Things that have made a real difference

So I've just done a major desktop upgrade.

My primary applications are Photoshop, Canon DPP, and Premier Pro. Also, Proshow Producer, Adobe Media Encoder, and Adobe After Effects.

Two things that made a big difference in performance for me with those applications:

1. Going from four cores with hyper-threading to eight true cores.
2. Putting OS and applications on an M.2 NVMe stick.

Most interesting has been how Canon DPP really, really, really loves eight physical cores. The difference is astounding. I have a meter that shows real-time per-core activity, and it just goes naz running DPP (which it didn't do with hyperthreading).

Nice!
What make & model of your cpu & mainboard did you upgrade to?

RDKirk wrote in post #18956570
Most interesting has been how Canon DPP really, really, really loves eight physical cores. The difference is astounding. I have a meter that shows real-time per-core activity, and it just goes naz running DPP (which it didn't do with hyperthreading).

So, you're saying that total CPU utilization is now 100%, but it used to be less?

iroctd wrote in post #18956629
Nice!
What make & model of your cpu & mainboard did you upgrade to?

Intel i7 9700K. My previous i7 had four physical cores that were hyperthreaded to eight cores. This cpu has eight physical cores, no hyperthreading. But it seems to have much better throughput on those eight real cores.

Gigabyte Aorus 390 Pro motherboard with 32gb of memory.

John Sheehy wrote in post #18956661
So, you're saying that total CPU utilization is now 100%, but it used to be less?

With the previous CPU, DPP only showed slight activity on a few cores. With this cpu, it pushes all the cores to 50% or more as it performs an operation.

Maybe DPP isn't written to recognize logical threads. It was interesting to me that the nature of operation seemed different, rather than just being faster.

Of the programs you listed, I would assume it's Premiere that's utilizing your CPU the most (IE able to utilize all your cores, and having the biggest difference). I would also assume your new i7 has a higher clock speed overall, which improves speeds of almost all functions of your photo programs (which have some processes that aren't parallel processing). At least when I've shopped around recently, it does seem like the turbo speed clock speeds have also gone up like core count.

RDKirk wrote in post #18956896
With the previous CPU, DPP only showed slight activity on a few cores. With this cpu, it pushes all the cores to 50% or more as it performs an operation.

Maybe DPP isn't written to recognize logical threads. It was interesting to me that the nature of operation seemed different, rather than just being faster.

I have the same CPU as you, and I get 100% utilization (according to Task Manager) with DPP, at least in clicking on a new image to edit and convert to the defaults. 100% short spike, then it drops to zero (disk access with DMA, I guess) and then it goes back to 100% again until all stages of converting the physical image.

Any lack of 100% utilization in code that uses all cores is probably waiting on disk activities (or switching to code that isn't well-threaded, temporarily).

davesrose wrote in post #18956918
Of the programs you listed, I would assume it's Premiere that's utilizing your CPU the most (IE able to utilize all your cores, and having the biggest difference). I would also assume your new i7 has a higher clock speed overall, which improves speeds of almost all functions of your photo programs (which have some processes that aren't parallel processing). At least when I've shopped around recently, it does seem like the turbo speed clock speeds have also gone up like core count.

I have the same CPU as RDKirk, and out of the box, it runs at turbo speed almost always when code is running at 100%, even when all 8 cores are at 100% each at 4.57GHz, at least for relatively short periods of time. I really don't know what role the nominal CPU speed plays in practice, because Task Manager usually reports the CPU at 0.9GHz or 4.57GHz, and rarely anything in-between.

RDKirk wrote in post #18956570
Two things that made a big difference in performance for me with those applications:

1. Going from four cores with hyper-threading to eight true cores.
2. Putting OS and applications on an M.2 NVMe stick.

What was your previous storage, HDD or SSD?

John from PA wrote in post #18957005
What was your previous storage, HDD or SSD?

I've been all SSD for quite some time in my computer. But the SSD is choked by the SATA interface, whereas the M.2 storage is not.

John Sheehy wrote in post #18956991
I have the same CPU as RDKirk, and out of the box, it runs at turbo speed almost always when code is running at 100%, even when all 8 cores are at 100% each at 4.57GHz, at least for relatively short periods of time. I really don't know what role the nominal CPU speed plays in practice, because Task Manager usually reports the CPU at 0.9GHz or 4.57GHz, and rarely anything in-between.

I had traditionally always stayed away from overclocking in favor of stability, but this Intel CPU seems to be living its best life in turbo mode, as long as the motherboard supports it well and it's kept cool.

davesrose wrote in post #18956918
Of the programs you listed, I would assume it's Premiere that's utilizing your CPU the most (IE able to utilize all your cores, and having the biggest difference). I would also assume your new i7 has a higher clock speed overall, which improves speeds of almost all functions of your photo programs (which have some processes that aren't parallel processing). At least when I've shopped around recently, it does seem like the turbo speed clock speeds have also gone up like core count.

The base clock speed is exactly the same as my earlier cpu: 3.6Ghz. But all eight threads are actual physical cores and this cpu seems much more ready to play hard at turbo clock speeds.

So this change of CPU has resulted in much better performance with photography applications than I had anticipated.

My pagefile and scratch disk are also in the m.2 storage, and that has made a difference.

My conclusion is that Adobe products and Canon DPP are both so heavily reliant on CPU clock speed and storage performance, that I'd invest first in those areas if I'm already running a basically decent graphics card and 16 gigs of system memory.

Any idea on how the newer amd cpus would do in a similar build

RDKirk wrote in post #18956570
So I've just done a major desktop upgrade.

My primary applications are Photoshop, Canon DPP, and Premier Pro. Also, Proshow Producer, Adobe Media Encoder, and Adobe After Effects.

Two things that made a big difference in performance for me with those applications:

1. Going from four cores with hyper-threading to eight true cores.
2. Putting OS and applications on an M.2 NVMe stick.

Most interesting has been how Canon DPP really, really, really loves eight physical cores. The difference is astounding. I have a meter that shows real-time per-core activity, and it just goes naz running DPP (which it didn't do with hyperthreading).

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting. Never heard of M.2 or NVMe, and they sound like great new technology. I had dismissed upgrading my 4 year old box as the performance advantage of a new processor seemed modest. But now it looks like a better SSD implementation could make a big difference.

Archibald wrote in post #18957178
Interesting stuff, thanks for posting. Never heard of M.2 or NVMe, and they sound like great new technology. I had dismissed upgrading my 4 year old box as the performance advantage of a new processor seemed modest. But now it looks like a better SSD implementation could make a big difference.

M.2 and NVMe are two storage strategies that have been around for a while, but they've been quite expensive until recently. They're still rather limited in size, but the 500gb and 1tb sizes are now about the same price as SSDs of the same sizes. The first M.2 sticks still used the SATA interface, but M2. NVMe is a newer interface that bypasses SATA.

The M.2 format is a small stick, not a lot larger than a stick of gum. As a "drive," it attaches in a socket directly on applicable motherboards, and it usually electronically occupies a SATA port in the BIOS. You can also get PCIe boards with an attached M.2 socket, if the motherboard doesn't have a socket for it.

Either way, it's literally than 300 times faster than a SATA drive, even an SSD.