AMD or Intel for photoshop???

[ovbg]

Ok, my 2nd question for my upgrade is whether I should go AMD or Intel. (1st question was in the motherboards section, though in hindsight I should have done this the other way around)

Now, the main purpose of my computer is photo editing very large RAW photo files into TIFF's. These can exceed 46Mb per photo, and I love to have other things running in the background, whether Internet, streaming mp3's across to my squeezebox via wifi and a host of other apps, often other photo programs.

So, I would presume that the Dual Core processors are the ones for me, but which one?

The two main options in my price bracket are the Pentium D 830 or the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester).

Now the Manchester is a bit more expensive here, but it's only 2GHz compared to the Intel version being 3GHz... ok, I know that this doesn't actually mean anything because both CPU's handle data diffeerently, but which would actually be better for my proposed system?

The Intel has double the cache, and is cheaper. Also, the motherboards seem to offer more features in what I am looking for, such as loads of SATA ports for the various HD's I need to store thousands of photo's.

Question 2) (but related). What is the big difference between the Pentium D 840 and Pentium Extreme Edition Processor 840? The EE is double the price, but same cache & speed? Is there any significant speed difference, or is it just minor?

Thirdly, I noticed that I can get two versions of the Pentium D 830, but one called BTX. Is this just in relation to fitting on a BTX motherboard?

Thanks for your help.

 

[addiarmadar]

I dont believe that Adobe supports the DC concept yet so probably an Intel chip will have the upper hane in this dept. Id still get the CD A64 just to look toward the future when Adobe will make proper use of DC chips.

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[TheRod]

The Intel has double the cache, and is cheaper.

You can't say that Intel get the upper hand because it has more cache. AMD architecture is more "cache-efficient", a bigger/smaller cache doesn't affect AMD64 architecture as much as P4 architecture.

-
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[Systemdw]

I'm gonna say to get a Mac if your doing a lot of photoshop.

 

[fishmahn]

Definitely dual core (but you'd already decided that LOL).

The 3800+ outperforms the 830 in most tasks (video encoding excepted), many by a significant margin (20%+). The extra cache of the 830 doesn't matter very much - it needs the cache (and could use more even) just to keep it from starving for memory - Intel CPU's need to be kept well-fed to perform well. Either CPU can do the job, but I think the 3800+ will do it better.

If you go with the 830, be aware of, and make allowances for, the fact that it needs a LOT of cooling and power. You'll be able to get by with a bit lower PSU with the 3800, and you won't need to be as concerned with heat and throttling as you would with the 830. Put either of them in a case with stock cooling and the 3800 will be fine, the 830 will be running right at the edge of overheating. Depending on the cooling and airflow in the case, it may be on the low side, or maybe on the high side...

The difference between the 840 and the 840EE is Hyperthreading. EE has it, the rest don't. Basically it makes the system look like there's 4 cores instead of just 2. Since you're already on a dual core, there's not much use for HT (just my opinion).

I don't know about that BTX version of the 830 - I'd guess that's what it means however.

Mike.

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[pat]

epend of the filter you'll be using. Some will work faster on AMD, others on Intel...

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[ovbg]

Thanks for your help guys.

I thought it very odd that the comparison article at the CPU section, compared the 3800 with the D-840 instead of it's direct competitor, the D-830.

Looks like I'll be going the Athlon DC.

Now I just have to decide on the best motherboard. I'm looking at the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, it looks pretty good, but of cause I don't think the SLI will have any effect on 2D graphics like photoshop.

So, I best now ask in the motherboard forum suggestions for this processor.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[P4Man]

>Actually Photoshop does use SMP very effectively.

Dont make me laugh.. some of its filters are multithreaded (less than half I think),but AFAIK none of the other cpu intensive operations (resizing, rotating, colourspace convertions, none of the palette functions,..) are multithreaded. at least in version 6, not too certain about more recent releases.


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