Laptop for Photoshop

[ShadowTiger]

Hi,
I need to buy a new laptop and could use your advice.

The primary use for the laptop is editing some pretty large photoshop files. (Hundreds of MB, sometimes a few GB) No video or animation.

I don't usually play any games on the laptop except a few simple (2D) games - usually Flash-based.

I'm also on a budget.

When it comes down to it, I seem to be staring at three main models, all with 6GB of memory:

* Core i5 520M + ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
* Core i5 520M + Nvidia NVS 5100M
* Core i7 720QM (quad core) + Nvidia GeForce GT 320M

I've read Photoshop is mostly CPU / Memory bound but recently I'm seeing they take advantage of the GPU (and that seems mostly OpenGL and Shader related). I've also read that while many programs won't take advantage of the quad cores (and may in fact run slower on the 720 because the clock speed is higher on the 520) Photoshop is not one of those, and the four cores will be faster - even at the clock speed difference.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Peter

 

[Look]

I assume you are running Photoshop CS4-Extended, correct? In terms of raw CPU power, the i7 will be the strongest, paired with that 6gigs of ram. I would go for the 720QM personally. I feel your pain, working on 1.5+ GB files was a huge pain in Photoshop CS3 with my old Athalon 5000+ x2 and 2GB of RAM.

What OS are you going to use this for? And which version of PS?

 

[ShadowTiger]

Hi,

Thanks - yes, CS4 Extended (soon to be CS5). I'll be running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

-Peter

 

[kamel5547]

I assume you are running Photoshop CS4-Extended, correct? In terms of raw CPU power, the i7 will be the strongest, paired with that 6gigs of ram. I would go for the 720QM personally. I feel your pain, working on 1.5+ GB files was a huge pain in Photoshop CS3 with my old Athalon 500+ x2 and 2GB of RAM.

What OS are you going to use this for? And which version of PS?

I've always wondered about that given that the 720 is 1.6 vs 2.4 for the 520. Does Photoshop really make that effecient use of the 4 cores that it would make up for the difference on operations that are restricted to one or two threads?

 

[Look]

I've always wondered about that given that the 720 is 1.6 vs 2.4 for the 520. Does Photoshop really make that effecient use of the 4 cores that it would make up for the difference on operations that are restricted to one or two threads?

As far as Photoshop's usage, I believe it would make more use of the four cores, looking at benchmarks of the Artist's Retouch test. Granted I am not 100% sure on how well it translates to the mobile versions of the CPUs, the lower clocked i7s consistently beat the higher clocked i5s. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25

 

[Shadow703793]

I know I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but you are probably better off with a i5/i7 based desktop that can be upgraded easily....unless mobility is a big factor.

At any rate, +1 for getting the i7 + a nVidia card.

 

[ShadowTiger]

Thanks everyone! I guess i7 + nVidia it is!

 

[ShadowTiger]

Best answer selected by ShadowTiger.

 

[ShadowTiger]

Well, in laptop land we did decide to go i7 + nVidia, but then we decided to go desktop instead and I've built a system around an i5-750 w/6GB of memory and an ATI 5770. So far it rocks! Thanks, everyone.