage.

I have one disk for OS, one for general data, and one for images. I think my swap and scratch are currently on the data disk, but I move it occasionally, and don't notice much difference. I do mostly batch processing though, not a lot of interactive photoshop use, so photoshop usually sits at <500MB RAM used.

[jdizzle]

I was about to bite the bullet on the Intel 9770, and than Intel announces Nehalem. I'm definitely going 8 cores and Vista Ultimate. I base my build on gaming since I play mostly FPS and I like to tinker with some overclocking. If things work out, I hope to run a dual 28" monitor setup for my digital darkroom. :) Gotta love new tech! :)

[rx7speed]

With 12GB of RAM the scratch disk won't be so important. I wouldn't bother with Raptor drives either, just get high capacity Seagate Barracuda drives, they have very high data density so the throughput is very good. Also (touch wood) i've not had a failure YET, and i've been using them for a decade. I will have a failure one day, but I have backups, so make sure you take that into account when you plan your storage.

I have one disk for OS, one for general data, and one for images. I think my swap and scratch are currently on the data disk, but I move it occasionally, and don't notice much difference. I do mostly batch processing though, not a lot of interactive photoshop use, so photoshop usually sits at <500MB RAM used.

in all honesty as far as it goes the data throughput on the seagates actually can surpass the raptor depending on what seagate drive you are talking about. the only thing the raptor has (not counting the velociraptor) is access times.

[Faolan]

Also people seem to neglect the fact that Raptors are designed for RAID and server environments and the warranty reflects this. Seagate are consumer drives unless you buy the specific RAID models which has a price premium. The two best Raptors are the 150Gb model and the fastest is the new Velociraptor.

As to cores unless you are doing lots of RAW editing (ie batch work) then you'll probably not going to see much good in Photoshop, unless you have a lot of applications open in the background. Dual core is the mimimum, and Quad Core does bring benefits in some aspects of usage but not a lot. RAM is and always been the best solution for speed increases in PS. CS 4 will change this equation...

If you're going Quad then I would not look at the Xenon's, AMD Opteron's generally give more value for money and more importantly efficient. Xeon's use more expensive FB-DIMMS (both in power and price). This said you could look at the consumer level processors and whilst AMD isn't the fastest on the block it's still generally cheaper to build and run a Phenom based system.

It comes down to how you are going to use the system and what tasks you mentioned PS but not any other apps/purposes. Intel still are best for video rendering (higher clock cycles) and AMD for power effiency/price. This is a very broad stroke over all the chips but it's a general rule of thumb.

[rx7speed]

Also people seem to neglect the fact that Raptors are designed for RAID and server environments and the warranty reflects this. Seagate are consumer drives unless you buy the specific RAID models which has a price premium. The two best Raptors are the 150Gb model and the fastest is the new Velociraptor.

As to cores unless you are doing lots of RAW editing (ie batch work) then you'll probably not going to see much good in Photoshop, unless you have a lot of applications open in the background. Dual core is the mimimum, and Quad Core does bring benefits in some aspects of usage but not a lot. RAM is and always been the best solution for speed increases in PS. CS 4 will change this equation...

If you're going Quad then I would not look at the Xenon's, AMD Opteron's generally give more value for money and more importantly efficient. Xeon's use more expensive FB-DIMMS (both in power and price). This said you could look at the consumer level processors and whilst AMD isn't the fastest on the block it's still generally cheaper to build and run a Phenom based system.

It comes down to how you are going to use the system and what tasks you mentioned PS but not any other apps/purposes. Intel still are best for video rendering (higher clock cycles) and AMD for power effiency/price. This is a very broad stroke over all the chips but it's a general rule of thumb.

not all xenons require FD-DIMMS. currently I am running on a xeon cpu (x3350 which is like the q9450) that is using the standard 775 socket with a p35 chipset and isn't compatible with dims. the x3000 series of xeons are more or less a conroe CPU. the ones that require FD-dimms are the x5000 and x7000 series and I believe only run on socket 771 or some other server based socket.

as far as the seagate though you do not need the raid version to run raid still though thankfully. :)

[BaumannPhotography]

not all xenons require FD-DIMMS. currently I am running on a xeon cpu (x3350 which is like the q9450) that is using the standard 775 socket with a p35 chipset and isn't compatible with dims. the x3000 series of xeons are more or less a conroe CPU. the ones that require FD-dimms are the x5000 and x7000 series and I believe only run on socket 771 or some other server based socket.


Could you explain this a little more please. I believe the Xenon I was looking at was a X3360....or the E5410 (which would be a dual quad setup)

Also should I just stick to the seagate drives for both app HDD and scratch or a velociraptor for a scratch/app drive.

As far as programs running I do Photoshop with lots of batch stuff. Also make video tutorials with Adobe captivate. This is where the system I have now really struggles. Most of the time it stops rendering video part way through the tutorials, and when I am done I only get about a 1/3rd of the video, everything else is really choppy. Also I tend to run bridge constantly with Proshow gold a bunch of times. Also Encore cs2.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what I am doing with my system.

Here is the site I found on building the system:
http://www.titanuscomputers.com/default.asp

[OdiN1701]

I have a Core2Quad 2.4GHz running at 3GHz with 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia 8600GT.

It runs CS3 and Lightroom 2 simultaneously with no problems whatsoever. I doubt you would need anything more for CS4.

I see no reason to get a Xeon (It's not Xenon, that's a gas, check your periodic table).

I don't really think you would need more than 8GB of RAM either.


BTW CS4 should take more advantage of the cores I believe...and I think it's 64-bit like LR2 is now as well which will also help.

[BaumannPhotography]

Thanks for all the responses guys, and I have seen the word "Xeon" a hundred times and I still think it looks wrong when I spell it that way. But thats what I get for not checking. ;)

Why get 12gb of RAM? why not, cs5 could be more of a memory hog.

Honestly I don't keep up with the CPU's enough anymore to know how the Core2quad is different than a Xeon quad, or the similar.

I'm going to stop putting my head to far into this computer build and just build me a darn computer.

[CyberDyneSystems]

sounds good...how about the speed of the HDD, where do you want the speed. The app HDD or the scratch disk?

Right now the ONLY choice for a good fast scratch disk is Solid state whcih now cost similar to a Raptor;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820183202

One will smoke any Raptor... two in RAID 0 will double your pleasure :)

As for RAM, If I could possibly and affordably stuff more than 8GB into my now aging Dual Opteron system that uses old style DDR/SDRAM with ECC, I would definitely go for it!

[tim]

From the benchmarks i've seen solid state disks give only a minor speedup for most applications. They're useful for things with random seeks more than big files. I think a RAM disk like CDS does is far more effective.

[Faolan]

Get a RAID controller with at least 256Mb of Cache and you will see a world of difference to SSD drives... It will smooth out any of the rough spots of performance. Adaptec 5405 is certainly worth considering but not cheap but it will usually last for years compared to drives.

[CyberDyneSystems]

From the benchmarks i've seen solid state disks give only a minor speedup for most applications. They're useful for things with random seeks more than big files. I think a RAM disk like CDS does is far more effective.

Was true, but did you read the specs on that drive?
approx 100MBs write,, pretty fast. In RAID 0 that;s 200MBs!

Like everything .. these things are getting faster. They have now finally and totally surpassed standard drives for speed and will be getting faster. Also the price is now very reasonable.

[tim]

Here's a new article (http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/core-i7-your-essential-guide-to-intel-s-new-killer-476154) about Core i7 - quad core early next year, with hyperthreading, for 8 virtual processors :)

Was true, but did you read the specs on that drive?
approx 100MBs write,, pretty fast. In RAID 0 that;s 200MBs!

Like everything .. these things are getting faster. They have now finally and totally surpassed standard drives for speed and will be getting faster. Also the price is now very reasonable.

It was a benchmark of a whole bunch of drives, at Toms Hardware. I was only mildly interested, but the impression I took away is they're not really good value yet, at least not for what I do.

[rx7speed]

Could you explain this a little more please. I believe the Xenon I was looking at was a X3360....or the E5410 (which would be a dual quad setup)

Also should I just stick to the seagate drives for both app HDD and scratch or a velociraptor for a scratch/app drive.

As far as programs running I do Photoshop with lots of batch stuff. Also make video tutorials with Adobe captivate. This is where the system I have now really struggles. Most of the time it stops rendering video part way through the tutorials, and when I am done I only get about a 1/3rd of the video, everything else is really choppy. Also I tend to run bridge constantly with Proshow gold a bunch of times. Also Encore cs2.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what I am doing with my system.

Here is the site I found on building the system:
http://www.titanuscomputers.com/default.asp

I don't have much knowlege of the 5000 or 7000 series xeons so I'm sorry on that one as they are more server based, require FB-DIMMs and a different motherboard then the standard desktop versions.

the x3000 series are more or less just a desktop CPU that has been rebadged xeon. sorry I kept saying xenon as it doesn't look right to me to say xeon either.
but like the one you pointed out above the x3360, it is basicly a rebadged q9550. only reason I see getting one is if they are cheaper or easier to get then the q9550 cpu. that is the only reason I have the x3350 as it was released before the q9450 came out and I didn't want to wait. but this way with the x3000 series you can use the standard 775 socket motherboard, the standard ddr2 or ddr3 ram (depending on motherboard) and everything else is standard desktop stuff.

as far as scratch disk I don't know and can't say much there. I have seagate disk right now in raid 0 and they average about 330mb/s (slightly controller limited I believe as I'm using onboard) and it wasn't that much faster then my two hitachis I had in raid before that managed a whole 120mbs avg so I kind of wonder how much disk speed makes a difference.

[tim]

SSD Raid0 article (http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-SSDs-RAID-0-A-Case-Study-In-Speed-Take-2/).

[rx7speed]

at what price for those though? as it sits now I still think mechanical drives for price/performance still win. even more so when it comes ti larger files as those SSD drives only really seem to win in latency which I easily will give them that. 7-15ms vs .1ms

[strmrdr]

I just built a quad core with 4GB Ram. The problem is that I'm running Ubuntu and PS won't run on it. There are some decent open source packages available but, so far, I'm still using CS2 on XP. My next PS platform will be a Mac Book Pro (January/Feb). I love Ubuntu BTW - too bad Adobe hasn't discovered it yet.

cs2 will install and run fine in Ubuntu.
check the Ubuntu forums.

[CyberDyneSystems]

at what price for those though? as it sits now I still think mechanical drives for price/performance still win. even more so when it comes ti larger files as those SSD drives only really seem to win in latency which I easily will give them that. 7-15ms vs .1ms

Depends on your application, needs, and point of view.
The link in my post points to a 32GB SSD with 100MBs write and over 150MB read times, and 0 ( ZERO ) second access times for about $100.00 bucks.

An OS or Scratch disk needs no more than that 32GB in 95% of the cases, and no other single drive or Raided pair of drives could match that speed.

Obviously double up for $200.00 in RAID 0 and you have 64GB at double the speeds.

Now in todays 500GB for $100.00 drive market, yes $100.00 for 32GB is a big leap.. but no one is looki9ng at these drives for reason of "storage" we are looking at them for reasons of opening up speed bumps/bottlenecks in our systems performance. In this application, there is no comparison at all with the platter drives, as just as the platter drive beats the SSD in cost per GB basis, the SSD beats the platter drive soundly in cost vs. speed. These $100.00 SSDs are the same cost as the fast 10K RPM Raptor drives speed freaks crave, but faster!

[tim]

With CS4 on a 64bit OS buying more RAM is probably a better solution.

[Boucher]

I'm running core2duo @ 3ghz with 4gb of RAM and a Ati 4850.

As long as I don't get involved with huge panoramas CS3 and lightroom run fine together.

[rx7speed]

Depends on your application, needs, and point of view.
The link in my post points to a 32GB SSD with 100MBs write and over 150MB read times, and 0 ( ZERO ) second access times for about $100.00 bucks.

An OS or Scratch disk needs no more than that 32GB in 95% of the cases, and no other single drive or Raided pair of drives could match that speed.

Obviously double up for $200.00 in RAID 0 and you have 64GB at double the speeds.

Now in todays 500GB for $100.00 drive market, yes $100.00 for 32GB is a big leap.. but no one is looki9ng at these drives for reason of "storage" we are looking at them for reasons of opening up speed bumps/bottlenecks in our systems performance. In this application, there is no comparison at all with the platter drives, as just as the platter drive beats the SSD in cost per GB basis, the SSD beats the platter drive soundly in cost vs. speed. These $100.00 SSDs are the same cost as the fast 10K RPM Raptor drives speed freaks crave, but faster!

they only win the access time for thats for sure and I can not and will not deny that at all.

in sustain throughput though these SSD drives are not the king. even for the price sustained throughput they are not the king. not I was able to get those speeds that thing claims on newegg (excluding access time) at a 100 even and ended up with 500gb of space vs their 32gb at 130 bucks.

took a search though and ended up with this and with what I see here (can't say how great the review is though) for the RiDATA ULtra-S Plus SSD 32GB I get better performance out of a single drive (again excluding access speeds. so 130 bucks for this vs 50 bucks for more space better throughput and only con seems to be slower access times. to me I'll take the platter disk right now.
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about16784.html