Specific CPU Questions (Photoshop CC)

[Canadacpu]

Hi all - first time poster here. I've been scouring the internet trying to find answers to some very specific questions but I am either not finding it, or misinterpreting the info I have been finding - hoping some of you can help.

I want to build a new PC *specifically* for photo editing using Photoshop CC and various related plug-ins. I am a real estate photographer and I spend huge amounts of time waiting on HDR processes to run - any time I can save is well worth the money. I know I want 32GB ram (quad channel DDR4), decent graphics card (probably GTX 1070), PCI SSD (probably Intel 750 for the cool temps and huge IOPS), etc. so that is not a problem - I have questions regarding the CPU.

I do the following things that regularly max out my current CPU (i7 3770k) according to task manager at 97-98%+ in Photoshop CC for very long periods of time:

1) Saving large numbers of 36 MP RAW image files (Nikon D810) to either Jpeg or TIFF

2) NIK HDR Efex Pro2 plug in (merging 3-7, 36MP RAW images to HDR) - this takes forever (probably 2 full minutes per merge) and is primarily what I really want to speed up. Time is money and if I could cut this in half or even by a third it would be huge.


My main question is do I go with more cores or newer tech, fewer cores, and higher clock? The two most obvious current options are the Skylake i7 6700 or Broadwell-E i7 6850K (Puget Systems had a good article suggesting Photoshop CC doesn't do much with anything more than 6 cores which is what I am going off of). The Photoshop benchmark articles also never seem to touch on HDR processing specifically, so I never know what to compare it to.

Cost isn't too much of a concern, but I can't do anything too outrageous (the 10 core Broadwell E is $2500 in Canada and that is not happening).

I do play some light games, but I'm not worried about it because anything I buy will play them with ease (League of Legends, Rainbow 6 Siege)

I will also need enough PCI-E lanes for a PCI-E SSD and a higher end graphics card.

Current Setup
i7 3770K
Asus P8Z77V-Deluxe mobo
16 GB dual channel ram DDR 3
Nvidia GTX 560 Ti
Crucial M4 256GB SSD (Application drive and also used as the Photoshop scratch drive)
Various storage HDDs
NEC PA271W 27" Monitor (1440p)

Can anyone offer some insight or point me to some testing specifically for heavy Photoshop tasks (like HDR photo merging with huge 36MP RAW files) with regard to newer 4-core CPU's or previous-gen Extreme edition 6-8 core CPU's?

Would there be any huge benefit to waiting for Skylake-E or Canonlake? I really don't want to wait that long though haha.

Thanks very much in advance - sorry that was a bit long.

Tl;dr - for heavy Photoshop CC tasks (specifically HDR image processing/merging), should I buy Skylake i7 6700K or Broadwell i7 6850K or wait for something else?

 

[Canadacpu]

Just as an update, I downloaded CPU-Z, GPU-Z and a system monitoring program.

Absolutely everything I do puts my CPU into Turbo mode (3.9-4.0 Ghz) and maxes out all 8 cores 100% for the duration of the job. Does this suggest that simply adding more cores will be best, or would a higher clocked, newer 4-core Skylake chip be best? TIA.

 

[Mainlander]

Can anyone offer some insight or point me to some testing specifically for heavy Photoshop tasks (like HDR photo merging with huge 36MP RAW files) with regard to newer 4-core CPU's or previous-gen Extreme edition 6-8 core CPU's?

Hi Canadacpu

Am also a RE Photog down under in NZ, although I see you posted this a while back, may I ask what you settled on? I'm running 3770 with Samsung M2 as a boot drive and was looking at i7-7700k. Hear good things about ddr4 4000 memory,curious if you upspeced your rams speed when you brought. Lastly did you get a decent video card and do you think this made a difference?
Thanks Dave

 

[Canadacpu]

Can anyone offer some insight or point me to some testing specifically for heavy Photoshop tasks (like HDR photo merging with huge 36MP RAW files) with regard to newer 4-core CPU's or previous-gen Extreme edition 6-8 core CPU's?

Hi Canadacpu

Am also a RE Photog down under in NZ, although I see you posted this a while back, may I ask what you settled on? I'm running 3770 with Samsung M2 as a boot drive and was looking at i7-7700k. Hear good things about ddr4 4000 memory,curious if you upspeced your rams speed when you brought. Lastly did you get a decent video card and do you think this made a difference?
Thanks Dave

Hi Dave,

I actually haven't bought anything yet - the only thing I have done is OC my 3770K to 4.4Ghz. I do have a better understanding now of what is multi-threaded and what isn't in Photoshop, including results from my own testing. The new plan is to either get an AMD Ryzen 1700 (OC to 4.0 GHz) or wait until August to see Skylake-X pricing, or Coffee Lake 6C/12T and make my decision then. Right now I am struggling with waiting, or just going Ryzen. A lot of what I do is multi-threaded, but not everything. I have tested a family member's Ryzen 1800X against my OC'd 3770K and the Ryzen is faster for almost everything, and twice as fast or more for anything multi-thraded. It's a hair slower for a few single threaded things, but overall net time saved is in the Ryzen's favor. I also typically have a ton of other things running while I am editing photos, which also would benefit from 8C/16T I would think.

I want 6-8 cores at 4.5 Ghz (or more) ideally. Broadwell-E is already capable of that, but the prices are outrageous, so that is why I'm wondering if I should wait and see what Skylake-X and Coffee Lake 6C/12T deliver. What I don't want to do is wait until August or later, only to realize I should have bought Ryzen in April, because at that point I might as well wait for Ryzen2 and the cycle continues haha. So frustrating.

Everything, including games, seems to becoming more and more multithreaded these days. I will not be investing in any more 4C/8T CPUs, especially not a 7700K because it's going to be replaced in a few months again. Adobe has said they will be working on adding a bunch more multi-threaded support as well, but there is no timeline for that.

Regarding video card, I did end up getting a Titan X (Maxwell) because I wanted 12GB of VRAM. My previous card (560Ti, 1GB) was not adequate because GPUz is telling me I am using just over 4GB of VRAM for things I regularly do in Photoshop, so I am pleased with that upgrade.

Hope that helps a bit.

EDIT: Immediately after posting that, I read this:

http://www.game-debate.com/news/22681/intel-accelerates-hedt-x299-skylake-x-and-kaby-lake-x-launch-to-combat-16-core-amd-ryzen-cpu

Hopefully won't have to wait until August anymore.

 

[synphul]

I saw there was mention that puget's testing didn't show hdr results, their page does appear to show those. They showed little difference between 4-6 cores and nearly flatlined after 6 cores.

Here's a page where puget has compared ryzen 1700x, 1800x, i7 7700k, i7 6850k and i7 6900k. When doing multiple hdr creation in terms of 5x 80mp photos the 7700k 4c/8t i7 easily beat both ryzen chips by a lot. When converting 5x 18mp images the ryzen chips beat the i7 7700k by around 1-2s. In almost every other photoshop task they ran the 7700k beat the ryzen chips other than filters like stained glass.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-2017-AMD-Ryzen-7-1700X-1800X-Performance-907/

The 7700k also beat the more expensive 6/8c i7's in most tasks. A titan x is a great gaming gpu but is a lot of money spent with little benefit in photoshop. Something else may have been at play comparing your system to your friends ryzen system. Was their disk setup the same as yours? Same settings in photoshop? Everything needs to be the same for a meaningful comparison or improved performance could be due to other factors.

While ryzen has helped close the gap in terms of ipc performance it still lags behind intel's ipc. It's important to still realize that simply "4.5ghz" means little. It would matter if comparing ryzen to ryzen or intel to intel of the same generation. Even 3rd gen intel "4.5ghz" isn't the same as 7th gen intel "4.5ghz".

The additional cores may help if you're doing multiple tasks at the same time. That could be a reason to consider ryzen. Just be aware of the tradeoff, a bit less performance in your photo programs for the ability to multitask a bit more.

One review site suggested that the the 1800x outperformed the 7700k by around 39% in multitasking though doesn't mention what that test consisted of. That same review also said the 7700k was 2 'points' (no explanation of measurement) behind the 1800x in 'photo editing' (no mention of what program or tests) and yet puget's extensive photoshop comparison showed the 7700k to be 112-124% so 12-24% faster than ryzen. 16.4% better in hdr creation than the 1800x. Both ryzen and the 7700k can be overclocked.

Unfortunately after a fair amount of searching I haven't been able to locate any solid multitasking workload comparisons. Ryzen is still fairly new, more and more updates are being released to address performance niggles. A test done before an update may change after an update.

It's also difficult if the particular tasks in a multi tasking benchmark don't match what someone is actually doing. A lot of times people mistakenly think they're multi tasking when they're doing a lot of single tasking. A lot of low power tasks going on or simply having a lot of programs open doesn't always equate to heavy multi tasking and may instead indicate a need for a lot of ram to hold concurrent programs open without a major performance hit in disk caching. For instance playing music while rendering an image in photoshop while surfing the web. Surfing the web and playing music (from the pc locally) are going to place a certain hit on the disk/storage system and that may end up being more of a limiting factor, not just for the amount of data but where it's stored. X amount of tasks going on hitting the hdd/ssd at various points and trying to simultaneously read and write from various areas of the device all at once.

 

[Canadacpu]

Puget's testing is unfortunately useless, because they did all their testing on preliminary Ryzen BIOSes, slow RAM (Ryzen scales better than Intel with fast RAM), no overclocks (that one is more forgivable), and before the CCX issues were mitigated. I actually brought this to their attention and they told me they would be re-doing their review probably around May/June because of it. I actually had a lot of respect for Puget's testing but seeing them release such a poorly researched review was disappointing, and now I question their other results.

I did considerable testing comparing the 1800X (16GB RAM, 2X Nvidia 950 in SLI) vs the 3770K @ 4.4 Ghz (16GB RAM, Titan X Maxwel)l (I play games too), and for everything *I* do in Photoshop, the Ryzen was net faster. The only times it was slightly slower were in one of two-part HDR processes, and the second part was much quicker on Ryzen. Anything like saving/opening files or batch processing was over double as fast. So for my usage, Ryzen was faster even with a less than ideal setup. Being able to test it doing exactly what I do (I'm a real estate photographer) was very helpful. I also usually have at least a half dozen other things going on while I'm editing, downloads going, music playing, 10 internet tabs open, etc.

I do want to see what Skylake-X & Coffee Lake 6c/12t have to offer, but I'm pretty sure I won't like the prices. I just can't see Intel selling a 8c/16t SKU for $319 or anywhere near that.