which cpu for photoshop? Amd phenom 965, i5 or i7?

[kickmaass]

since i wont be overclocking,which is going to perform better at stock speed.i undrstand the i series have HT but with the phenom 965 at 3.4ghz, thats quite abit higher than the i series of 2.something. I ll be using cs3 and 8gb of ram in my future build

 

[rexehuk]

i7 with SSD and CS4 GPU acceleration?

 

[kickmaass]

Gpu acceleration? My budget is around 750-800.thats with more than 4gb of ram and a 4850 gfx card at least

 

[JonJ678]

You wont be overclocking? And you're asking for advice from overclockers.co.uk?

Predictably, I recommend overclocking as the way to get the most performance out of a given budget.

 

[kickmaass]

whoops.was meant to go to stockspeedcpus.co.uk
or maybe i wont be overclocking right away
or maybe i just wont overclock because id like my pc to last as long as possible.
orrr maybe i was meant to come to this forum because i wanted to asked people who know what they were on about.
i ve seen a lot of posts on here where someone says they arnt going to overclock,and nobody has left a comment like that

so lets put that little mistake in the past,and i ll continue asking for friendly advice from people who are kind enough to tell me

 

[rexehuk]

Yeah kick, Adobe CS4 supports GPU acceleration for rendering etc in photoshop.

And if you want max performance you could grab an i7 d0 @ 266 and easily overclock to 3.5Ghz with one change to the bios. Overclocking doesn't shorten the length of your components, unless your planning to keep the PC for 15 years...

I'd recommend a SSD if you are using photoshop or a decent size scratch disk. All of this depends on your budget etc. A 4850 would be fine for Photoshop, even if you want to use GPU acceleration

6gb Ram would cost you £100 (corsair), £200 CPU, £200 Mobo, £80/90 for 4850.

 

[skippy2421]

whoops.was meant to go to stockspeedcpus.co.uk
or maybe i wont be overclocking right away
or maybe i just wont overclock because id like my pc to last as long as possible.
orrr maybe i was meant to come to this forum because i wanted to asked people who know what they were on about.
i ve seen a lot of posts on here where someone says they arnt going to overclock,and nobody has left a comment like that

so lets put that little mistake in the past,and i ll continue asking for friendly advice from people who are kind enough to tell me

Now Now play nice, admittedly Jon did not give the most useful of answers but he does have a point in the fact overclocking will vastly benefit you.

To respond to your question of which cpu i'd personally have to say i7 (especially if you fancy moving on to cs4), overclocked if possible but if you don't want to then it's up to you. Even a mild overclock would see gains and have little to no impact on the life of your hardware.

However i am not that knowledgable on the workings of cs3 so how much this will benefit you over the phenoms will depend on how multi threaded it is. Hopefully some one more knowledgable will be along soon to clear this up. As far as i know however the phenoms only really match the intel chips in games.

 

[kickmaass]

thank you rex and skip.i ve decided that im going to go for a bundle thats already overclocked because id hate to do something wrong trying to overclock,and im happy to pay oc a little premium to do it for me.well my budget started at around 600 but i ve decided if i spend near 900ish on a i7 i can keep it for several years as im not into heavy pc gaming,just some minor older games and photoshop is used mostly for my photography (cant really do big hdr files or shoot raw as it takes too long on my current very old pc) few more weeks of saving and browsing other peoples i series builds and i ll buy.

Also if i had the i5,am i going to notice a drop in performance because of no HT? Assuming at some point i ll be using cs3 or cs4 in future.
Thanks

 

[rexehuk]

I work with libraries in lightroom with thousands of pictures on my rig on dual monitors and it runs very smooth

When u need to run photoshop from lightroom it takes about 5/6 seconds to load photoshop and 10 seconds or less to blend a 3 image HDR.

With an SSD it would be really amazing. Which is my next upgrade

+ You won't regret spending more, I know this PC is going to last me a very long time given that an i7 isn't even used to a portion of it's total capability at the moment by current software.

 

[paininlife]

well answer to your question is simply here AMD 965 vs i7 920

AMD vs i5 750

if you see PS CS4 timing it goes like this

AMD 965 = 21.1s
i5 750 = 18.1s
i7 920 = 16s

so nw choice is yours, my vote goes for AM 965

 

[kickmaass]

it wouldnt load those webpages.but since i can see the i7 is 5s faster in your post,is it really going to out perform the 965 by that much? Im soo torn weather to spend that much more on an i7 rig?

 

[paininlife]

well in real world test there is not much of a difference b/w AMD 955 and i7 920, so wont feel the difference,
my vote goes to AMD 955 , save money and get yourself SSD and more ram

 

[kickmaass]

guna have myself at least 8gb of ram.and am i right in think ssd's are going to drop in price abit when windows 7 comes out? Whichever i get i dont want to have to upgrade for a few years so im edging towards an overclocked i7 bundle insted of a amd now.hmmmmmm.

 

[D D Danneh]

Does £900 include the case, monitors, etc? Or just the components?

 

[kickmaass]

Everything except a monitor.i ll be using a 37" hdtv.or should i factor in a nice 22" screen?

 

[daz.wallace]

I would have thought a monitor would be better than a HDTV for working with photo's

 

[kickmaass]

i guess,but at full hd,it shouldnt be too bad right? Id like to duel screen at some point.

 

[GSS]

As daz.wallace hints, a dedicated monitor is a must for the photographer. An HDTV may be ok for a HTPC but not IMO for serious image editing in CS3, CS4, Lightroom etc., processing HDR & Raw files as you intend, especially 37", unless your editing from your sofa and the HDTV is on the other side of the room no offence intended.

Photography requires a high degree of colour & tonal accuracy, from capture through processing (digital editing) to printing. Monitors suited to this task have wider/extended colour gamuts, which can be further enhanced with calibration software.

There is a photography section on the forum, perhaps you could post there too for some guidence in choosing your rig

 

[Adrianr]

I presume you're using a pirate version of CS4 if you seriously intend to edit photos on a HDTV?

RAW CPU speed does very little beyond a certain point in photoshop. My seemingly ancient Q6600 still holds it's own with the new Nahalems. You need a more balanced system to make the most of it. Don't get too hung up on GPU acceleration either as at present it actually does very little.

Don't spend all your money going for the i7 system if you could better spend your budget elsewhere. More ram and SSD's, seperate scratchdisk.. All places to improve before more CPU power.

 

[Col_M]

I got an i7 920 a few months back and even at stock it mauls photoshop, I did come from a E6300 though so the difference was night and day

So I'd recommend that.