Dual Core and Photoshop CS

Steve Reeves wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to upgrade to an AMD 64 Dual Core machine with a couple of gigs of RAM and am planning on staying with XP Pro.

As I understand it PS CS1 is multi-threaded and so will be able to take advantage of a dual core CPU. Am I correct in this assumption?
If so, is there anything I need to do to allow PS to run multi-threaded?
I would appreciate any guidance – many thanks.
Steve

Rework the source code?

Rework the source code?

OK, so to be clear, PS isn’t already multi-threaded? I was just sure that I heard that PS runs that way on multi-processor systems.

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:59:52 +0100, Steve Reeves
wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to upgrade to an AMD 64 Dual Core machine with a couple of gigs of RAM and am planning on staying with XP Pro.

As I understand it PS CS1 is multi-threaded and so will be able to take advantage of a dual core CPU. Am I correct in this assumption?

It is a multithreaded app.

If so, is there anything I need to do to allow PS to run multi-threaded?

You couldn’t without altering the source code and even if you have the skill to reverse engineer PS I don’t think Adobe would appreciate it 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

In article ,
Fred MacMurray wrote:

Steve Reeves wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to upgrade to an AMD 64 Dual Core machine with a couple of gigs of RAM and am planning on staying with XP Pro.

As I understand it PS CS1 is multi-threaded and so will be able to take advantage of a dual core CPU. Am I correct in this assumption?
If so, is there anything I need to do to allow PS to run multi-threaded?
I would appreciate any guidance – many thanks.
Steve

Rework the source code?

IMO Dual core gets you an immediate benefit in that CPU cycles are needed to support concurrent IO, etc. It reduce context switches. It’s meen a long time since I screwed with stuff at this level but I used to know the number of cycles and microseconds a context switch took and tuned the systems and apps to minimize awitches.

I notice my w2k system is handling 2500 interrupts/sec and each one required some CPU time to service.

If nothing else, it means your printer can be active while you are crunching a complex PS task on a large PSD file.

if/when you need to go to the pagefile you will not suffer as much as performance cost.

I don’t know if anyone is benchmarking Photoshop, but if I needed to buy a system today. I’d love to hear if anyone has hard info about this.

My $0.02

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.

Is it dual core or dual cpu’s. I think the latter.

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:59:52 +0100, Steve Reeves
wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to upgrade to an AMD 64 Dual Core machine with a couple of gigs of RAM and am planning on staying with XP Pro.

As I understand it PS CS1 is multi-threaded and so will be able to take advantage of a dual core CPU. Am I correct in this assumption?
If so, is there anything I need to do to allow PS to run multi-threaded?
I would appreciate any guidance – many thanks.
Steve

Donald Link wrote:

Is it dual core or dual cpu’s. I think the latter.

I’m talking dual core here (Athlon 64 4800+).

Hi Hecate, thanks for the reply.

I’m probably being thick here, if PS is a multi-threaded app already then why would I need to re-write the source?

When I say multi-threaded I am assuming that it would work like a 3D application. I’m familiar with Lightwave and to get that baby to render across multiple CPUs you need to tell it do so at the rendering stage. It will then split out the rendering across the available CPUs.

I was wondering if PS can also split the processing for things like filters (sharpen and so on) and whether I need to flick some switch somewhere.

It may be that I have my terminology muddled!

And don’t worry – I certainly don’t have the skills to re-write PS – Adobe don’t need to be loosing any sleep over that one 🙂

Kind regards
Steve

Hecate wrote:

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:59:52 +0100, Steve Reeves
wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to upgrade to an AMD 64 Dual Core machine with a couple of gigs of RAM and am planning on staying with XP Pro.

As I understand it PS CS1 is multi-threaded and so will be able to take advantage of a dual core CPU. Am I correct in this assumption?

It is a multithreaded app.

If so, is there anything I need to do to allow PS to run multi-threaded?

You couldn’t without altering the source code and even if you have the skill to reverse engineer PS I don’t think Adobe would appreciate it 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Thanks for the info Al.

I would expect dual cores to assist big time with multi-tasking at the system level. If I find some benchmarks I will post the links here.

Steve.

IMO Dual core gets you an immediate benefit in that CPU cycles are needed to support concurrent IO, etc. It reduce context switches. It’s meen a long time since I screwed with stuff at this level but I used to know the number of cycles and microseconds a context switch took and tuned the systems and apps to minimize awitches.

I notice my w2k system is handling 2500 interrupts/sec and each one required some CPU time to service.

If nothing else, it means your printer can be active while you are crunching a complex PS task on a large PSD file.

if/when you need to go to the pagefile you will not suffer as much as performance cost.

I don’t know if anyone is benchmarking Photoshop, but if I needed to buy a system today. I’d love to hear if anyone has hard info about this.

My $0.02

I wonder what that "MultiProcessor Support.8BX" file is doing in the Plug-Ins\Extensions directory…

Andrew

I wonder what that "MultiProcessor Support.8BX" file is doing in the Plug-Ins\Extensions directory…

OK, so PS does support multi-threading – thank you for this. Could you expand upon how it is used and where the main benefits are seen.

Thanks

Steve

Steve Reeves wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to upgrade to an AMD 64 Dual Core machine with a couple of gigs of RAM and am planning on staying with XP Pro.

As I understand it PS CS1 is multi-threaded and so will be able to take advantage of a dual core CPU. Am I correct in this assumption?
If so, is there anything I need to do to allow PS to run multi-threaded?
I would appreciate any guidance – many thanks.
Steve

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

What you will gain is that other processing space for other things. You can play music, print, open e-mail, etc. and XP runs that in the other space. Well, mostly. It doesn’t do everything. Of course, it won’t help much if you are still competing for other resources, like memory and HD.

Generally speaking, I notice the multi-tasking advantage a fair bit when I work on my daughter’s computer without HT.

Clyde

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 04:29:14 +0100, Steve Reeves
wrote:

Hi Hecate, thanks for the reply.

I’m probably being thick here, if PS is a multi-threaded app already then why would I need to re-write the source?

Because it’s a t32 bit multi-threaded app, not a 64 bit multithreaded app. 🙂

When I say multi-threaded I am assuming that it would work like a 3D application. I’m familiar with Lightwave and to get that baby to render across multiple CPUs you need to tell it do so at the rendering stage. It will then split out the rendering across the available CPUs.

You’re not talking about multi-threading, that’s why you’re getting confused. Multithreading doesn’t require more than a single processor. My partner has often written code for rather more processor intensive apps than PS, using 32 bit processing, which use numerous threads. Any 32 bit app can be written, if it is so desired, to be multithreaded. You are confusing multiprocessor system with multithread apps. And, PS can use two processors now. Whether they increase that or not, is really up to Adobe, but I would have thought it would make sense for them to do so – if only so I can use Radial Blur on best without having to go and eat lunch whilst it’s working 🙂

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:47:52 -0500, Clyde wrote:

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

It doesn’t. What Intel does with HT (and why it often causes PS to slow down) is to *emulate* a dual core processor.

Dual Core processors are exactly what the3y sound like *2* processors on 1 chip. And it makes quite a lot of difference 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Hi again Hecate,

Because it’s a t32 bit multi-threaded app, not a 64 bit multithreaded app. 🙂

Best I start learning c++ then! 🙂

I think you are right in that I am getting confused between multi-processor and multi-threading. If PS can handle 2 CPUs then the dual core I have in mind will be useful.

Many thanks for the reply.
Steve

You’re not talking about multi-threading, that’s why you’re getting confused. Multithreading doesn’t require more than a single processor. My partner has often written code for rather more processor intensive apps than PS, using 32 bit processing, which use numerous threads. Any 32 bit app can be written, if it is so desired, to be multithreaded. You are confusing multiprocessor system with multithread apps. And, PS can use two processors now. Whether they increase that or not, is really up to Adobe, but I would have thought it would make sense for them to do so – if only so I can use Radial Blur on best without having to go and eat lunch whilst it’s working 🙂
—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:47:52 -0500, Clyde wrote:

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

It doesn’t. What Intel does with HT (and why it often causes PS to slow down) is to *emulate* a dual core processor.

Dual Core processors are exactly what the3y sound like *2* processors on 1 chip. And it makes quite a lot of difference 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.

My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

We know that Adobe can make it do that. The have made Photoshop for OS X work with 2 processors. It runs very nicely on those dual CPU G5 Macs or so I’ve been told. Alas, I haven’t the pleasure of doing that myself. We also know that Adobe had to rewrite the code for Photoshop to make it do that. They haven’t rewritten the code to run on dual CPUs for Windows. Or not that I’ve heard. I would think we should see that upgrade about 6 months after Dual Core gets popular.

We also know that Adobe has not rewritten the Photoshop code for 64 bit. Well, on OS X. They are probably waiting for the OS to get to 64 bit first. Now that we have Windows XP 64 bit, we might see 64 bit Photoshop on Windows before we see it on OS X.

This has been a combination of Clyde’s experience, logic, and speculation. All of which may be faulty.

Clyde

In article ,
Clyde wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:47:52 -0500, Clyde wrote:

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

It doesn’t. What Intel does with HT (and why it often causes PS to slow down) is to *emulate* a dual core processor.

Dual Core processors are exactly what the3y sound like *2* processors on 1 chip. And it makes quite a lot of difference 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

We know that Adobe can make it do that. The have made Photoshop for OS X work with 2 processors. It runs very nicely on those dual CPU G5 Macs or so I’ve been told. Alas, I haven’t the pleasure of doing that myself. We also know that Adobe had to rewrite the code for Photoshop to make it do that. They haven’t rewritten the code to run on dual CPUs for Windows. Or not that I’ve heard. I would think we should see that upgrade about 6 months after Dual Core gets popular.

We also know that Adobe has not rewritten the Photoshop code for 64 bit. Well, on OS X. They are probably waiting for the OS to get to 64 bit first. Now that we have Windows XP 64 bit, we might see 64 bit Photoshop on Windows before we see it on OS X.

This has been a combination of Clyde’s experience, logic, and speculation. All of which may be faulty.

Clyde

Adobe has already taken advantage of the G5s 64bit architecture.

"Clyde" wrote in message

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

So your personal experience is a polar negative of Adobe’s claim. I find that rather astounding.

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 09:42:58 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

Yes. They are both effectively, and practically, two different things. It will show 2 different processors and PS should see two different processors. The difference is that single processor HT chips have all pipelines dedicated to them. Dual chips have two sets of pipelines.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On Sat, 2 Jul 2005 10:48:54 -0500, "johnboy"
wrote:

"Clyde" wrote in message

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

So your personal experience is a polar negative of Adobe’s claim. I find that rather astounding.

I’ve seen plenty of tests showing that turning HT% slows PS down. It’s only really useful for 3D apps, where it does make a difference, though the speed increase is generally <5%.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Steve Reeves wrote:

OK, so PS does support multi-threading – thank you for this. >Could you expand upon how it is used and where the main >benefits are seen.

Thanks

Steve

Multi-processor support in Photoshop is spotty at best. Some filters seem to be better optimized for it than others. You certainly will NOT see anything close to a 2X speed increase in your normal workflow.

Having said that, I’m looking forward to building a dual core rig myself. I often have Photoshop running along with ID and Illy or FreeHand, and I would *love* to be able to turn PS loose on some lengthy task and return to my other work. Depending on the nature of that lengthy task (what filter was invoked, for example) such a scenario can be nearly impossible with a single processor system. My great hope is for dual core to make me quite a bit more productive. Maybe I can go home on time once in a while. 🙂

"Hecate" wrote in message

I’ve seen plenty of tests showing that turning HT% slows PS down. It’s only really useful for 3D apps, where it does make a difference, though the speed increase is generally <5%.

Guess I was thinking of dual processors, for example in the G5.

Kevin wrote:

In article ,
Clyde wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:47:52 -0500, Clyde wrote:

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

It doesn’t. What Intel does with HT (and why it often causes PS to slow down) is to *emulate* a dual core processor.

Dual Core processors are exactly what the3y sound like *2* processors on 1 chip. And it makes quite a lot of difference 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

We know that Adobe can make it do that. The have made Photoshop for OS X work with 2 processors. It runs very nicely on those dual CPU G5 Macs or so I’ve been told. Alas, I haven’t the pleasure of doing that myself. We also know that Adobe had to rewrite the code for Photoshop to make it do that. They haven’t rewritten the code to run on dual CPUs for Windows. Or not that I’ve heard. I would think we should see that upgrade about 6 months after Dual Core gets popular.

We also know that Adobe has not rewritten the Photoshop code for 64 bit. Well, on OS X. They are probably waiting for the OS to get to 64 bit first. Now that we have Windows XP 64 bit, we might see 64 bit Photoshop on Windows before we see it on OS X.

This has been a combination of Clyde’s experience, logic, and speculation. All of which may be faulty.

Clyde

Adobe has already taken advantage of the G5s 64bit architecture.

Only partially and not a big part either. Photoshop for OS X is NOT a full 64 bit application.

Clyde

johnboy wrote:

"Clyde" wrote in message

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

So your personal experience is a polar negative of Adobe’s claim. I find that rather astounding.

Instead of a smart ass answer, why don’t you state something plainly? What Adobe claim are you referring to? What part of my personal experience do you think that is different from Adobe’s claim?

If you are referring to the use of the HT "processor" on my Intel CPU, it’s pretty easy to see. I have the Task Manager running as an icon my my system tool bar. It’s pretty easy to see when an application is using the HT feature. I have never seen Photoshop use it. I suppose there are parts of Photoshop that I don’t use enough to see if it is using HT. Do you have different experiences?

I don’t know what Adobe has said about Dual Core, but if they have, please inform us of the reference. More importantly, I don’t know of any tests that anyone has published showing what Dual Core will do with Photoshop. That’s not very surprising, as Dual Core is very new.

Clyde

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 09:42:58 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

Yes. They are both effectively, and practically, two different things. It will show 2 different processors and PS should see two different processors. The difference is that single processor HT chips have all pipelines dedicated to them. Dual chips have two sets of pipelines.
—

Hecate – The Real One

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My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different? We do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core. How does it actually work with Photoshop? As far as I can tell, no one knows. Has Adobe upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP? If so, great. However, I don’t know about it and I haven’t seen anyone here give me evidence to the contrary.

I’m open to evidence to show me otherwise. Please do so.

Clyde

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 2 Jul 2005 10:48:54 -0500, "johnboy"
wrote:

"Clyde" wrote in message

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

So your personal experience is a polar negative of Adobe’s claim. I find that rather astounding.

I’ve seen plenty of tests showing that turning HT% slows PS down. It’s only really useful for 3D apps, where it does make a difference, though the speed increase is generally <5%.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

My personal experience says that it doesn’t make any practical or noticeable difference. I had heard the same and tested. It didn’t seem to make any difference to me.

The advantage of leaving HT on is that other things run WITH Photoshop much better. So those other apps that I have open run much nicer without bothering Photoshop. So, I can run Windows Media Player or Thunderbird or Firefox or anything without slowing down whatever Photoshop is chugging away on.

Turning off HT means that Photoshop and other apps have to use the same CPU space. That is noticeably slower. I suppose there is some overhead for switching and sharing of the memory bus, etc., but it’s way better with HT on than off.

So, I get practical daily workflow improvement because XP Pro is aware of HT and knows how to use it. That is good, even if Photoshop is not aware of it.

Clyde

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:54:51 -0500, Clyde wrote:

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different? We do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core.

I have. UK magazines PCD Advisor and PC Pro have both carried articles and tests, which included tests using PS 7.01, showing notable speed increases (not just a couple of seconds 30+ secs to over a minute) on filter applications, transformations and so forth. Both magazi8nes use testing software which uses real world applications and several function within each app to get tests scores. In both magazines, incidentally, the faster chips where the Athlon Dual cores, including using 3D manipulation.

How does it actually
work with Photoshop? As far as I can tell, no one knows. Has Adobe upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP? If so, great. However, I don’t know about it and I haven’t seen anyone here give me evidence to the contrary.

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

—

Hecate – The Real One

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On Sat, 2 Jul 2005 21:17:59 -0500, "johnboy"
wrote:

"Hecate" wrote in message

I’ve seen plenty of tests showing that turning HT% slows PS down. It’s only really useful for 3D apps, where it does make a difference, though the speed increase is generally <5%.

Guess I was thinking of dual processors, for example in the G5.

Dual will make a difference. 🙂

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

In article ,
Hecate <Hecate> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:54:51 -0500, Clyde wrote:

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different? We do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core.

I have. UK magazines PCD Advisor and PC Pro have both carried articles and tests, which included tests using PS 7.01, showing notable speed increases (not just a couple of seconds 30+ secs to over a minute) on filter applications, transformations and so forth. Both magazi8nes use testing software which uses real world applications and several function within each app to get tests scores. In both magazines, incidentally, the faster chips where the Athlon Dual cores, including using 3D manipulation.

How does it actually
work with Photoshop? As far as I can tell, no one knows. Has Adobe upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP? If so, great. However, I don’t know about it and I haven’t seen anyone here give me evidence to the contrary.

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.

In article <da9tes$ge$ (Al Dykes)
wrote:

In article ,
Hecate <Hecate> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:54:51 -0500, Clyde wrote:

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different? We do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core.

I have. UK magazines PCD Advisor and PC Pro have both carried articles and tests, which included tests using PS 7.01, showing notable speed increases (not just a couple of seconds 30+ secs to over a minute) on filter applications, transformations and so forth. Both magazi8nes use testing software which uses real world applications and several function within each app to get tests scores. In both magazines, incidentally, the faster chips where the Athlon Dual cores, including using 3D manipulation.

How does it actually
work with Photoshop? As far as I can tell, no one knows. Has Adobe upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP? If so, great. However, I don’t know about it and I haven’t seen anyone here give me evidence to the contrary.

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

Or OS X :p

—
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In article , Clyde
wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 09:42:58 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

Yes. They are both effectively, and practically, two different things. It will show 2 different processors and PS should see two different processors. The difference is that single processor HT chips have all pipelines dedicated to them. Dual chips have two sets of pipelines.
—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different?

Yes.
Anyone who’s read up on them should know.

We
do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core. How does it actually work with Photoshop?

Pretty well.

As far as I can tell, no one knows.

Oh, so you haven’t read any of the reviews around the net?

Has Adobe
upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP?

No, because it has been multiprocessor aware since version 3.0.

But you won’t get a big win out of HyperThreading because you still have the same bandwidth limitations (one chip, one pipeline to memory), and HyperThreading only has the functional units of a single processor to play with.
But you will see some HT advantage on some compute bound operations.

Dual Core – that’s almost the same as 2 processors (slightly different bandwidth limits since they’re in a single package, but close). You’ll see a lot more advantage from dual core chips than from HyperThreading.

Chris

Clyde wrote:

So, I get practical daily workflow improvement because XP Pro is aware of HT and knows how to use it. That is good, even if Photoshop is not aware of it.

Not so sure about that. On my XP Pro, if I play a musical CD, PS CS will come to a crawl.

wrote:

On my XP Pro, if I play a musical CD, PS CS will come to a crawl.

Maybe DMA isn’t enabled on the IDE channel where your CD drive is installed.

—
Regards
Madsen

Hecate wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:54:51 -0500, Clyde wrote:

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different? We do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core.

I have. UK magazines PCD Advisor and PC Pro have both carried articles and tests, which included tests using PS 7.01, showing notable speed increases (not just a couple of seconds 30+ secs to over a minute) on filter applications, transformations and so forth. Both magazi8nes use testing software which uses real world applications and several function within each app to get tests scores. In both magazines, incidentally, the faster chips where the Athlon Dual cores, including using 3D manipulation.

How does it actually
work with Photoshop? As far as I can tell, no one knows. Has Adobe upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP? If so, great. However, I don’t know about it and I haven’t seen anyone here give me evidence to the contrary.

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Can you point to a place that the rest of us can see those articles?

Thanks,
Clyde

Chris Cox wrote:

In article , Clyde
wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 09:42:58 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

Yes. They are both effectively, and practically, two different things. It will show 2 different processors and PS should see two different processors. The difference is that single processor HT chips have all pipelines dedicated to them. Dual chips have two sets of pipelines.
—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different?

Yes.
Anyone who’s read up on them should know.

We
do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core. How does it actually work with Photoshop?

Pretty well.

As far as I can tell, no one knows.

Oh, so you haven’t read any of the reviews around the net?

Has Adobe
upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP?

No, because it has been multiprocessor aware since version 3.0.
But you won’t get a big win out of HyperThreading because you still have the same bandwidth limitations (one chip, one pipeline to memory), and HyperThreading only has the functional units of a single processor to play with.
But you will see some HT advantage on some compute bound operations.
Dual Core – that’s almost the same as 2 processors (slightly different bandwidth limits since they’re in a single package, but close). You’ll see a lot more advantage from dual core chips than from HyperThreading.
Chris

I guess the reviews of CS2 and Dual Core that I have read never put the two together. I would love any links that you have that are better.

Thanks,
Clyde

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:56:30 -0400, Kevin wrote:

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

Or OS X :p

Of course. Why would anybody be using anything else other than XP, W2K or OSX. I naturally assumed people wouldn’t be wasting their time with dead OS’s like Win95/ME and OS9.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On Mon, 04 Jul 2005 09:32:27 -0500, Clyde wrote:

Can you point to a place that the rest of us can see those articles?

I checked and they’re not online (the mags are, but the articles aren’t. Neither mag generally puts it’s current articles online, for obvious reasons.).

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On Mon, 04 Jul 2005 05:34:09 GMT, Chris Cox
wrote:

In article , Clyde
wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 09:42:58 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different? My Windows XP Pro sees my HyperThread as two separate processors, even though it isn’t. Well, all of XP’s performance tools sees it as 2 CPUs. Since Photoshop runs on top of XP, it can only use what XP tells it to use. Photoshop doesn’t see the 2nd processor that XP says it there.
My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

Yes. They are both effectively, and practically, two different things. It will show 2 different processors and PS should see two different processors. The difference is that single processor HT chips have all pipelines dedicated to them. Dual chips have two sets of pipelines.
—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

My point is: how does anyone know if they are practically different?

Yes.
Anyone who’s read up on them should know.

We
do a lot of talk in the newsgroups, but I haven’t seen anything here or anywhere that has hard test numbers for Dual Core. How does it actually work with Photoshop?

Pretty well.

As far as I can tell, no one knows.

Oh, so you haven’t read any of the reviews around the net?

Has Adobe
upgraded Photoshop to be dual processor/dual core/HyperThread aware on XP?

No, because it has been multiprocessor aware since version 3.0.
But you won’t get a big win out of HyperThreading because you still have the same bandwidth limitations (one chip, one pipeline to memory), and HyperThreading only has the functional units of a single processor to play with.
But you will see some HT advantage on some compute bound operations.
Dual Core – that’s almost the same as 2 processors (slightly different bandwidth limits since they’re in a single package, but close). You’ll see a lot more advantage from dual core chips than from HyperThreading.

Thank you, Chris. That’s what I keep telling them 🙂

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

In article ,
Hecate <Hecate> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:56:30 -0400, Kevin wrote:

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

Or OS X :p

Of course. Why would anybody be using anything else other than XP, W2K or OSX. I naturally assumed people wouldn’t be wasting their time with dead OS’s like Win95/ME and OS9.

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.

"Thomas G. Madsen" wrote:

wrote:

On my XP Pro, if I play a musical CD, PS CS will come to a crawl.

Maybe DMA isn’t enabled on the IDE channel where your CD drive is installed.

—
Regards
Madsen

How can I verify and enable DMA?

Maybe DMA isn’t enabled on the IDE channel where your CD drive is installed.

How can I verify and enable DMA?

In Device Manager, open the list of IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Look at the properties for the Primary and Secondary IDE channels under the Advanced Settings tab. You can change it to "DMA if available" if it isn’t set on that already. Hopefully you have your CD player and hard disks on different channels – the CD player will have a separate lead going to the motherboard.

Andrew

On 4 Jul 2005 18:57:43 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:

In article ,
Hecate <Hecate> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:56:30 -0400, Kevin wrote:

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

Or OS X :p

Of course. Why would anybody be using anything else other than XP, W2K or OSX. I naturally assumed people wouldn’t be wasting their time with dead OS’s like Win95/ME and OS9.

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t use anything called a "Home" version anyway 🙂

What they are doing is dropping the Home version. The next version of Windows will have a lot of functionality turned off to prevent misuse. You will have to explicitly turn on virtually everything concerned with networking for a start.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Hecate wrote:

On 4 Jul 2005 18:57:43 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:

In article ,
Hecate <Hecate> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:56:30 -0400, Kevin wrote:

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

Or OS X :p

Of course. Why would anybody be using anything else other than XP, W2K or OSX. I naturally assumed people wouldn’t be wasting their time with dead OS’s like Win95/ME and OS9.

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t use anything called a "Home" version anyway 🙂

What they are doing is dropping the Home version. The next version of Windows will have a lot of functionality turned off to prevent misuse. You will have to explicitly turn on virtually everything concerned with networking for a start.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

You make it sound like Microsoft has Longhorn nailed down in features, functionality, and packaging. I wouldn’t bet on that. Hell, we don’t even have the name for it.

Clyde

In article ,
Clyde wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On 4 Jul 2005 18:57:43 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:

In article ,
Hecate <Hecate> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 19:56:30 -0400, Kevin wrote:

It doesn’t need to upgrade PS to make it "dual core". Dual core is two separate processors on one chip. And PS can use both.

You need w2k or XP/pro to use a dual cpu system.

Or OS X :p

Of course. Why would anybody be using anything else other than XP, W2K or OSX. I naturally assumed people wouldn’t be wasting their time with dead OS’s like Win95/ME and OS9.

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t use anything called a "Home" version anyway 🙂

What they are doing is dropping the Home version. The next version of Windows will have a lot of functionality turned off to prevent misuse. You will have to explicitly turn on virtually everything concerned with networking for a start.

—

You make it sound like Microsoft has Longhorn nailed down in features, functionality, and packaging. I wouldn’t bet on that. Hell, we don’t even have the name for it.

The strategy of off-by-default for services instead of on-by-default is a done deal for security reasons.

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.

On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 11:36:47 -0500, Clyde wrote:

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t use anything called a "Home" version anyway 🙂

What they are doing is dropping the Home version. The next version of Windows will have a lot of functionality turned off to prevent misuse. You will have to explicitly turn on virtually everything concerned with networking for a start.

You make it sound like Microsoft has Longhorn nailed down in features, functionality, and packaging. I wouldn’t bet on that. Hell, we don’t even have the name for it.

I didn’t mention any features. As for functionality, that is what they say they are going to do in terms of security. However, they do insist that there will only be one client version.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On 6 Jul 2005 12:57:23 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:

You make it sound like Microsoft has Longhorn nailed down in features, functionality, and packaging. I wouldn’t bet on that. Hell, we don’t even have the name for it.

The strategy of off-by-default for services instead of on-by-default is a done deal for security reasons.

Yes. It’s already how they set up Server 2005. Nothing works until you turn it on.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 11:36:47 -0500, Clyde wrote:

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t use anything called a "Home" version anyway 🙂

What they are doing is dropping the Home version. The next version of Windows will have a lot of functionality turned off to prevent misuse. You will have to explicitly turn on virtually everything concerned with networking for a start.

You make it sound like Microsoft has Longhorn nailed down in features, functionality, and packaging. I wouldn’t bet on that. Hell, we don’t even have the name for it.

I didn’t mention any features. As for functionality, that is what they say they are going to do in terms of security. However, they do insist that there will only be one client version.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Yeah, well… A new file system was one of the big new features in the new OS too. <sigh>

I can certainly see turning everything off by default. OS X made that a desktop standard. (OK, Linux did too, but it isn’t a desktop standard.)

Clyde

In article ,
Clyde wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 11:36:47 -0500, Clyde wrote:

XP/home won’t do MP. I *think* MS has said something about support sometime in the future.

Yes, you’re right. I wouldn’t use anything called a "Home" version anyway 🙂

What they are doing is dropping the Home version. The next version of Windows will have a lot of functionality turned off to prevent misuse. You will have to explicitly turn on virtually everything concerned with networking for a start.

You make it sound like Microsoft has Longhorn nailed down in features, functionality, and packaging. I wouldn’t bet on that. Hell, we don’t even have the name for it.

I didn’t mention any features. As for functionality, that is what they say they are going to do in terms of security. However, they do insist that there will only be one client version.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Yeah, well… A new file system was one of the big new features in the new OS too. <sigh>

I can certainly see turning everything off by default. OS X made that a desktop standard. (OK, Linux did too, but it isn’t a desktop standard.)

History shows that any firm statement made by the vendor can and will be changed, almost at whim.

MS has been talking about a fantastic new file system from the first days, almost 15 years ago.

—
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don’t blame me. I voted for Gore.

On 7 Jul 2005 10:09:35 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:

Yeah, well… A new file system was one of the big new features in the new OS too. <sigh>

I can certainly see turning everything off by default. OS X made that a desktop standard. (OK, Linux did too, but it isn’t a desktop standard.)

History shows that any firm statement made by the vendor can and will be changed, almost at whim.

MS has been talking about a fantastic new file system from the first days, almost 15 years ago.

Cairo, IIRC 🙂

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 09:42:58 -0500, Clyde
reverently intoned upon the aether:

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:47:52 -0500, Clyde wrote:

If (big IF) Dual Core works like HT on Intel processors, you won’t get much from it in Photoshop. Photoshop doesn’t use my "extra" processor in my Intel 3.2 GHz Prescott.

It doesn’t. What Intel does with HT (and why it often causes PS to slow down) is to *emulate* a dual core processor.

Dual Core processors are exactly what the3y sound like *2* processors on 1 chip. And it makes quite a lot of difference 😉

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

I know it is technically different, but is it practically different?

Yes. The longer answer:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/hyperthreading.ar s

There are situations where hyperthreading can really make a huge performance difference in some apps if they are hyperthreading aware and it can hurt performance on others that are not hyperthreading aware.

Check out the media encoding benchmarks here to get an idea:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050603/index.html

My big "IF" was an extrapolation of that. If XP Pro would see two processors in a Dual Core chip, I would think that it would allocate different processes to them, much like it does with HT. I would certainly hope that it is more efficient in the way it runs, but XP probably wouldn’t allocate it any differently. I would hope that Dual Core would act more like true multi-processing.

It is true multi-processing. Whereas hyperthreading is actually a change in CPU scheduling methods.

However, if Photoshop doesn’t know how to use the "two" processors that XP thinks are there with HT, why would it suddenly get smarter on a Dual Core machine? I’m thinking that it wouldn’t — with the current Photoshop for Windows.

They behave differently. Once Adobe gets a few of their more CPU intensive filters to take advantage of hyperthreading (if they ever do), then that too may help.

some thoughts,

Sean

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

– Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

New Website
http://www.envisagement.com/
Last Updated 23 June 2005

"Sean" wrote in message

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/hyperthreading.ar s

Really, most of us will save time overall by just getting a good dual-processor system with four fast drives and 4gb of RAM. The time spent obsessing over performance factors, reading every strange test and usenet impression will never be made up for by the performance difference between two top-end systems, especially when the typical lifetime of a professional system is two years.

But since I’m invalid at the moment, let me waste a minute with a question. It concerns benchmarks that run the same routines over and over. Under an operating system I’ll not trouble you with, routines that are used often are stored at a fixed address in memory for fast re-use – and routines used by more than one executing program are copied to memory only once and shared by each application, and further, the whole program is almost never loaded to memory – the OS loads only what is asked for (and routines that aren’t used for ‘n’ cycles are dropped from memory.) It’s a hugely tunable system.

Does WindoZe or *ix do that?

johnboy wrote:

"Sean" wrote in message

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/hyperthreading.ar s

Really, most of us will save time overall by just getting a good dual-processor system with four fast drives and 4gb of RAM. The time spent obsessing over performance factors, reading every strange test and usenet impression will never be made up for by the performance difference between two top-end systems, especially when the typical lifetime of a professional system is two years.

But since I’m invalid at the moment, let me waste a minute with a question. It concerns benchmarks that run the same routines over and over. Under an operating system I’ll not trouble you with, routines that are used often are stored at a fixed address in memory for fast re-use – and routines used by more than one executing program are copied to memory only once and shared by each application, and further, the whole program is almost never loaded to memory – the OS loads only what is asked for (and routines that aren’t used for ‘n’ cycles are dropped from memory.) It’s a hugely tunable system.
Does WindoZe or *ix do that?

Most of us? Who is us? I bet most Photoshop users do NOT have that nice of hardware. Besides, on an XP machine, 4 GB is a waste.

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

"Clyde" wrote in message

Most of us? Who is us? I bet most Photoshop users do NOT have that nice of hardware. Besides, on an XP machine, 4 GB is a waste.

So you have CS2 set up to use 100% of RAM, meaning maybe 1.8 to 3.2GB to the application (which, depending, you can do), and the rest is left to WindoZe and system jobs. Seems to warrant 4GB to me. No? Anywhow, I only have 2gb on the XP system, but 4gb on the G5 and the G5 likes all that extra. Doesn’t WindoZe behave similarly?

johnboy wrote:

I only have 2gb on the XP system, but 4gb on the G5 and the G5 likes all that extra. Doesn’t WindoZe behave similarly?

See: <http://photoshopnews.com/?p=134>.

—
Regards
Madsen

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 09:05:44 -0500, "johnboy" reverently intoned upon the aether:

Does WindoZe or *ix do that?

Yes. So does the *nix underlying OS X.

So for the audio encoding, things all fit in main memory. For video encoding you cannot fit a full DVD in RAM. But my main point in noting the benchmarks was the performance difference on media encoding between HT enabled and HT disabled runs. It can make a huge difference.

enjoy,

Sean

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

– Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

New Website
http://www.envisagement.com/
Last Updated 23 June 2005

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

wrote:

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

A lot. Sorry, I didn’t do hard number testing before or after. I also make two upgrades at once. I also added a WD 36.7 GB SATA 10K hard disk that I use for XP’s Pagefile and Photoshop’s Scratch Disk. That and the doubling of RAM make this Photoshop machine really fly now. I was rather surprised by how much speed increase there was.

In the past I thought I could always tell when I had used up my 1 GB and things really slowed down. Now running stuff much smaller, it’s running much faster. I’m guessing that Photoshop’s memory management it not just using more memory, but it’s doing it in a different way.

I always run Windows Task Manager minimized and hidden. This puts a little icon in my System Tool Bar. That little icon will always show the CPU usage. A quick double click and I can see both "processors" and the activity going on in each. Experience has shown me that the little icon pegged at 50% means that some non-HT aware app is hitting full stride.

When I was running 1 GB, Photoshop never got above 50%. Double clicking to see the "processors" in detail and separately showed just one side doing the work. Hence, Photoshop appeared to be non-HT aware.

With 2 GB I had Photoshop flying along very nicely. I looked at the little icon and noticed that it was jumping up above 50% all the way to 100%. That surprised me so I double clicked. Sure enough both "processors" are working happily away. They appear to be matched, so both sides show the same curves.

So, Photoshop seems to be using the processor more efficiently above 2 GB and not just the RAM. I am curious to see if anyone else has noticed this and learn as much of the technical as possible. Anyone?

Clyde

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 12:31:15 GMT, wrote:

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

For PS, he’ll be seeing a performance decrease overall with HT. For the rest of the system, he’ll probably see a speed increase, particularly with any 3D apps.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Personally I find as I get older that Photoshop really speeds up tremendously. Then again, it maybe that I am slowing down quite a lot.

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:15:11 -0500, Clyde wrote:

wrote:

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

A lot. Sorry, I didn’t do hard number testing before or after. I also make two upgrades at once. I also added a WD 36.7 GB SATA 10K hard disk that I use for XP’s Pagefile and Photoshop’s Scratch Disk. That and the doubling of RAM make this Photoshop machine really fly now. I was rather surprised by how much speed increase there was.

In the past I thought I could always tell when I had used up my 1 GB and things really slowed down. Now running stuff much smaller, it’s running much faster. I’m guessing that Photoshop’s memory management it not just using more memory, but it’s doing it in a different way.
I always run Windows Task Manager minimized and hidden. This puts a little icon in my System Tool Bar. That little icon will always show the CPU usage. A quick double click and I can see both "processors" and the activity going on in each. Experience has shown me that the little icon pegged at 50% means that some non-HT aware app is hitting full stride.
When I was running 1 GB, Photoshop never got above 50%. Double clicking to see the "processors" in detail and separately showed just one side doing the work. Hence, Photoshop appeared to be non-HT aware.
With 2 GB I had Photoshop flying along very nicely. I looked at the little icon and noticed that it was jumping up above 50% all the way to 100%. That surprised me so I double clicked. Sure enough both "processors" are working happily away. They appear to be matched, so both sides show the same curves.

So, Photoshop seems to be using the processor more efficiently above 2 GB and not just the RAM. I am curious to see if anyone else has noticed this and learn as much of the technical as possible. Anyone?
Clyde

Clyde wrote:

wrote:

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

A lot. Sorry, I didn’t do hard number testing before or after. I also make two upgrades at once. I also added a WD 36.7 GB SATA 10K hard disk that I use for XP’s Pagefile and Photoshop’s Scratch Disk. That and the doubling of RAM make this Photoshop machine really fly now. I was rather surprised by how much speed increase there was.

In the past I thought I could always tell when I had used up my 1 GB and things really slowed down. Now running stuff much smaller, it’s running much faster. I’m guessing that Photoshop’s memory management it not just using more memory, but it’s doing it in a different way.

Hmm, that does not necessarily mean PS is using HT. But both RAM and HD are cheap, so who cares? Are you seeing doubling speed improvement, or something close?

I always run Windows Task Manager minimized and hidden. This puts a little icon in my System Tool Bar. That little icon will always show the CPU usage. A quick double click and I can see both "processors" and the activity going on in each. Experience has shown me that the little icon pegged at 50% means that some non-HT aware app is hitting full stride.
When I was running 1 GB, Photoshop never got above 50%. Double clicking to see the "processors" in detail and separately showed just one side doing the work. Hence, Photoshop appeared to be non-HT aware.
With 2 GB I had Photoshop flying along very nicely. I looked at the little icon and noticed that it was jumping up above 50% all the way to 100%. That surprised me so I double clicked. Sure enough both "processors" are working happily away. They appear to be matched, so both sides show the same curves.

So, Photoshop seems to be using the processor more efficiently above 2 GB and not just the RAM. I am curious to see if anyone else has noticed this and learn as much of the technical as possible. Anyone?

Another possibility is that XP somehow makes better use of the added RAM and HD. I always believe that cheap storage breeds bad programmers.

Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 12:31:15 GMT, wrote:

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

For PS, he’ll be seeing a performance decrease overall with HT. For the rest of the system, he’ll probably see a speed increase, particularly with any 3D apps.

I don’t do any 3D apps, so I can’t speak to that. I certainly haven’t seen a speed decrease, but a major increase. However, I haven’t timed Photoshop with and without HT at 2 GB. I probably should. It was faster with HT on at 1 GB, but it’s looking like things are different at 2 GB.

I should catalog all my apps that do use HT and see if they run different with and without it on.

Clyde

wrote:

Clyde wrote:

wrote:

Clyde wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

Thanks,
Clyde

How much performance improvement are you seeing? How can you tell PS is using HT after upgrading RAM?

A lot. Sorry, I didn’t do hard number testing before or after. I also make two upgrades at once. I also added a WD 36.7 GB SATA 10K hard disk that I use for XP’s Pagefile and Photoshop’s Scratch Disk. That and the doubling of RAM make this Photoshop machine really fly now. I was rather surprised by how much speed increase there was.

In the past I thought I could always tell when I had used up my 1 GB and things really slowed down. Now running stuff much smaller, it’s running much faster. I’m guessing that Photoshop’s memory management it not just using more memory, but it’s doing it in a different way.

Hmm, that does not necessarily mean PS is using HT. But both RAM and HD are cheap, so who cares? Are you seeing doubling speed improvement, or something close?

I always run Windows Task Manager minimized and hidden. This puts a little icon in my System Tool Bar. That little icon will always show the CPU usage. A quick double click and I can see both "processors" and the activity going on in each. Experience has shown me that the little icon pegged at 50% means that some non-HT aware app is hitting full stride.
When I was running 1 GB, Photoshop never got above 50%. Double clicking to see the "processors" in detail and separately showed just one side doing the work. Hence, Photoshop appeared to be non-HT aware.
With 2 GB I had Photoshop flying along very nicely. I looked at the little icon and noticed that it was jumping up above 50% all the way to 100%. That surprised me so I double clicked. Sure enough both "processors" are working happily away. They appear to be matched, so both sides show the same curves.

So, Photoshop seems to be using the processor more efficiently above 2 GB and not just the RAM. I am curious to see if anyone else has noticed this and learn as much of the technical as possible. Anyone?

Another possibility is that XP somehow makes better use of the added RAM and HD. I always believe that cheap storage breeds bad programmers.

Is XP Pro a good example of the above? Maybe MS Office? Probably Photoshop? Because of the file sizes, I think that graphics app programmers are a little more careful. Not as much as they should be, but a little better.

Of course, the speed improvement isn’t uniform for everything I do in Photoshop. I would think that the aprox 75% increase in opening speed is due more to the fast Scratch HD than the added memory. That includes the opening of 3rd party filters.

Saving of files isn’t much faster for formats that were fast; PSD, TIFF, etc. Saving of slow formats JPEG 2000, PNG, etc. is about 10-20% faster. I’m not sure why though. The files are way below 1 GB in size so you wouldn’t think that added memory would help. I’m not sure how a fast Scratch disk would help saving.

Of course, now that XP says that Photoshop is using HT, some or a lot of this may be due to that. I guess I’ll have to do some tests with HT on and off.

I’d say everything else feels like 30-50% faster. My gut feeling may be way off, but it’s mine.

Clyde

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 09:37:33 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I don’t do any 3D apps, so I can’t speak to that. I certainly haven’t seen a speed decrease, but a major increase. However, I haven’t timed Photoshop with and without HT at 2 GB. I probably should. It was faster with HT on at 1 GB, but it’s looking like things are different at 2 GB.
I should catalog all my apps that do use HT and see if they run different with and without it on.

For your own benefit. You’ll find the slow down should be documented around the web. I’m going by the magazines I’ve read which showed a max. 5% decrease in speed with HT (because it’s only an emulation, not the real thing). Certainly, the increase in memory will have a far greater impact than HT ever would in any case.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Hecate wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005 09:37:33 -0500, Clyde wrote:

I don’t do any 3D apps, so I can’t speak to that. I certainly haven’t seen a speed decrease, but a major increase. However, I haven’t timed Photoshop with and without HT at 2 GB. I probably should. It was faster with HT on at 1 GB, but it’s looking like things are different at 2 GB.
I should catalog all my apps that do use HT and see if they run different with and without it on.

For your own benefit. You’ll find the slow down should be documented around the web. I’m going by the magazines I’ve read which showed a max. 5% decrease in speed with HT (because it’s only an emulation, not the real thing). Certainly, the increase in memory will have a far greater impact than HT ever would in any case.

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Well, that was pretty fruitless. There was a lot of speculation and theory, but very few numbers. Actually, the people that say they ran benchmarks all said that it runs faster with HT on. They didn’t give numbers either though.

Even the theory was all over the place. Some said that HT is splitting the processor and some said that HT is just using extra, unused cycles and paths. Since Intel says the later, I’ll go with that.

Well, I guess I’ll have to run my own tests.

Clyde

PS – It’s scary when Google finds Web sites with your own garbage from here quoted like it meant something. Ah, the value of the Internet.

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:59:56 -0500, Clyde wrote:

PS – It’s scary when Google finds Web sites with your own garbage from here quoted like it meant something. Ah, the value of the Internet.

LOL! But it must be right if it’s on the Internet????

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:59:56 -0500, Clyde wrote:

PS – It’s scary when Google finds Web sites with your own garbage from here quoted like it meant something. Ah, the value of the Internet.

LOL! But it must be right if it’s on the Internet????

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

<sigh> …and we depend on Google so much. Google would be great if it could filter out crap.

Clyde

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 09:42:40 -0500, Clyde wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:59:56 -0500, Clyde wrote:

PS – It’s scary when Google finds Web sites with your own garbage from here quoted like it meant something. Ah, the value of the Internet.

LOL! But it must be right if it’s on the Internet????

<sigh> …and we depend on Google so much. Google would be great if it could filter out crap.

Theodore Sturgeon : "90% of science fiction is crap. But, then, 90% of everything is crap".

—

Hecate – The Real One

Fashion: Buying things you don’t need, with money
you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like…

In article , Clyde
wrote:

********** Update & Correction ***********

I said earlier in this thread that Photoshop did not us HT. That was because I had never seen it use it on my P4 3.2 GHz Prescott with 1 GB of RAM.

Well, I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM total. Now Photoshop seems to be using HT just fine.

Anyone have a technical explanation for this?

You stopped hitting the scratch disk so often?

Photoshop uses multiple processors and hyperthreading regardless of the RAM installed.

Chris