Schoee Loc: Europe

The latest beta of Affinity Photo has a benchmark built in. This will allow comparison of various computers for their relative computing power specifically related to photo editing. Will be very useful in future when someone recommends a particular PC or laptop to see its actual performance. Does Photoshop have something similar?

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Short answer.

Buy a Gaming Desktop.

Swap a regular sound card for the pricey gaming sound card.

Sell the fancy sound card.

Use the money to buy a better Monitor.

Use Photoshop Classic.

Skip all the technical reading and comparisons to figure which computer does what from the test parameters.

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

Adobe has minimum a requirements on their sight. It doesn't talk about specific computers,
It also list graphic card compatibility.

Schoee Loc: Europe

I understand your idea but I think a benchmark can be really useful to compare options particularly if buying standardised laptops for example. Also can give a good indication of the value of upgrading RAM or graphics card instead. Just a handy thing to have.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I once attended a gymkhana. If you are not familiar, it is a course set on a flat area, with cones, barrels, reversals, hairpins, straight sections etc. At the amateur level, they are often open competitions. There can be as many as 60-100 contestants in all sorts of vehicles competing. The winners are based by division and there is also an overall winner. The goal is to navigate the course in the least amount of time and with the fewest number of mistakes.

So this guy shows up with a Dodge Viper - an 8.4L V10, over 600 hp, mid/rear engine, etc etc etc - 0-60 in 3.5 sec, top speed of 208 mph. The driver figured he had it in the bag. This other guy shows up in a beat up and rusty old '91 Honda CRX, but one that had obviously had considerable suspension and engine tuning. To everyone's surprise, and to the Viper driver's chagrin, the CRX took first overall. He did not have the fastest car - that went to the Viper, but the driver was skilled, precise, obviously experienced, and really knew his car and the course - better than anyone else who showed up that day.

I'm telling this story in order to make a point - having a fast performing computer is not going to give you an edge - but knowing how to use it efficiently will. Unless you are looking at a computer that is generations-old - there won't be much of a difference.

I just got a blazingly fast laptop - to replace an 11 yr old desktop. Sure the specs are clearly better - and performance is "snappier" but in terms of throughput, I might be saving a half an hour on 6-7 hours of image editing - and that is mostly program startup, computational time to merge panos, HDR and focus stacks, etc - things I don't do on most images.

A benchmark feature on a program is a lot like the button you push on the traffic light pole when you want to cross the street - most of the time it basically does nothing but make you feel like you might have a little control.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Excellent reply post.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Note I said desktop. Upgrade a purchased Laptop, have fun. Personally all the laptops I've had, 3 have turned out to be pricey toys that did not last long. They all died. All my desktops have been retired while still running. See my point?

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Schoee Loc: Europe

Hi Gene, I have the greatest respect for you opinions and often read you contributions here. I just can’t quite understand the agression I am seeing from several posters about the benchmark issue. I think it is just another tool that could help. Obviously if money is no object then my PC will be fastest CPU, latest best GPU and max RAM. But if I want to compare say an Acer Swift laptop to a HP Envy to a Microsoft Surface then a benchmark might help me.
I think from now on I should just keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Thanks. Some great images there. I don't have my better shots on any one source. Thank you.

rck281 Loc: Overland Park, KS

Try Geekbench 5 for benchmarking.

Schoee Loc: Europe

Hi Rck281, Thanks for that. I am aware there are many benchmarks available but just wanted to let people know there was one now specifically aimed at post processing software.

BebuLamar

I don't think Adobe has a benchmark software for Photoshop but the Puget System has the Pugetbench for Photoshop plug in to benchmark and compare to other PC systems.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

I’m curious to how a person will have access to new hardware to do test personally? There are tons of people doing hardware tests against many machines even ones specific for pp software. I’m a Mac user and Matt Suess just did a great unscientific review of performance of pp software on a late model mbp against a Mac mini M1. All the testing I need so I’ll spend time shooting images instead. And I’m a computer nerd first.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Another alternative, for Mac lovers: Buy a Mac Mini with an Apple Silicon M1 processor. Get the 16GB RAM/512GB SSD model ($1100 plus display, keyboard, mouse). When Adobe releases M1 Native versions of their apps this year, you'll be set. (Adobe apps run fine now, in Rosetta 2 emulation, usually faster than on similarly priced Intel machines.) Affinity Photo is $25 right now, and runs both natively on M1, in Rosetta 2 on M1 (for use with Intel plug-ins) and natively on Intel. It also runs on Windows or iPads.

The M1 machines connect to ANYTHING except external display card adapters via Thunderbolt/USB 4 or USB 3.2. High quality sound is built-in, as is support for one 6K display or two 4K displays. They also come with a lot of very useful software, and too many other things to mention here.

Watch a few of the excellent reviews of the new M1 systems on YouTube, and you'll see these machines beating out computers costing FOUR TIMES as much money for most common tasks *other than* gaming.

Intel and AMD are now scrambling to figure out how to release ARM-based competitors to Apple's new chips. It may be a while, as Apple has a 10-year R&D lead. They will have dumped Intel entirely by the end of 2022. The x86 architecture isn't dead yet, but it is wounded. I give it 10 to 12 years...