Photoshop speed test

[Doug Nelson]

I put this in the Hardware forum even though I mentioned Photoshop, because it has more to do with hardware than Photoshop.

In Photoshop, make a new RGB white bg 8x10 300ppi document. Open Add Noise and set to Uniform, Monochromatic, 400% and click OK. Then open Radial Blur, set to Amount 100, Method Zoom, Quality Best but do not hit OK yet.

As you hit OK, start timing. Continue timing until the filter finishes, then stop.

Report the time back here along with your machine specs.

For example, I've a P4 1.4ghz and my time was 5:56

[Noelf]

My machines specs

Dual Pentium 4 cpus running at 2.8, 1 gig of ram.

Windows xp pro

2 mins 15 secs.

- Noel

[W. Rose]

P4 2.0 ghz. 4:10

Wayne

[Gary Richardson]

Hi, Intel Celeron 1.3 G
RAM 256 M

Time 3' 35"

Any particular reason you want this.

[Xaran]

P4 2.8Ghz 2Gb Ram

2 mins 34 secs

Christine

[Pvt.Weed]

P4 3Ghz HT
1Gb DDR ram
Photoshop CS...Physical Memory Usage 90%
Window XP Home

2 mins

[Susan S.]

G3 imac, 600Mhz, (please don't laugh..), 756mb RAM, Photoshop CS, 7 minutes and 15 secs.... (I'm glad I don't do that one very often!!)

[Ed_L]

P4, 1.6 GHz, 512 DDR Ram --5 min. 23 sec.
Hmmmm, compare Gary's apecs and time to mine.

Ed

[Leah]

AMD Athlon XP, 1.29 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 4 mins 33 secs

[Doug Nelson]

I'm working on a project where I had to do this a minimum of 100 times in the past couple of weeks, so it got me wondering if its time for a new machine.

[Mars]

Gary and Leah got me thinking too....

AMD Athlon XP 1.68 MHz (2000+), 768 MB RAM - 5:13
for a 2400x3000 pixels document.... (8x10 at 300ppi).

Martin

[Leah]

I did vaguely think I had more than 1.29 GHz, but that's what the PC claims I have...

[Gary Richardson]

Switch off some of the many superfluous background tasks that run in XP and it will speed things up. It did for me. Try this site for info. www.fixyourwindows.com/optimizewindows.htm

[Gary Richardson]

Hi, after looking at some other peoples specs and times, I wondered if I'd done anything wrong, so I ran the test again and came out with exactly the same time 3' 35".

[Mars]

Thank you Gary for the link, I'll have a look at the steps later on. T'was a tad strange, since the other results seem to show a linear dependance between the MHz and the time (I've corrected the diagram above again).

Martin

[Leah]

I do have MemTurbo running, which does something clever with system resources (although precisely what it is goes over my head). That might be a factor.

[DannyRaphael]

P4 1.4 Ghz, IGB RAM, Windows 2000, Photoshop 7.01

Test 1 - PS memory allocation: 50% - 5 min 56 sec
Test 2 - PS memory allocation: 80% - 5 min 50 sec

Interesting to note that elapsed times in this highly compute bound task reflect the benefits of additional horsepower and perhaps slightly better resourse managing by XP.

Would the RAM type (DDR or not) have much impact?

[brandonx49]

Athlon 1800+ 512 MB memory,

3:40 min

[Doug Nelson]

Are there any other Mac users reading this that might be willing to run the test?

[Rexx]

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

Are there any other Mac users reading this that might be willing to run the test?

Yes, me.
The document is 2400 wide, 3000 tall
933MHz single G4, 768MB RAM MacOS X 10.2.8
4:32 with everything else running (quite a lot)
Quitting everything except Photoshop and this browser
4:45!
Perhaps Photoshop likes a little competition?
Is it time for me to upgrade to a dual 2.5GHz G5?

Why didn't you do it once and then copy? Because you didn't do exactly the same each time?

[Doug Nelson]

I changed stuff and re-did it a lot, plus I was running it 10x in a row (I finally made an action and went and watched TV while it was running).

[Leah]

Well, I ran through the Windows XP optimisation list, did all the relevant restarts, tried the task again and... still 4 minutes 33 seconds.

General pootling around the PC seems to work faster now, though, so the optimisation does seem to have achieved something.

[Don Majoros]

win xp p4 2.8ghz 1 gb ram

PS 7.01 80% memory to ps - 2min 10sec
PS 7.01 100% memory to ps - 2min 12sec

PS CS 50% memory to PS - 2min 15sec
PS CS 40% memory to ps - 2min 10sec
PS CS 100% memory to ps - -2min 10sec

[Mars]

Hi all,

a little bit tweaking helps a bit but the biggest impact on the performance is due to the used hardware (of course). One of the many sites discussing these issues claims that for Photoshop the CPU internal cache (size of the L2) and the memory performance are quite important...

Here's the link (scroll down a bit):
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...plus-s939.html

Martin

[Rob S.]

1.25 GHz Power Mac G4

3:19
(near the end there, I was shouting: "Cmon Baby! Do it for daddy! Come in under 3 and I'll defrag your hard drive!)

[Chip Hildreth]

4:49

P4
1.8 GHz
512 MB RAM

I could use more RAM but the money always goes to other, more pressing things.

The only time I find the waiting unacceptable is when we're doing big exhibit work with big ole honkin' 500MB files.

[BonnieN]

WinXP Pro
Photoshop CS
P4
3.40 GHz
1G Ram Memory - 1 minute 48 sec

[CJ Swartz]

2 minutes 31 seconds -- Intel P4, 2.6 Ghz, 504 MB RAM

[catia]

Okay, new system. P4 3Ghz HT with 1MB L2 cache. 1GB of dual channel memory @400Mhz on an 800Mhz FSB. Photoshop 7 with scratch on its own HD, a WD 160GB 7200 with 8MB on board cache. Running XP.

Test result: 1 minute 49 seconds

[Doug Nelson]

Some very impressive results being posted, but where are the Dual-G5 users? I'd really like to see those scores.