Best CPU for Photoshop and Lightroom out of these

[zainalu]

Hi!
I'm planning to build a PC primarily for Photoshop and Lightroom along with normal tasks such as web browsing, office etc. I have shortlisted the following CPUs but due to my limited budget, I am not sure if I should go with the higher ones listed. I have made my mind on i5 4440 since it is the cheapest. Is it good enough for my requirements and run smoothly?

Intel i5 4440 - (3.1 GHz to 3.3 GHz)
Intel i5-4460 - (3.2 GHz to 3.4 GHz)
Intel i5-4590 - (3.3 GHz to 3.7 GHz)
Intel i5 4690 - (3.5 GHz to 3.9 GHz)
Intel i5 6500 - (3.2 GHz to 3.6 GHz)
intel i5 6600 - (3.3 GHz to 3.9 GHz)

I will use 8 GB RAM and no dedicated graphics card (might add later). I will work with raw files of around 30-40 MB.

Please help,

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

i5 4460 is enough, Photoshop nor Lightroom benefit from a better CPU than that. You do want a dedicated graphics card, optimised drive setup for the scratch as well as media in seperate drives rather than on the OS drive, and you want lots of RAM, which of course depends on the size of projects. I can get Photoshop up to around 19 GB before I've done what I need to do, which massively improves workflow times, with a proper setup optimised for the app. As for Lightroom, it's mostly on a dedicated GPU, because basically everything is about color, Lightroom official specs recommends a GTX 760 to be the minimum, for optimal workflow. Now since nobody knows exactly what type of projects you work on, it's hard to say what you really need, though a good CPU is not one of them, Photoshop has never been CPU intensive.

 

[Wisecracker]

AMD A10-7850K Kaveri: $132

Put the extra cash toward an SSD or another 8GB of RAMs.

 

[hclarkx]

I question stopping at an i5. If you watch the eight threads or "logical processors" in the Windows Task Manager while doing things in LR on an i7, you will often see all eight are over 50% and sometimes approach or hit 100%. An i7, having twice the logical processors of an i5, won't on average be twice as fast as an i5, but at times it will be. For instance, zooming an image to 1:1 for editing or checking focus is very dependent on the number of logical processors and will be done in half the time on an i7 compared to an i5 (assuming both operate at the same speed). This is something we do often in LR and cutting the time it takes to zoom a large image from, say, 4 seconds to 2 seconds or 2 seconds to one second is very noticeable. If you are culling a few hundred images, you are talking about hours. I.e., maybe 1 hour instead of two.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

I question stopping at an i5. If you watch the eight threads or "logical processors" in the Windows Task Manager while doing things in LR on an i7, you will often see all eight are over 50% and sometimes approach or hit 100%. An i7, having twice the logical processors of an i5, won't on average be twice as fast as an i5, but at times it will be. For instance, zooming an image to 1:1 for editing or checking focus is very dependent on the number of logical processors and will be done in half the time on an i7 compared to an i5 (assuming both operate at the same speed). This is something we do often in LR and cutting the time it takes to zoom a large image from, say, 4 seconds to 2 seconds or 2 seconds to one second is very noticeable. If you are culling a few hundred images, you are talking about hours. I.e., maybe 1 hour instead of two.

List your PC specs, Lightroom version, and file sizes be it raw or jpg.

 

[hclarkx]

I question stopping at an i5. If you watch the eight threads or "logical processors" in the Windows Task Manager while doing things in LR on an i7, you will often see all eight are over 50% and sometimes approach or hit 100%. An i7, having twice the logical processors of an i5, won't on average be twice as fast as an i5, but at times it will be. For instance, zooming an image to 1:1 for editing or checking focus is very dependent on the number of logical processors and will be done in half the time on an i7 compared to an i5 (assuming both operate at the same speed). This is something we do often in LR and cutting the time it takes to zoom a large image from, say, 4 seconds to 2 seconds or 2 seconds to one second is very noticeable. If you are culling a few hundred images, you are talking about hours. I.e., maybe 1 hour instead of two.

List your PC specs, Lightroom version, and file sizes be it raw or jpg.

Raw files (like the 30-40GB Zainalu mentioned), i7-4770K not overclocked, 16GB 1600 MHz (not overclocked), AMD R9-270X 2GB (not overclocked, OpenGL enabled). Latest LR and PS from Adobe CC.

The recent LR and PS take more advantage of the GPU and that's noticeable here and there, but LR supporting at least 8 logical processors has been around for a while. Of course, before CC LR versions varied from one to the next in how fast various functions are so it's hard to compare. Mostly I depend on Task Manager showing my CPU utilization and when I see 8 logical cores bouncing around 80-100%, it's clear that an i5 with its four logical (and actual) cores can't compete. Even when I see 8 logical cores running at, say, 20-50% it's clear that the i7 cpu is showing a significant advantage. Eight cores doing 30% is faster than 4 cores doing 30%.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

I see. It very well could be the case an i7 beats an i5 in these applications, but everything in LR for instance inside the develop module is GPU bound/accelerated. Anyways, I can't argument against your experience...

What's the efficiency indicator in Photoshop, when you use it like you normally would? You can find this on the bottom, you may have to unhide it if it's hidden. If it's below 100% at any point while working with your projects, you're heavily bottlenecked by your RAM, meaning you don't have enough RAM, and it's using the scratch drive. Now, since Photoshop by default only allocates 70% of RAM for itself, this could also be why your efficiency is not always at 100%, even 99% is a bottleneck, to give you an idea. You can increase allocated RAM by opening the Performance preferences and use the slider or manually type in your number.

 

[hclarkx]

The better performance of an i7 also helps us get good GPU acceleration. Using the GPU means the CPU is moving a lot of data to/from the GPU and doing things before, during and after the GPU activity on the parallel part. That's a major load on the CPU that can reduce the GPU benefit if the CPU is not up to the task. I've seen this discussed though I don't know at what point the CPU becomes a bottleneck in getting good GPU performance. I'd guess that a faster GPU demands a faster CPU to provide full benefit. An i7 provides insurance in that respect (along with the benefits that a faster CPU provides for CPU intensive tasks.

My PS reads 100% most if not all of the time. I limit PS to 60% of RAM; that's in the setup recommended range. I cut it short so as to not cramp LR because that's where I am 95% of the time when both are running. I'm not an intense PS user, mostly have it for the "automate" features and the content-aware tools that are far superior to those in LR for erasing people and power poles and wires from my landscapes. I don't feel it lag except when doing a merge of 3 or 4 images. That can take minutes so might be worth watching. Though again, that's not something I do much. And with an SSD for a scratch drive, I would think that hitting RAM limits does not hurt as much as it used to with HDDs. I do sometimes monitor memory use in the Windows Task manager and have never seen LR and PS use 100% there.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

RAM is about 100x faster than an SSD and HDD. But yeah ok. No point taking this further. 🙂

 

[blockpasser]

Nice chat!