Dual Core vs 2 CPU vs 1 CPU using Photoshop

[CC381]

I raised this question with Cnet and they recommended this site for help. Does anyone know if benchmark testing has ranked the performance of the Dual-Core Intel(r) Xeon(tm) or Pentium(r) 4 against Dual CPU's and against a Single CPU using Adobe Photoshop to save, build, and render graphics files over 1GB. I called Adobe and they told me they can't share that information. We support Adobe Photoshop users and they have asked if Dual Core will perform better than 2 CPU and if these will perform significantly better that a single CPU; all other components being equal and all CPU at the clock speed. Does anyone know anywhere or anyone that has tested these various configuration with Photoshop and published their results?
Many thanks in advance.
CC381

 

[battousai831]

well since photoshop is single threaded my guess would be a faster single core rather than 2 slower cores... but i have no info to back that up sorry i'm jsut going on the fact that the second core wouldn't be sued since photoshop isn't multithreaded

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

Photoshop supports multithreading. Why do you think the program is 800 dollars?

well since photoshop is single threaded my guess would be a faster single core rather than 2 slower cores... but i have no info to back that up sorry i'm jsut going on the fact that the second core wouldn't be sued since photoshop isn't multithreaded

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

Dual Core and 2 processors is the samething.

There are 2 physical processsors on a single dye. What does that mean?

That means "2 processors" is the samething as a processor like conroe that is "Dual Core".

if you popped in 2 dual core processors that would the same as 4 processors.

Photoshop does infact make use of multithreading and you would benefit from a processor like conroe (core 2 duo), Pentium D, or athlon x2 ASSUMING you have a operating system that can handle multithreading such as Windows XP PROFESSIONAL or Windows 2000.

Windows XP Home and windows 9x/me cannot handle multithreading and so none of your software will make use of it.

I raised this question with Cnet and they recommended this site for help. Does anyone know if benchmark testing has ranked the performance of the Dual-Core Intel(r) Xeon(tm) or Pentium(r) 4 against Dual CPU's and against a Single CPU using Adobe Photoshop to save, build, and render graphics files over 1GB. I called Adobe and they told me they can't share that information. We support Adobe Photoshop users and they have asked if Dual Core will perform better than 2 CPU and if these will perform significantly better that a single CPU; all other components being equal and all CPU at the clock speed. Does anyone know anywhere or anyone that has tested these various configuration with Photoshop and published their results?
Many thanks in advance.
CC381

 

[guyinyourattic37]

Dual core and 2 processors arn't the same.
Dual core is 2 cores on one processor.
Dual processors are 2 prosessors.

 

[choirbass]

...im wondering though (and im probably wrong)... but arent the main differences between dual cores, and dual processors, in current configurations... that with dual cores, they are on the same die, but seperated only by a crossbar (lower latency than dual processor?), tying the two cores together, but also having a shared memory channel... ...and that with dual processors, they are seperated by the system bus (i think), therefore increasing latency between them... but each cpu would have its own dedicated memory channel (for more memory bandwidth)... again, i could be wrong about those things...

 

[IcY18]

Windows XP Home and windows 9x/me cannot handle multithreading and so none of your software will make use of it.

since SP2 Windows XP Home does handle multi threading and dual cores

Fast performance
•

Multithreading. Right now the most sophisticated games require computers to complete many different processes at once. This is known as multithreading and as games evolve multithreading will become more and more important. Windows XP handles multithreading more intelligently than previous operating systems. For now, any game that requires execution of multiple tasks within its own process will benefit from smoother graphics and some overall speed gains.

Link

 

[Dade_0182]

You have a 2000+ post count and you don't even know the difference between dual core and a dual processor setup...thats just sad. Don't want to fight, i'm just surprised thats all.

 

[ChrisLudwig]

I do professional Photography work and regularly work with large files.

Dual core is noticeably faster than single core, and my current system with 2 dual core (quad) is faster still.

However, PLEASE believe me when I say that upgrading Hard Drive I/O performance by using multiple, fast drives on RAID configurations and designated RAID scratch disks will boost PS performance more than anything else.

4GB of high-speed RAM helps too!

Personally for a budget, I’d recommend the Pentium D 630, unlimited budget, I’m not sure. The new XEON 5000’s are fast, high-end Opteron CPUs are faster, but I think Adobe works more closely with Intel. Photoshop has always been Intel optimized and I don’t know if this has been changed.

 

[shinigamiX]

Ah, a fellow resident of Tshw...Pretoria
Dual-core makes a difference in Photoshop.

 

[The_Abyss]

Windows XP Home and windows 9x/me cannot handle multithreading and so none of your software will make use of it.

since SP2 Windows XP Home does handle multi threading and dual cores

Fast performance
•

Multithreading. Right now the most sophisticated games require computers to complete many different processes at once. This is known as multithreading and as games evolve multithreading will become more and more important. Windows XP handles multithreading more intelligently than previous operating systems. For now, any game that requires execution of multiple tasks within its own process will benefit from smoother graphics and some overall speed gains.

Link

Surely that is not explicit dual core support though.

 

[JohnWeldt]

I am doing testing in a similar environment. Although I am doing real producer transcodes, it comes down to numbers and you may see the same results. So take it with a gain of sand.

I am dealing with raw video transcoding it to real format, 36+ GB files. I have a two xeon 3.2GHZ system, a opteron 275 system, and a dual opteron 275 system. Each has 1GB ram (2BG for the dual 275) and two Seagate 250GB 8mb SATA drives. Here is what I have found:

The xeon is fast at a single task buy about 12% in my case.

The 275 is faster at two tasks by about 9%.

The dual 275 is under testing, having issues loading all of the CPUs.

I am working on raid testing. I think the HDD is one of the biggest bottlenecks.

Now real producer does have it own quarks but I have found a two CPU setup with max processing power to be the fastest for encoding.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Just my .02 Dual Core chips will be slightly faster in multithreaded apps like photoshop than Dual CPU systems of the same speed/processors. This difference is likely to be minute and perhaps un-noticable to the naked eye, but Dual core is faster because of the close proximity of the processing cores, and the ability to talk with eachother faster.

This is more true with AMD dual core processors than Intel at this time, because the AMD Dual cores are actually built on the same die with chip level interconnects to make cross-core communication about as fast as it can get these days.

Basically less lengthy pathways in dual cores = faster communication/operation

Also in regards to single core CPU's, it all depends what you are doing in Photoshop. to my knowledge there are certain filters that are multithreaded, and some that are not, however I'm just a Photoshop hobbiest, not a professional user so I'm not the definitive resource on that topic.

 

[IcY18]

Windows XP Home and windows 9x/me cannot handle multithreading and so none of your software will make use of it.

since SP2 Windows XP Home does handle multi threading and dual cores

Fast performance
•

Multithreading. Right now the most sophisticated games require computers to complete many different processes at once. This is known as multithreading and as games evolve multithreading will become more and more important. Windows XP handles multithreading more intelligently than previous operating systems. For now, any game that requires execution of multiple tasks within its own process will benefit from smoother graphics and some overall speed gains.

Link

Surely that is not explicit dual core support though.

ok let me make this as clear as possible, Windows XP (home and pro) both support any dual core processor, although the question is whether windows xp home supports multithreaded apps( that is to use 2 cores on one program) it is in dispute as to whether XP Home takes advantage of multithreading, while XP Pro does support multithreading, regardless of this windows xp would still take advantage of of the two cores using them on different programs, now as far as dual socket ( dual cpu) i'm not sure if xp supports that, you'd probably have to use windows server 2003 i believe

 

[The_Abyss]

Ah - ok - that's cleared it up for me.

Thanks

 

[IcY18]

its all just tech blabble anyway :lol:

 

[Lord-Ilpolazzo]

indeed

 

[severeon]

first off, as a rough estimate of performance gain use task manager to see howmany threads a program has. (ctrl + shift + esc to open task manager, then goto the processes tab, then click view, the select columns... then check thread count)

Photoshop runs much beter on my D830, than on all of my single core intel's. It also runs MUCH MUCH better on my dual opty 275 system. The times to apply effects, open files, and general smoothness of CS2 are what im judging by. (all my systems use EVGA 6600GT's... and have 2 GB of memory).

So for photoshop I suggest a dual CPU AMD set.

And they call me an intel fanboy...

 

[mesarectifier]

Photoshop runs fastest on a BootCamp'd Macintosh, I believe.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

Photoshop runs fastest on a BootCamp'd Macintosh, I believe.

I can't imagine why that would be. New Macs are just Core Duos. I'd expect the "old" Quad G5 to at least potentially be a speed king in Photoshop with its dual dual-core setup and "Velocity Engine" aka VMX. At least for a while Photoshop was faster on PowerPC Macs than on AMD/Intel Windows machines if I'm not mistaken.

Also: not that this is necessarily still being debated, but while Photoshop loads, one of the components is multiprocessor support although I'm not sure if thats exactly what its called. For reference I'm using CS2.

-mcg

 

[sithscout80]

XP Home supports 1 physical processor with Hyperthreading and/or Dual Core processors.
XP Pro supports up to 2 physical processors with Hyperthreading and/or Dual Core processors.

Hyperthreading and Dual Core are supported in XP Home because the operating system sees them as virtual CPUs.