I use AMD Athlon with great results.
I had the same question a little while back because for some reason Adobe states in System Requirements that PSCS needs a P3 or P4 rather than the old way which said P3 or P4 class processor. I think Adobe should update the system specs.
I was getting ready to upgrade anyway so I went with Windows XP,AMD 64 3200+, and 1gb of ddr and PS CS smokes.
Marion
(that whas I think… but Adobe nead do update is requirements…)
Djip
Ho yes one question… I test PS6, and SMP (and 64bits of color) is realy bad (SMP is nearly unexisting: for example the bach process only make 1 job at a time..) look like 64/48bit have been improuve…)
How is this with the CS version?
Djip
there’s a subtle difference between "it works on…" and "is supported on…".
Djip,
As far as I know, PS CS will run on either an Intel or AMD platform. The system requirements as stated are indeed misleading and should be restated as a "Pentium 3 or 4 ‘class’ processor" with ‘class’ to imply any CPU that AMD (or other companies for that matter) would define as comparable in processing power. If this is not correct, then Adobe should explicitly state that in the system requirements.
Regards,
Daryl
DJIP — Photoshop is well threaded, but it does not do multitasking. We use additional processors to speed up processing, not to do different things at one time.
MOST of Photoshop is threaded, and does see a speedup from additional processors. This has been true since Photoshop 3.0.
Also, PLEASE don’t use the total number of bits to describe image depth — it leads to too much confusion (is a 32 bit image 1×32, 2×16, or 4×8 ?).
multitasking… Oh yes cold been realy nice… imagine the possibilitie to make bach process in background and continu to "play" with you currante picture… Yes I now PH can’t do that..
Threaded is not suffisant to make a program a SMP one! Do they use OpenMP code, auto parlelise or message passing librairy… Juste test PH6, load a 150Mo Tiff 3x16bit photos and apply all filter on it… non use more than 50% of the CPUs this mine it do not use my 2CPU to spead the process!
Try FlackMpeg, 3DS,… they can lood 100% of my CPU, and the processing time decrise nearly from a factor of 2!
JPP
I don’t even know where to start correcting DJIP…
I repeat: MOST of Photoshop is threaded, and does see a speedup from additional processors
Now, not everything can be threaded – because many bandwidth limited operations would SLOW DOWN if they used multiple processors or HyperThreading!. We try to maintain the best performance, so we disable threading (or hypertheading) on those operations.
Also, some operations are inherently serial and cannot be threaded. And some of the plugin filters are not threaded because they need to be rewritten to support threading.
And some newer functions don’t get threaded because we just haven’t had the time to write the code and test it.
You’re really in over your head here….
I don’t even know where to start correcting DJIP… Correcting me…
I repeat: MOST of Photoshop is threaded, and does see a speedup from additional processors
have you a sample of an operation that speedup with more than 1 processor so I can test it…
Now, not everything can be threaded – because many bandwidth limited operations would SLOW DOWN if they used multiple processors or HyperThreading!. We try to maintain the best performance, so we disable threading (or hypertheading) on those operations.
This is not the prob of the programmer it is the prob of the hardware… for example all Opteron have is owne memory access so it still have best performance if multiple processors are use (the bandwidth goes us linerly whit the nomber of processor!
Also, some operations are inherently serial and cannot be threaded. And some of the plugin filters are not threaded because they need to be rewritten to support threading.
Well OK some opertion are serial… like convergance operation (dicotomie, recusivitie, ..etc) but PS work on picture, He dit moste of the time the same operation an all pixel of the picture. (MMX, SSE, SSE2 are spesialy for image procesing is’t it?). Any operation that use one of this fonctions (call vertor compute) can be use on SMP.
And some newer functions don’t get threaded because we just haven’t had the time to write the code and test it.
That I can undersand. (I am programer!).
What do you use for SMP code? OpenMP, Message passing, hand thread?
Haven’t you try compilateur that make make auto SMP paralelisation (I think Intel 7.1 does, PGI 5.1 does, and some other). I personaly use use auto paralelisation for fortran (one a 8pro Origine2000 and a 4pro Convex) and it work realy nise. But have’nt try on x86/Win Computer.
With Xeon multiprecessor and hypertheading the OpenMP compilateur and auto paralel compilateur have realy improve the last year.
Good work, I am realy sur you can improuve PS for SMP processor. And with hypertheading, SMP computer, that are the future.
Thanks for all this reply
Djip
And one think I’d like: most programer spend a lot of time optimise a process for one processor to optain 10% of speed on it, but doing that slow done oll other processor. it make the code realy difficulte to maintaine, a lot of job to optimise for new hardware architecture.
For example not use SMP because of a slow done of 10-15 % on old architecture make you loss 100% on modern Opteron processor, or on 1000% on a hypothetic cluster that will have 10PC.
DJIP – I must repeat: You’re in over your head here….
OK Can you give me a test to do so I can see the use of my 2 CPU…
I only wanted to help you from programmer to programmer!
Lighting Effects can peg 2 processors for a while, as can Median.
Again, MOST operations in Photoshop do use multiple processors. But if you’re working with small (less than 40 Meg) images, the operations are going to go by too fast to see.