Best combo for photoshop and other image software?

[Attila the Bun]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that photoshop runs better with Intel CPUs.
Does anyone know if this is true or not.
Or, is it simply a case of more cores is better regardless of whether it's Intel or AMD.
Will a good GPU be a factor?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is your budget??

AMD Bulldozer is out next month.

Also remember that disk speed is another important factor for Photoshop. I would consider getting an SSD as an OS drive and having a dedicated scratch disc or partition.

[Attila the Bun]

What is your budget??

No budget as yet...it's a possible build for a neighbour and I'm just doing some component research for starters.

AMD Bulldozer is out next month.

Yes, I know Hence my question about Intel vs AMD for tattyshop.

Also remember that disk speed is another important factor for Photoshop. I would consider getting an SSD as an OS drive and having a dedicated scratch disc or partition.

I was considering just that in fact...I thought a 64gb SSD would be sufficient (but I plan to check the space requirements once I know exactly what s/w they use) with a 1tb HDD for storage.

[kalniel]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that photoshop runs better with Intel CPUs.
Does anyone know if this is true or not.
Or, is it simply a case of more cores is better regardless of whether it's Intel or AMD.
Will a good GPU be a factor?

It would appear that Intel have an advantage in the previous version at least:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25

A good GPU isn't that important - some operations are sped up but mostly it's the rendering on the screen that's improved - any modern GPU from either AMD or nVidia works great.

[Attila the Bun]

Thanks for that link.

I've also read that RAM plays significat a part in Photoshop

[kalniel]

Thanks for that link.

I've also read that RAM plays significat a part in Photoshop

Yes, quantity at least. 8gb or more is handy if you're working on very large images with a high number of layers. RAM speed not really IMHO.

Disk speed makes a difference especially on startup and image loading. I use Lightroom 3 and as that acts as a kind of digital catalogue all the previewing etc. is cache intensive so I use a cache file on my SSD. I don't know how normal Photoshop would work in that regard (I use The GIMP for layer work, also with a cache on the SSD).

[Attila the Bun]

Disk speed makes a difference especially on startup and image loading. I use Lightroom 3 and as that acts as a kind of digital catalogue all the previewing etc. is cache intensive so I use a cache file on my SSD. I don't know how normal Photoshop would work in that regard (I use The GIMP for layer work, also with a cache on the SSD).

So is the s/w stored on the SSD or on the HDD with a segment of the SSD used for cache. Sorry if the question seems a bit clumsy but I've not looked into disk configuration as yet.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

However,the OP does need to realise one thing. The Phenom II they use is a derivative of the original Athlon 64. Since,Bulldozer is a new architechure it will be hard to say how well it performs. For instance Zacate outperforms Atom at the same clockspeed despite being a smaller chip.

Edit!!

It does seem CS5 is more favourable for AMD CPUs:

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//i...1&limitstart=9

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/d...CS-5,2426.html

Anandtech is still using quite an old version of Photoshop.

[kalniel]

So is the s/w stored on the SSD or on the HDD with a segment of the SSD used for cache. Sorry if the question seems a bit clumsy but I've not looked into disk configuration at as yet.

You can do either. Personally I have the OS, program, catalogue file and cache on the SSD, with my original image files on an HDD. The programs are fast to start, Lightroom (LR) caches the image files when I import them, so my catalogue browsing is fast and it can load full image data in the background when I need it, and the operations mostly fit in RAM - if they didn't then they'd only spill over into the SSD - either from LR using it's own cache or Windows paging out (my pagefile is also on the SSD). Finally, I export finished work to the HDD.

For me, this works really well - I can't remember the size of the catalogue file, but I think it's about 4GB, then I have the LR cache set to 10GB. LR itself is pretty small >1GB I think. So that's about 15GB of extra space taken up on the SSD exclusively to LR, but it's worth it. As my image store grows it might need more (I can't remember the size at the moment - I think it's in the thousands).

edit to cat's point: Of course, we can only know how current and past architectures perform. Bulldozer is a very new way of doing things for AMD - it could be really great at photoshop operations, we just don't know yet.

[Attila the Bun]

Thanks for your help guys.
I will bear all this in mind once they have decided on a budget.