Why does Photoshop work better on one computer vs the other (specs included)

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FastShoes

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Jun 3, 2016
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I have two computers and am wondering why one runs photoshop so much better.

Computer 1
Runs photoshop well, is quick to edit and open photos
Dell Precision T5600
Intel Xeon CPU E5-2609 @ 2.4GHz
16GB Ram
64 Bit
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 Video Card

Computer 2
A lot slower with photoshop, chugs when working on files
Dell
Intel Core i7-4790 @ 3.6GHz
8GB Ram
64 Bit
Internal Intel HD Graphics 4600 (1696 mb ram)

According to this link, the i7 should be much faster than the Xeon. What is holding the i7 back from performing like the Xeon? Is it the memory, or perhaps the video card, or something else? Thank you very much!
 
Solution
synphul
The xeon has a bit more cache (ultra fast memory next to the cpu cores), 10mb vs 8mb on the i7 but with the higher speed the 4790 should be performing better. Do you know what kind of drive the xeon system is using? Is it using an ssd while the i7 build is using a mechanical drive?

Honestly I think ram is one of the biggest things holding you back. I noticed a nice improvement moving from 8gb to 16gb ram and that was with a dedicated gpu (older amd hd4850, nothing blazing fast). It was using all 8gb for the os and programs where your i7 is using around 6.3gb. If you have a mechanical hard drive like a wd blue or something in the i7 machine that will likely show the lack of ram.

When a system runs low or runs out of system memory it...
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synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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The video card may be a slight improvement depending on the task but only a handful of things are improved using gpgpu acceleration. The ram is likely one of the biggest differences, photoshop loves ram especially when working with bigger files or lots of layers. The i7 system has half the ram and even less available since the integrated graphics are using 1.7gb of your ram as video memory where a dedicated gpu card provides its own vram. The rest of the system is left with just over 6gb of ram.
 
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FastShoes

Commendable
Jun 3, 2016
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1,510


Thank you for your response, yes I am working with larger files that have multiple layers. My goal is to get the slower computer up to par with the other one.


 
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synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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The xeon has a bit more cache (ultra fast memory next to the cpu cores), 10mb vs 8mb on the i7 but with the higher speed the 4790 should be performing better. Do you know what kind of drive the xeon system is using? Is it using an ssd while the i7 build is using a mechanical drive?

Honestly I think ram is one of the biggest things holding you back. I noticed a nice improvement moving from 8gb to 16gb ram and that was with a dedicated gpu (older amd hd4850, nothing blazing fast). It was using all 8gb for the os and programs where your i7 is using around 6.3gb. If you have a mechanical hard drive like a wd blue or something in the i7 machine that will likely show the lack of ram.

When a system runs low or runs out of system memory it resorts to using the swap file, dedicated free space located on the hard drive. An ssd is significantly slower than ram and a mechanical 7200rpm drive is slower than that. If you have one drive on the pc and it's being used for os/programs plus being used as a scratch disk for photoshop and it's where photoshop is accessing files from and it's being hit heavily on the swap file that's a lot of different i/o activity on a single drive. The drive heads reading/writing data are having to constantly move back and forth all over the place and will cause a major slowdown.

Ssd drives being a bit faster and not relying on mechanical arms/heads to physically change position are a bit better for sure in that situation. Ideally photoshop would be on the os drive (ssd), there would be a separate (equally fast) small drive to be used as a dedicated scratch disk and working files or stored files would be on a 3rd drive. Along with more ram of course. That way all those parts of the process aren't competing for the same hard drive.
 
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