CPU for photo editing.

[Cisar]

Hello, I need to build a pc for my sister who is a graphic designer and photographer.

I want to know as of today which is the best budget CPU for Photoshop, Lightroom, Corel and more Adobe programs.

There will be not much of video editing, just some video playback, like YouTube, Netflix, nothing fancy.

My initial thought was the G3258, but after research, I found that it's no the best option, is the I5 4460 a better option, having in mind the price/performance ratio.

Should I go with the i5 6500?, what worries me about the 6500 is the price of the other hardware.

The budget is 500 max, I need to spend less than $500 on CPU, motherboard, RAM, PSU(I will have to decide the other hardware inside the store).
No case, no HDD, no screen.

I will be buying the CPU in store in a TigerDirect Store.

 

[Mr Kagouris]

Photo editing is not particularly resource intensive, especially on CPU. What you should look into is an IPS 4K (or even 1440p if 4K is completely out of budget) monitor and a GPU that can properly drive it (some extra RAM and an SSD might be good as well). That will provide good picture quality which is as you can imagine really important for designer and photo editing work.

 

[Geekwad]

For a straight-up entry level editing workstation, more (and slower is OK) cores are preferred.

I'd looks for a screaming deal with something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8320E 3.2GHz 8-Core Processor ($125.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock 970M PRO3 Micro ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard ($41.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: PNY Anarchy 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R7 250 2GB Video Card ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($66.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $349.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

And then spend any extra money on a truly great monitor, as Mr Kagouris mentioned.

 

[Cisar]

Photo editing is not particularly resource intensive, especially on CPU. What you should look into is an IPS 4K (or even 1440p if 4K is completely out of budget) monitor and a GPU that can properly drive it (some extra RAM and an SSD might be good as well). That will provide good picture quality which is as you can imagine really important for designer and photo editing work.

She already has a 1440p screen, her desktop is way too outdated, still DDR2(it's like 6 years old), the PC worked great 2 years ago, but now it starts to give her trouble.

 

[Cisar]

For a straight-up entry level editing workstation, more (and slower is OK) cores are preferred.

I'd looks for a screaming deal with something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8320E 3.2GHz 8-Core Processor ($125.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: ASRock 970M PRO3 Micro ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard ($41.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: PNY Anarchy 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R7 250 2GB Video Card ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($66.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $349.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

And then spend any extra money on a truly great monitor, as Mr Kagouris mentioned.

I don't know about AMD, I don't want to sound like a fanboy(maybe I am), I have an old lenovo laptop with i3 2310 that performs better than the A6 5200 on a newer Asus laptop.

I don't know much about AMD CPU's
Well, I do sound like a fanboy.

 

[Mr Kagouris]

As I said, CPU is not a big issue for photo editing.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($86.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Mushkin Silverline 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($56.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 250X 2GB Core Edition Video Card ($84.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($55.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $484.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-06 05:24 EST-0500

 

[Geekwad]

For a straight-up entry level editing workstation, more (and slower is OK) cores are preferred.

I don't know about AMD, I don't want to sound like a fanboy(maybe I am), I have an old lenovo laptop with i3 2310 that performs better than the A6 5200 on a newer Asus laptop.

I don't know much about AMD CPU's
Well, I do sound like a fanboy.

That's fair, but wouldn't extrapolate the laptop experience to the same comparison. Dual core to low-level dual core A6 isn't the same as a dual core to 8-core FX chip.

With any of the photo editors I've every known and supported in my life, they eventually get into more complex operations and light, but frequent, rendering.....and multitask extremely heavily. Lots and lots of, albeit admittedly, not particularly resource intensive tasks add up to a heavy workload, and the inexpensive AMD 8-core will handle this better than the Intel i3. Three screens is the norm for editors like this (typically one great one for work/scratch, then two or more prep screens).

 

[Mr Kagouris]

I agree that for heavier multitasking an 8-core AMD CPU would be far better.