Which Xeons for max Photoshop performance in HP XW6400

[iangreenhalgh]

Hi folks

I just picked up a HP XW6400 cheap to do some intensive Photoshop work (I'm a photographer) and it has a single Xeon E5320 1.86Ghz/8M/1066 Quad core. I have a pair of E5160 3.0/4M/1333 dual core Xeons that I could install.

What I'm wondering is which will be faster for Photoshop - to use the 2x E5160s which would give me four 3Ghz cores and a 1333 bus or to buy another E5320 and have eight 1.86Ghz cores and a 1066 bus.

I guess it boils down to more cores at a slower speed versus less cores at a higher speed. I wonder what would benefit Photoshop more - lots of cores or higher clock speed and bus speed?

 

[amuffin]

More cores!

I would also grab a GPU to help with GPU Acceleration in PS!

 

[iangreenhalgh]

Cheers, it's Photoshop CS5, so you reckon it's going to get more benefit from lots of cores, I have no idea how the multithreading capability of Photoshop is, but it makes sense to have more cores as I run Photomatix to assemble HDR images at the same time as Photoshop.

On the GFX - I have a pair of Quadro FX 3450s but with both installed I get a message from the driver that the graphics card can't draw enough power so is going into a lower performance mode. There is only one power connector on the XW6400 PSU to fit onto a graphics card so obviously I can only power one of the cards with it. The FX 3450 isn't CUDA capable so perhaps I should upgrade to a CUDA capable card. I use the NIK Software plugins (Silver EFEX, Dfine, Color EFEX, Sharpener) a lot, any idea if those can benefit from CUDA or is it just Photoshop itself that will benefit from CUDA?

What card (or pair of cards) would you recommend for accelerating Photoshop? I'll be buying secondhand probably as budget is limited so it boils down to what I can find on ebay at a good price.

 

[amuffin]

Photoshop itself will benefit from CUDA, actually all Adobe programs do.


Depending on your budget and power supply, look for a card such as the GTX 480.

 

[iangreenhalgh]

Cheers. So I guess I'll stick the pair of 5160s and FX 3450s on ebay and buy another 5320 and a new graphics card.

One other question, would it be worth me going for a pair of 53xx Xeons that run at 1333Mhx bus? Is the higher bus speed and memory speed over the 1066Mhz 5320 going to be worth the expense?

 

[amuffin]

No, not really.

 

[omadds]

Cheers. So I guess I'll stick the pair of 5160s and FX 3450s on ebay and buy another 5320 and a new graphics card.

One other question, would it be worth me going for a pair of 53xx Xeons that run at 1333Mhx bus? Is the higher bus speed and memory speed over the 1066Mhz 5320 going to be worth the expense?

Hi Ian, I am in the same situation as you - I have just bought a xw6400 with a 1.6 quad xeon and I am going to buy twin xeon 5345 which are 2.3 ghz quad xeon for only about $70. I got onto this thread because I wanted to see if the xw6400 could overclock the cpus - not that i would probably need to anyway, just curious. I too will be using the computer for photography.

One thing I wanted to say is that i found out yesterday that running a quadro fx and an 8800gt together, having the gt has the primary card actually can give huge performance increase:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-586789.html