Digital BW, The Print

I'm not sure where to best ask this, but I think it's of interest to this group. I'm in the 
process of deciding whether to buy a new Mac. Photoshop is the most important 
application I run and my objective is to run it faster.

I have a Power Mac Dual 2.5 G5 at 10.4.10 and Photoshop CS2. A new machine would be a 
Mac Pro running CS3. Reviewing articles in MacWorld, I see that the time required to run 
their Photoshop Suite, "a set of scripted tasks ..." is:

Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7 GHz (two single cores) and CS2: 0.48 seconds
(8/10/2006 and 8/16/2006)

Mac Pro/2 dual core 3GHz Xeon (four cores) and CS3: 0.50 seconds
(6/6/07 and 7/19/07; the eight core version improves to 0.48)

Assuming that their Suite has not changed between articles (it is described identically and 
should be a constant to be able to compare apples to apples) I need to spend several 
thousand dollars to get to where I am now, plus new features of CS3. (I'm ignoring the 
difference between my Dual 2.5 and the Dual 2.7 used in the tests.)

MacWorld talks about applications needing to by written to take advantage of multiple 
cpus, but I find only a passing mention of Photoshop, and that mention said "multiple". 
Using Activity Monitor, I see that Photoshop CS2 does use both of my cpus when doing 
Unsharp Mask, Gaussian Blur and Bicubic resizing. (Lightroom also uses both my cpus.) 
Does this mean that Photoshop is written to use only a maximum of two cpus?

Anyone out there can verify how many cpus Photoshop CS3 uses on four and eight core 
machines? If the answer is "two", then I should stay with the setup I have until I am 
compelled to upgrade my hardware by software features. (From the very minimal 
difference between the four and eight core Pro, it doesn't use eight well.) According to the 
charts in the articles I mention above, CS3 runs slower on a G5 than on a Pro, in fact 
slower than CS2 on a G5 - so I don't want to upgrade Photoshop and stay on my G5.  I do 
not find the new features of CS3 worth the major upgrade in hardware. Ditto Lightroom 
1.1.

If the answer is that Photoshop CS3 uses more than two cpus, then I don't know how to 
understand the MacWorld reviews.

I found the articles at macworld.com:
www.macworld.com/2006/08/firstlooks/macprobench/index.php
www.macworld.com/2006/08/reviews/macprorev/index.php
www.macworld.com/2007/06/firstlooks/ochotests/index.php
www.macworld.com/2007/07/reviews/macpro8/index.php

Michael

History says that Photoshop will use as many processors as there is in
the machine. But I have no real idea if CS3 continued that tradition.
This goes back to PS3 or PS4 and the aftermarket multiple processor
Daystar machines (I think).

Very few apps can utilize 8 processors simultaneously, and they are
largely video editinging/production tools.
See his blog post by John Nack for more info
<http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/photoshop_and_multicore.html>
Even if PS doesn't utilize all available processors that doens't mean
there's no benefit to say, a 2x dual core setup. You have "spare"
processors to devote to other apps and the OS while PS is crunching
away. But video pros aside, the 8 core machines seem to be more for
geek status than real world performance gains.
When I switched to CS3 I moved to a Mac Pro 2x 2.66 dual core from a
dual G5 2.5. On the Mac Pro, PS launches faster and progress bars feel
shorter. A noticeable difference? Yes, but not night and day. And of
course for optimum performance you need to feed the beast with
adequate RAM, use fast drives, create RAID scratch disks, etc etc. So
the cost of upgrading goes far beyond the Mac Pro purchase. Oh, and on
top of that you get to track down (and pay) for upgrades for your
other heavy use apps that must now be Universal Binary to run at full
speed.
Having said all of that, I don't regret the move, and everything feels
fast, but there are definitely other ways to spend your money that are
more photographically fulfilling.
-- 
amadou diallo
Author, Mastering Digital Black and White
www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com

Amadou,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. (And for your great book!)

I followed your link to that blog and its link to an Adobe article and learned some things. 
For now, I've decided to tweak  what I have and use Memory Stick and the efficiency 
measurement within Photoshop to decide whether I should increase my memory from 2GB 
to 4.

FYI, I usually can find things to do while Photoshop grinds away at an action involving 
many files - fixing a snack, checking email, ... It's the small chunks of time while working 
on a big file with many layers I'm trying to miimize; the seconds waiting for a filter to 
complete or a dodge/burn to show up in final form, for example, because these add up  
and there's nothing I can do but wait for completion.

Not contesting that you find a speed improvement with your new setup, but I'll keep those 
Macworld articles I saved and wait on a new Mac until I see an article showing a more 
significant improvement over what I have.

Thanks again,
Michael

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "amadou diallo" <amadiallo@...> 
wrote:

>
> Very few apps can utilize 8 processors simultaneously, and they are
> largely video editinging/production tools.
> See his blog post by John Nack for more info
> <http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/photoshop_and_multicore.html>
> Even if PS doesn't utilize all available processors that doens't mean
> there's no benefit to say, a 2x dual core setup. You have "spare"
> processors to devote to other apps and the OS while PS is crunching
> away. But video pros aside, the 8 core machines seem to be more for
> geek status than real world performance gains.
> When I switched to CS3 I moved to a Mac Pro 2x 2.66 dual core from a
> dual G5 2.5. On the Mac Pro, PS launches faster and progress bars feel
> shorter. A noticeable difference? Yes, but not night and day. And of
> course for optimum performance you need to feed the beast with
> adequate RAM, use fast drives, create RAID scratch disks, etc etc. So
> the cost of upgrading goes far beyond the Mac Pro purchase. Oh, and on
> top of that you get to track down (and pay) for upgrades for your
> other heavy use apps that must now be Universal Binary to run at full
> speed.
> Having said all of that, I don't regret the move, and everything feels
> fast, but there are definitely other ways to spend your money that are
> more photographically fulfilling.
> -- 
> amadou diallo
> Author, Mastering Digital Black and White
> www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com
>