GPU or CPU: computer digital photography?

Question

Hi all,

I will be buying a computer soon, probably a laptop. I'd like something with enough power to run stuff like lightroom and photoshop without busting a gut. One website I found recommended the Dell Alienware line, but another said that Alienware is specifically good at gaming cos it has a heavy duty GPU.

I won't be doing any video editing, gaming or CAD work. I'm just looking for something that will process RAW files, apply filters etc at a decent speed.

So I guess my question is, what's more important for running stuff like lightroom, photoshop, maybe Capture ... CPU power, or GPU power? And can you let me know of your experiences with the specs of your machines pls?

(I'm currently running a Dell Dimension 2400 with 1GB of RAM, so I'm guessing pretty much anything on the market right now will be a step up ...)

Answer 1

If a system is made for playing current games without lag, then it will have no problems with Photoshop.



The main areas to look at are the memory (the closer to 8Gb the better) and the graphics card (do not use an on-board GPU for a desktop unit since it is using system memory).



My current editing (and gaming) desktop machine is a AMD 2.4GHz quad core, 8 GB RAM, 500watt power supply, a 9800GTX+ video card, 3- 1Tb hard drives, and a DVD/CD burner viewed on a 24" display.



My laptop has:

17.3" High-Definition LED widescreen

2.40 GHz AMD M600 Turion II Ultra Dual-Core CPU

8 Gb RAM

500GB hard drive

DVD burner



Both systems network to another system that handles the backups. They run Photoshop CS4 smoothly, but running CS4 on the laptop does eat the battery quickly in the field (~45 minutes).

Answer 2

Up until CS5 Photoshop was not that dependent on processor speed, it always could use as much Ram as you could give it.



For the first time with CS5 PS uses any hardware acceleration it can find, at the very least you need a graphics card with Open GL on it, but that's base level these days, lots of video Ram (1Mb) speeds it up too. CS5 uses Glide in the GUI, but it can work without it.



A multi-core processor is better, it speeds things such as opening and creating thumbnails in Bridge. There are a few filters that are processor speed dependent too. By far the biggest speed hyke you can apply to PS is a Raid system, the bottleneck has always been opening and saving files to the hard drives. With the ever larger Mp sensors files for HDR or panorama multi image files etc. can be in the Gb range after processing, a 4 drive Raid system can handle these with the same speed as high speed Ram.



A high end gaming machine is overkill for PS, but it will give you a high level of future proofing.



Chris

Answer 3

effective processing unit, the CPU is the brains of the computing gadget. each so often noted simply by fact the effective processor,yet fairly often referred to as processor, the CPU is the place maximum calculations take place. in terms of computing skill, the CPU is the main mandatory ingredient of a working laptop or computing gadget equipment. Used on the whole for 3-D purposes, a portraits processing unit is a single-chip processor that creates lights outcomes and transforms products each time a three-D scene is redrawn. those are mathematically-in intensity initiatives, which otherwise, might positioned fairly a tension on the CPU. Lifting this burden from the CPU frees up cycles which would be used for different jobs.