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cogden

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« on: April 04, 2007, 12:49:43 pm »

Is it just me, or where's the beef? http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html

The long anticipated update seems to only change the processor: no architecture changes (no L2 cache changes, no bus improvements, etc.) and  no peripheral enhancements (no blu-ray, no Hitchi 1TB drives, no more ports, etc. etc.)


The question:  For 2D Photoshop CS3 work, do 8-cores provide significant speed improvements over the 4-core? (as it pertains for the quest for the fastest CS3 machine; I fully understand the benefit of striped scratch disks, plenty of RAM, etc.)

One of the wild cards is CS3,  Adobe RAW 4.0 , and processing in 16bit images (although I only use a handful of filters: Photozoom, Shadows/Hilights, Noise Ninja , Nik Sharpener Pro).
   


## 1 Multicores Not Panacea?##
There's Adobe's assertion that just adding more cores, without dedicated processor memory changes, won't make Photoshop go zoom as one would hope...
What's the story with Photoshop & multi-core?
 http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/photo..._multicore.html

Although, I'm surprised that RAW processing wouldn't benefit significantly (ie, it's computationally intense, no?)

Apple's page on Photoshop performance isn't very compelling:
http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html (all about Rosetta and G4's)

Although this guy says he shows all four cores going like gangbusters (perhaps with multiple apps open?):
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/aug06/082406.html#S21606





## 2 - Graphics Card Impact? ##
I still can't find any current information as to how much the graphics  card choice translates to realworld PS 2D performance?  Have there been any metrics on the 3 options for PS3 and/or Aperture (NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT vs. ATI Radeon X1900 XT vs. NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500)?

Apple highlights gaming/3D (http://www.apple.com/macpro/graphics.html), not Photoshop CS3 nor Aperture.

Some reports say that Photoshop will use VRAM if it depletes it's 4GB limit, but I haven't seen it validated.

Apple Support said Adobe/Apple recommend the entry level graphics card as an "optimized" CS3 solution, referring me to: http://store.apple.com/AppleStore/WebObjec...ily=MacAdobeCS3

"As counterintuitive as it may sound, video cards have little effect on the performance of most 2D imaging tasks... The one major exception to the above is for users of Apple Macintosh computers. Recent versions of OS X have implemented a technology called Core Image that makes use of graphics hardware to offload some image processing tasks from the processor. Software that is programmed to take advantage of this (such as Aperture) will be reliant on the performance of the graphics card, so buying high-end offerings will be a significant boon to these users. Note that this will not have any effect on software not explicitly using this technology (eg Photoshop)." http://www.photographicworkflow.com/wiki/C...s:Graphics_Card

"Does Photoshop CS3 "hand off" rendering to the graphics card and will you gain speed if you have a fast graphics card with lots of VRAM? Not at this time... the current CS3 beta relies strictly on CPU for rendering effects." (http://www.barefeats.com/quad16.html)

Also confirmed by Adobe that PS CS3 does not use "Core Image" (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/photoshop_and_multicore.html )




## 3 - Aperture or Lightroom Speedup?  ##
Maybe the 8-core would speed up Aperture (toward which I'm leaning - Lightroom so far seems too modal and it's not AppleScriptable)?

Although Apple seems to place more stock in higher end graphics card for Aperture (http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html):
upgrading to a high-performance graphics card, you can make the most of OpenGL-accelerated applications such as Aperture.

Some say "The main reason LR is faster is because it uses CPU to do image processing where as Aperture dumps a lot of stuff to the GPU by utilising core image. Hence a macbook with a built in GPU isn't exactly the best machine to be running Aperture on. !"

Also, "ArsTechnica compared the Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture in workflow management. Here’s the conclusion: “Aperture’s main drawback is still performance and as that last joke implies, it was designed for bleeding edge machines. On a quad Core2 Duo Xeon, it is very usable but Lightroom just feels faster for everything regardless of hardware. Since Aperture relies on Core Image and a fast video card to do its adjustments (RAW decoding is done by the CPU), it’s limited to what the single 3-D card can do. Lightroom does everything with the CPU and so it is likely to gain more speed as multicore systems get faster."

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc38855



## 3 - Hard Info?  ##
In trying to get some hard info, I called Apple, and after the usual begging, got connected to an engineer ("Andy"). He was full of wrong information and was shooting from the hip. I corrected him point by point and he fell back to generalized marketing obfuscation such as saying Apple can't comment on unreleased products, etc. (even when I pointed out that was released today). After the fourth time referring him to Apple's own pages, and not having any luck getting a more senior person, I gave up.

Ever the optimist, I called back to talk to MacPro technical support. I asked: specifically what is the 2D graphic performance (ie PS CS3) difference between two 3.0GHz Quad-Core processors and two 3.0GHz Dual-Core processors. I got to listen to some great reggae for 35 minutes at which point their senior tech said the only info is what is on Apple's website (no internal knowledge base information, etc.).


It sounds like we'll just have to wait until someone does actual benchmarks on Quad vs. 8-Core machines using CS3 (?) - sigh, and I have a show coming up in 3 weeks for which I need to process my thousands of Antarctica images?






Running Commentaries:
digg http://www.digg.com/apple/8_CORE_Mac_Pro_O...ounced_by_Apple

Performance Tests:
Photoshop CS2 vs CS3 beta on High-End Macs http://www.barefeats.com/quad16.html


Apple Info:
8-core architecture http://www.apple.com/macpro/intel.html
   (no mention of photoshop, just scientific apps)

8-core specs http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html
   (no discernible differences besides the processor)


Pricing (with all default settings except processor (1gb ram, 250gb hdd, GeForce 7300 GT)
An 8-core system (two 3.0GHz Quad-Core processors) costs $4,000
A 4-core system (two 3.0GHz Dual-Core)   $3,300
A 4-core system (two 2.0GHz Dual-Core)      $2,200


Adobe:
Optimize performance in Photoshop (CS2 on Mac OS) http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase...x.cfm?id=332270
No 64-bit Photoshop CS3 http://news.com.com/2061-10791_3-6146229.html
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Tom.D.Arch

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2007, 02:21:30 pm »

A lot of the hype and speculation about the 8 core upgrade has revolved around video processing, where a particular operation (e.g. color correction or sharpening) is performed on frame after frame of a stream of video and more cores really can pay off.  Of course, this will depend heavily on things like memory speed.  The rumor mill is predicting that Apple will release a new version of their video editing software to go with this hardware at the big TV/Video conference in two weeks.

I doubt we'll know much until reviewers start running PSCS3 on a real machine with real images.  But I will be very surprised if the upgrade turns out to be worth US$1,500 for a 'typical' PS user.  

Thankfully, very few of us have to wait 30 minutes any more for a particular filter to run on an image.  It used to be the case that the 'next generation' of hardware would mean saving 5 or 10 minutes at a shot, multiplied by however many times per day.  A new machine could mean an hour or two a day of increased productivity, thus it was worth thousands of dollars to upgrade.  As I said, I'd be surprised if the move to 8 cores turns out to be this sort of upgrade for non-3d, non-video work.
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BernardLanguillier

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2007, 08:49:25 pm »

It would be great if someone could run a real life benchmark on these machines.

I often do a batch conversion of images in Raw Developper, DxO or Lightroom at the same time I start computing a panorama with PTgui, generate previews in Bridge and retouch some very large images in PC CS2 while burning DVDs... all these things being done while accessing a RAID5 NAS without a dedicated CPU.

My 3 years old 2 Xeon box with 2GB RAM gets real slow in these scenarios, I believe that more cores and more memory would help, but have a hard time figuring out whether 4 cores are enough, or whether 8 cores would help.

The 8 core Mac is tempting, but it is a bit sad that they decided to go for the super high end only. An 8 core version clocked at 2.66 Ghz and priced slightly above the 4 core 3 Ghz version would have been an easy pick.

Regards,
Bernard

ternst

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2007, 09:41:53 pm »

Let's face it - these machines and CS3 have been in the hands of those that know for a while now, and not a single person that I can find will say the 8-core will run CS3 any faster than a quad core. If the new machines were faster there would be a lot of press about it, somewhere, but nothing.

Is there any reason to buy an 8-core for photoshop work at this point in time?
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61Dynamic

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2007, 10:07:25 pm »

You seem to have most of your answers already.

CPUs can no longer be benchmarked simply my Megahertz alone these days. Architecture, bus design, and number of cores and software design all play important roles. Adding more cores will add performance but how much---and whether it will benefit your workflow---can only be found through real-world testing.

Quote
Let's face it - these machines and CS3 have been in the hands of those that know for a while now, and not a single person that I can find will say the 8-core will run CS3 any faster than a quad core. If the new machines were faster there would be a lot of press about it, somewhere, but nothing.
The 8-core machines were just released. It's a bit premature to make such assumptions.
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ternst

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2007, 10:38:30 pm »

They were just released to the public but they have been available for a while - you don't just start shipping to the world before a lot of hands-on testing is done by many people over a period of time...
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61Dynamic

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2007, 12:04:32 am »

Quote
They were just released to the public but they have been available for a while - you don't just start shipping to the world before a lot of hands-on testing is done by many people over a period of time...
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
This is Apple computers we're talking about. They don't give test units to anyone outside of Apple. Nor do they announce their release plans ahead of time. Anyone claiming otherwise is full of it.

That being said, it has been possible---ever since the quad-core chips were released---to convert a 4-core Mac Pro into a 8-core system with after-market chips. This has been done by only [a href=\"http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=6]AnandTech[/url] and C-Net that I know of.
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francois

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2007, 03:58:51 am »

Quote
This is Apple computers we're talking about. They don't give test units to anyone outside of Apple. Nor do they announce their release plans ahead of time. Anyone claiming otherwise is full of it.

That being said, it has been possible---ever since the quad-core chips were released---to convert a 4-core Mac Pro into a 8-core system with after-market chips. This has been done by only AnandTech and C-Net that I know of.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
There's another benchmark article on [a href=\"http://www.hardmac.com/articles/72/]HardMac.com[/url]. They tested the Intel Quad Core Xeon X5355 chip but Apple ships the new 8-core Macs with X5365 chips. I don't know how this affects real world perfromances.

I guess that we'll be flooded by pref tests by the end of the month...
« Last Edit: April 06, 2007, 03:59:06 am by francois »
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Francois

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2007, 08:36:15 pm »

I don't care, but I ordered one today with 4GB RAM 8 processors and 500GB HD.

It will replace my 3 yr old Dell Precision 470 workstation running WinXP. I got tired of waiting for a true 64 bit Win OS. While waiting, I purchased an MacBook Pro (Intel) 15" with 3GB RAM. Using Parallels, it runs Windows XP Pro better and faster than my Dell Latitude laptop.

I'm sold in Apple!

I also spoke to Adobe and they did a cross-platform upgrade from my Windows version of Photoshop CS2 to Mac OS Photoshop CS3.

I should have my new MacPro 8 in a week. I can't wait.

Bud James
North Wales, PA
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Bud James
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taylorphoto

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2007, 12:31:21 am »

I know that in the past, Apples have had lots of horsepower and were the latest and greatest... only to discover after the fact that Photoshop wasn't using it effectively.  I think it might be the case here also with the 8.  lots of juice but an inability for the software to put it to good use.  We'll see.
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tomholland

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2007, 05:12:59 am »

It isn't a question of will it benefit you now, Benchmarks have already shown that any perfermance offered by more cores for the moment is minimal with photoshop. The question is if in the future Adobe will write their software to take advantage of the extra cores, which of course they will. Think back to the introduction of multi-processors. Software more often has to catch up to the hardware, not the other way around.

If you can afford the extra-cores and want your machine to be relevant longer, then get more cores.

Just my thoughts.
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DiaAzul

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2007, 08:41:36 am »

Quote
If you can afford the extra-cores and want your machine to be relevant longer, then get more cores.

Just my thoughts.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=111121\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That may not work out to be the case as Daniel has already pointed out. Adobe Photoshop engineers have already pointed out that the current limitation with speed in Photoshop is how quickly data can be moved on and off the CPU. Adding more cores does not improve the current memory/bus bandwidth bottleneck, also increasing addressable memory by moving from 32-bit to 64-bit addressing also exacerbates the problem (i.e. breaking the 4Gbyte memory barrier).

As a metaphore what you are advocating is that more megapixels in your camera is always going to be better, however, we all know that unless you have good lenses you are not going to be able to make best use of all those pixels, same holds true for multi-core computers.


Where multi-core does have an advantage is where the data set is small and the processing is complex e.g. in 3-D rendering/rasterizing. Here the input data (points on vertices and lighting) is a relatively small amount of data that can be read into a processor but the processing is complex. Therefore, the limitation is the number of processing elements not the memory bandwidth. For a typical photoshop image there is a huge amount of data on which relatively simple calculations are performed (excepted images where people apply complex filters - though this is likely to be rare). The limitation in this case is how quickly information can be moved from the memory to the CPU and back again.

This is all due to a limitation of Intel's computing architecture where all CPUs and all memory is connected to a common bus. AMD's architecture allows each processor to have its own memory. Therefore, if the image is distributed across each processor and there associated memory then a true parallel processing solution develops and processing speed should increase more linearly with number of processors. This could also be used to offset the processing hit of going to 64-bit addressing and allow photographers to migrate to a platform for processing larger image files.

So the question is did Apple make the correct decision in going to Intel or should they have gone with AMD/Other processing manufacturer? They definitely get a lot more marketing bang for the buck, but ultimately is your 8-core machine really going to give you performance improvements for running photoshop or is there going to be a need to radically alter the architecture to get more processing speed out of the system? Who knows, and if people are happy to bet on 8-core then thats OK. But for photoshop I don't see that it will give much advantage over 4-core or even dual-core at this time (laws of diminshing returns etc..).

The best outcome would be if Apple finally released OS/X for any hardware platform. Given how bad Windows Vista has actually turned out to be they have an opportunity to seriously wack Microsoft. It could then be run on multiple hardware platforms dependent upon which one suited the needs of the specific user.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2007, 08:45:45 am by DiaAzul »
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David Plummer    http://photo.tanzo.org/

feppe

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #12 on: April 07, 2007, 10:58:05 am »

In addition to the points above, the software itself needs to support multiple cores to fully exploit the benefits of a multi-core processor. I don't know how advanced CS3 is in that, but a lot of software gets little benefit from multiple cores. The main benefit from such processors comes from running many programs at the same time. So benefits of multi-core processors depend a lot on how much multi-tasking you do.

61Dynamic

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #13 on: April 07, 2007, 12:02:05 pm »

Quote
So the question is did Apple make the correct decision in going to Intel or should they have gone with AMD/Other processing manufacturer?
AMD latest system is not as fast as Intel's current setup. It has huge (and from what I've read, "huge" should not be underemphasized, however "specialized" goes along with it) potential but currently falls short of it.

Intel's problem---as pointed out---is they need a new bus architecture to accommodate the bandwidth required in a multi-core platform. They just announced a new chip design to succeed the Core 2 in 08 with a new design built from the ground up. Some of its features indicate a new bus may be on its way.

Apple's decision to go with Intel I believe has a lot to do with Intel's ability to offer a complete package (CPU, chipset, graphics, networking, audio, etc). AMD didn't acquire these abilities until more recently when they bought ATI. Even so, AMD can't move chips out the fabs like Intel does.


The future of CPU development is going to be pretty wild for the first time in more than a decade. Multi-core, multi-threaded, specialized CPU cores, modular bus architectures, co-processors, integrating GPUs in the CPU, GPUs being used as co-processors, and a bunch more are all going to alter they way we have to look at computer performance quite significantly.
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nemophoto

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #14 on: April 07, 2007, 01:02:03 pm »

Quote
It would be great if someone could run a real life benchmark on these machines.

I often do a batch conversion of images in Raw Developper, DxO or Lightroom at the same time I start computing a panorama with PTgui, generate previews in Bridge and retouch some very large images in PC CS2 while burning DVDs... all these things being done while accessing a RAID5 NAS without a dedicated CPU.

My 3 years old 2 Xeon box with 2GB RAM gets real slow in these scenarios, I believe that more cores and more memory would help, but have a hard time figuring out whether 4 cores are enough, or whether 8 cores would help.

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=110900\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

What you are really beginning dealing with here is not so much cores and CPUs, but an OS multi-tasking situation and how effectively the OS divides the tasks at had with the resources available, as well as how ell a program is written to take advantage of the multiple cores.

I can't speak for OS X, but I assume you are running Windows. If you are, and you consistently multi-task like this, you are better off running Vista. PC Magazine tests showed that while Vista ran a few things slower, it consistently multi-tasked better than XP, especially while doing multimedia tasks (Photoshop, MP3 ripping, etc.). For the moment, it would be cheaper to up your RAM slightly and buy Vista over shelling out for an 8-core machine. Until program code within the apps is more efficiently written for multi-cores and 2D process, it's overkill. I have a dual core Opteron and often I'll look at the CPU usage running something in Photoshop while doing a few other things, and CPU usage is still around 50% per core, max.
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tomholland

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #15 on: April 07, 2007, 06:32:47 pm »

Although, I am not a computer engineer, I have read enough compelling evidence on the internet stating that there are programs that can take more advantage of the additional cores and with the introduction of a new operating system and photoshop either having an add-on plugin or an update, that eventually Photoshop will take advantage of the extra cores. From my own googling on the subject of multi-threaded applications, Adobe's lack of writing photoshop in a more multi-threAded manner, seems where the problem lies in Photoshop not taking full advantage of additional cores. It also sounds that photoshop will not be switching to a 64 bit architecture until sometime next year.

The ball is in Adobe's court, so read adobe engineers explanations with a grain of salt regarding the inability of it taking advantage of the extra cores.
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DiaAzul

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #16 on: April 07, 2007, 07:02:08 pm »

Quote
AMD latest system is not as fast as Intel's current setup. It has huge (and from what I've read, "huge" should not be underemphasized, however "specialized" goes along with it) potential but currently falls short of it.

Intel's problem---as pointed out---is they need a new bus architecture to accommodate the bandwidth required in a multi-core platform. They just announced a new chip design to succeed the Core 2 in 08 with a new design built from the ground up. Some of its features indicate a new bus may be on its way.

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=111155\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Agreed about AMD not being up there on raw performance with Intel at this time. Not so sure that your link indicates that Intel is looking to introduce a new bus architecture - appears more that their strategy is vertical integration of chips for smaller and lower power dissipating devices. This would tie in with their strategy for WiMax and the ubiquitous computing and networking platform. For the mainstream we have enough processing power, the critical aspect is getting the low power consumption and networking capabilities in place.

The key points i am trying to get across (though from previous post it seems I - and the Adobe engineers - have failed) is that the issue is bandwidth on the data/memory bus and not raw computing power (either in terms of increased MHz or cores). Throwing more processing power at the problem is not going to improve the situation until we can get data on and off memory chips and hard disk faster.

Bernard - that computer of yours must be smoking with all that activity going on. Chill and go make a cup of tea ;-)
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David Plummer    http://photo.tanzo.org/

61Dynamic

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #17 on: April 07, 2007, 09:54:56 pm »

Adding GPU and exceeding 4-cores per chip will require a new bus for all the extra bandwidth that will need to pass through it. Add the on-die memory controller and they have to at the very least modify the current bus less we end up with another G4-like setup. When all the Core chips started appearing Intel said they were looking at '08 before they could do anything with the bus and so with this chip announcement it seems we may get this fix soon enough. Hopefully.

(that new chip arch. is not just for low-power devices, it is the successor to the Core 2 as well)

Quote
...is that the issue is bandwidth on the data/memory bus and not raw computing power (either in terms of increased MHz or cores). Throwing more processing power at the problem is not going to improve the situation until we can get data on and off memory chips and hard disk faster.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=111231\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Exactly.
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tomholland

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #18 on: April 08, 2007, 08:23:34 pm »

I think what most photogrpahers want to know without all of the techno-babble is will the new 8 cores benefit me in the future and make my machine relevant longer.

When the benchmarks are released in a few days for these new machines, they will undoubtedly be under Rosetta without the new mac os, and without any updates that Adobe will eventually offer to to take more advantage of  multiple cores.

It is already obvious with just a bit of googling that in the short term, the new machines will offer only minimal speed improvements. What everyone wants to know is through the use of better software implementation, will these machines perform better in the future.

There will always be hardware upgrades that among other things, will take better advantage of multiple cores. The question is, for people that are in the market for a machine today, are the 8 core machines a better option thaN the 4 cores and will they in the future offer substantial speed improvements.

My hope is yes with future photoshop software upgrades, It seems ineveitable that they will have to better implement the use of multi-threading in their software code; In the same way some developers have already been able to do; by taking advantage of all 8 cores.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2007, 08:33:56 pm by tomholland »
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BernardLanguillier

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Apple 8 Cores Released: any help for 2D work in PS
« Reply #19 on: April 08, 2007, 09:08:54 pm »

Quote
Bernard - that computer of yours must be smoking with all that activity going on. Chill and go make a cup of tea ;-)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=111231\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

OK David, will do.

Cheers,
Bernard
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