Best CPU for photoshop

[qwerty_31]

I am looking to build a computer with the aim of running photoshop CS5, and possibly in the future CS6. No games. No overclocking. What CPU would be best?
Price is a big factor. I am prepared to shell out up to $350, but for that money, it had better be a lot faster than the lower priced competition.

 

[noob2222]

thats why you have someone you konw to be computer literate do it. And yes I have actually built about 4 computers recently for friends and co-workers. Some of them pre-paid for the parts, others I paid up front, they paid on delivery.

Only support I had to deal with is warranty on a hdd.

there is nothing stoping you from doing your own support before you have to consult your "system builder".

 

[qwerty_31]

Best answer selected by qwerty_31.

 

[jmichae3]

you can take a look at cpu benchmarks here.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

[jmichae3]

finally got my new build. as it turns out, I rarely use more than 13% of my 64GB of ram, maximum 15%-18%. which comes out to 11.5GB. and the CPU usage with CS5 with most ops turns out to be no more than 3% of i7-3970x cpu.
in terms of cakewalk Sonar X2, it uses all the threads you throw at it (you hand-configure it during setup), but in minor amounts with this powerful a proc and only 4 tracks and not many fx.
so if you think of this in terms of threads, I rarely see more than about 6 threads working very much at a time on average with anything (wondering if it's the OS or antivirus). and even then it's not that much.

am using a gigabyte gtx 670 with multiple displays.

only time I have topped the CPU (because I want to make use of that CPU and speed up my formerly 3-day builds) is when I am doing parallel builds.
so I am thinking you could get by with a nice cheap i7-2600k for ps and a geforce 600-series card (something decent if you want good OpenGL speed I should think). what I have seems to work well. but it's a once-in-9-years upgrade.

I was wrong about "fastest CPU, lotsa threads, etc". 4 cores should be plenty.
I figure a system for $1000-$1500 would work well, if you can get one that has a decent video card. maybe. just a ballpark guess. get something that's 64-bit and install ps as 64-bit.
if you are buying new boxes, wait for windows 8.1 to come out, or buy a win7 box.

 

[jmichae3]

finally got my new build. as it turns out, I rarely use more than 13% of my 64GB of ram, maximum 15%. which comes out to 9.6GB. and the CPU usage with CS5 with most ops turns out to be no more than 3% of i7-3970x cpu.
in terms of cakewalk Sonar X2, it uses all the threads you throw at it (you hand-configure it during setup), but in minor amounts with this powerful a proc and only 4 tracks and not many fx.
so if you think of this in terms of threads, I rarely see more than about 6 threads working very much at a time on average with anything (wondering if it's the OS or antivirus). and even then it's not that much.

am using a gigabyte gtx 670 with multiple displays.

only time I have topped the CPU (because I want to make use of that CPU and speed up my formerly 3-day builds) is when I am doing parallel builds.
so I am thinking you could get by with a nice cheap i7-2600k for ps and a geforce 600-series card (something decent if you want good OpenGL speed I should think). what I have seems to work well. but it's a once-in-9-years upgrade.

I was wrong about "fastest CPU, lotsa threads, etc". 4 cores should be plenty.
I figure a system for $1000-$1500 would work well, if you can get one that has a decent video card. maybe. just a ballpark guess. get something that's 64-bit and install ps as 64-bit.
if you are buying new boxes, buy a win7 box, or wait for windows 8.1 to come out (August 2013).