I hesitate to bring this up - but here goes. <g> Last year I did some benchmarking to see which of the two G4's at my disposal was best to use as the main unit. This test was not exactly 'fair' - although it was as fair as one can make it given the situation and goals.
It may not mean anything to anyone else - but it was helpful in many respects to me. It is a better test than comparing a Mac to a PC, since the two apple units were fairly close to each other. Following is two edited posts that I sent to the Photoshop Discussion List at the time. === Unit A: G4 400, Single Processor, 370 Photoshop RAM allocation Unit B: G4 450 Dual Processor, 230 Photoshop RAM allocation After running a benchmarking action on both machines set to the same nearest possible test conditions of each computer being at it's optimum 'real world' performance (chock full of apps and files and not defragged, but with more than enough scratch for the tasks at hand): 50mb RGB Test File - 3.7 pix G/Blur: Unit A: 25.6 sec Unit B: 12.7 sec 85 pix G/Blur: Unit A: 28.2 sec Unit B: 13.6 sec 50/1/0 USM Unit A: 12.7 sec Unit B: 8.8 sec Despeckle: Unit A: 12.4 sec Unit B: 8.5 sec RGB to CMYK: Unit A: 39.0 sec Unit B: 37.3 sec 60% Image Size Width Unit A: 4.2 sec Unit B: 4.0 sec There are more results and more tests to do (this is only part of the benchmarking actions results), but it is obvious that even with less RAM the dual processor running 50mhz faster will speed up many of my operations (no real shock there). So that's it - there's no real point to this post, just sharing my initial findings on two real world computers (as in the past I have only had reviews to go by and these are usually stacked or not real world setups). This is not designed to test SP vs DP or I would have set both RAM the same...it is just an attempt to see which of the two boxes I have access to would be better to use as the main box. ====== I found this interesting link while doing a search on MP Photoshop http://www.reed.edu/~cosmo/pt/tips/Multi.html It seems that the benchmarking action is not 'ideal' for me, since many of it's tests are not 'real world' for my tasks - but it does provide some good answers anyway. Can't recall where I got it from, probably a search of the web for Photoshop benchmarking action or something. For example there are significant speed decreases for a large gaussian blur over a smaller blur - but a user may not use the larger blur often (say contrast masking) - when the smaller blur may be used a lot more (minor softening). What I took away is that the test image and benchmarking actions should be made by each user for the tasks they do each day. I rasterize many Quark pages (selected elements) into Photoshop so that I can perform seamless soft masking between elements that are usually alien to each other (vector/raster). Rasterizing a single or double page spread into Photoshop can be time consuming, as the resolutions are often higher than normal - since the Quark elements need to stay sharp (but 300 ppi is often acceptable), these are panels and perhaps headline type - nothing really sharp or small, that is left as vector in layout. Rasterize 28 mb Quark EPS single page to 300 ppi CMYK: Single processor - 71 seconds (half of this time is with the progress bar stuck on 0%...then suddenly it churns through the data) Dual processor - 44 seconds (instant rasterization progress with no stall) === I agree with Andrew Rodneys recent criticism of benchmarking tests in general, even more so Mac vs PC. I guess if one was making a dedicated purchase for raw file conversion, then testing a Mac and PC unit of the same approx price would be more realistic - but the choice of a computer is often for more reasons than for one 'simple' task. Stephen Marsh. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
