Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance

To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.

The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.

Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Retouch Artists Speed Test

Hyper Threading does have a real benefit in Photoshop and thus we see the Core i5 750 suffering a bit. It's still faster than the Phenom II 965 BE but it is marginally slower than the i7 920. The 870 is bested only by the i7 975.

SYSMark 2007 Performance Video Encoding Performance
Comments Locked

343 Comments

View All Comments

  • Jamahl - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Digusting! How much money did intel bung you for this disgrace?
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    How is that disgusting? It is the stock configuration of the processor. They are not doing all this testing as an e-pissing contest of who has better performance per clock, it is a comparison of retail products in real-world applications. If (and according to the review, when) AMD has something similar, I'd imagine they will test with that turned on too.
  • Jamahl - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Why not benchmark the Phenom 2 with fusion for gaming anand???
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    "Why not benchmark the Phenom 2 with fusion for gaming anand??? "

    Have you actually tried using Fusion with Windows 7 x64? It is a total mess. I will be happy to show some results with it, most will say DNF, but that might not make you happy. ;) That said, AMD is working on it, especially trying to get it to play nice with AOD.

    In the meantime, here is the current list of items to watch out for - http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_fusion.aspx?p=3&...">http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_fusion.aspx?p=3&... .
  • Jamahl - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    What? It's AMD's fault that an unreleased 64-bit os is causing issues with their software?

    How many people are using Window 7 64 bit who visit this website?
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    It is just as bad in 64-bit Vista. I imagine a fair amount of people that visit the site are using the RTM version of Win7.
  • Jamahl - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    were you benchmarking a processor at 2.66 gigahertz or a processor at 3.2 gigahertz?
  • Gary Key - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Do you and SnakeOil live in the same house or is the IP address just that similar? LOL.. The processors were benched as they come out of the box. For Lynnfield that means turbo was on as we stated in the article and here in the comments. For Bloomfield, that also means turbo was on, just as it comes out of the retail box.

    If you check all the other reviews on the web at the main sites, everyone tested with turbo on in the primary benchmarks. So I guess you can say there is a huge conspiracy between us to actually utilize the processors as Intel intended for the users.

    Apparently, we all failed at covering it up, so congratulations on discovering the Freeturbomasons. A now not so secret fraternal organization bent on world domination through the use of turbo frequencies inside processors carrying the blue "i" logo.

    For the AMD Phenom II x4 series, they were benched with all cores enabled just as they come out of the box, even though you can disable each core in the BIOS just like you can disable turbo on the i7/i5. I guess to make things fair, we should disable the cores on the 965 BE as having that "feature" turned on is cheating.

    Anyway, thanks for making my day, I needed some much deserved laughter. :)
  • Chlorus - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Seeing as how Fusion isn't even out yet, that would be hard to do...go troll somewhere else. What is with the idiots coming out of the woodwork on this post? You've got the standard fanboys, as well as insecure LGA-1366 owners who feel the need to defend their purchase, and insecure purchasers of 1156 products who are afraid their choice might be bested in a benchmark somewhere.
  • Roland00 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Would you please rerun page 9 with an overclocked 975 and the 870. I am wondering how much the difference will grow when the gpus are fed more information due to the faster cpus. Something like 3.8 to 4.0 ghz on both cpus with turbo off (a good overclock yet not in the unreasonable area)

    If you are investing 400+ dollars in gpus, and you are building it yourself you are probably going to overclock.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now