Two questions

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

Thank you for your time and the info. I don't know
how I've gone all this time with such a misconception.

likely the same reason you've gone all this time with all of the other
misconceptions you have.

| This is odd. On my current machine there's a dual
| AMD 3.9. Windows see two cores. What you're saying
| implies that I really have two CPUs, for a total of 7.8
| GHz. But if I run CPUID it sees two cores, and it tells
| me each is running at 1,800 MHz. (I presumed it was
| determining a safe multiplier for a cool speed.)
|
| That sounds like you actually have just 1 core, and it
| is hyperthreaded.
|
| Can you find something that tells what the chip actually
| is? Google suggests that there are AMD dual core 3.9GHz
| chips (AMD A6-6400K). But it that is running at 1.8GHz
| you should be seeing effectively 4 cores. (I'm not
| familiar with your software, so it might not show logical
| cores, but only the real ones.)

I figured it out. First I tried setting the multiplier
manually. Still running 1,800 per core. So I did more
research and found the answer: It's running two 3900
cores but it uses "Cool n Quiet" to keep the heat down.
With a real-time monitor named Core Temp I was able
to test it and see that it ramps up as needed. So cool
at idle, full speed when needed.

Thank you for your time and the info. I don't know
how I've gone all this time with such a misconception.
I feel like the kid who's suddenly discovered that horse
doovers and hors d'oeuvres are one and the same.

On 9/17/2015 12:15 AM, Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

snip

All 4 cores are totally independent as for as GHz is
concerned. Just as if they were on 4 separate chips, or
for that matter in 4 separate boxes.

What you are describing is true of a single core that is
hyperthreaded. With that there is one clock and one
core, but the hyperthreading makes it look to the
software as if there are multiple cores.
Multi-threading in that way slows everything down by 1/2
each time the number of threads is doubled. (Actually
it is slightly slower than half due to administrative
overhead for context switching.)

But multi-core CPU's actually have different hardware
for each core, each core runs independently at full
clock speed, asynchronously to the other cores.

Here's the difference in practice... If you do a lot of
text editing, either writing papers or reading and
writing email, having a hyperthreaded single core vs
just a single core is very nice. Clock speed doesn't
make any difference to a text editor, because vastly
more than 99% if all clock cycles are no-ops that just
give up their slice immediately while waiting for
keyboard input. Everything else keeps right on chugging
along without a hitch, yet the reponse time of the
editor to keyboard input is always very quick. Some
interupt that bogs down 1 logical CPU for 2 or 3 seconds
won't cause the keyboard to wait that long. This is
probably very useful for a typical laptop, as an
example.

But on a desktop, if it is used for anything that is CPU
intensive, actual multiple cores are much better. Not
just at speeding up the CPU intensive processes, but
allowing that same quick response time for the keyboard.
What works is 1 core for every CPU process being run in
parallel, plus one for everything else.

The last time I even thought about a single core desktop
was over 20 years ago. I'm not sure about a laptop, but
that wasn't too long after.

Floyd.
Bottom line:
I plan to make my purchase within the next week.
Would I be making any great mistake by getting an i7 quad core
processor, or its AMD equivalent, with at least 16g memory, and a video
card that would fully utilize a 4k ass monitor.

What would I tangibly lose if I got an 15 with a similar speed.
As you know my prime use is for Photoshop2015, with plugins & Corel Painter.







--
PeterN

In article , PeterN
wrote:

I plan to make my purchase within the next week.
Would I be making any great mistake by getting an i7 quad core
processor, or its AMD equivalent, with at least 16g memory, and a video
card that would fully utilize a 4k ass monitor.

no, and stick with intel.

What would I tangibly lose if I got an 15 with a similar speed.

not much in most cases. either way you can't go wrong.

On 9/17/2015 12:27 PM, PAS wrote:
"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article , PAS
wrote:

what's more important is getting an ssd and a lot of memory, 16 gig
should be sufficient unless you're *really* pushing it hard.

16 gigs is a good amount of ram. If my motherboard supported 32 gigs,
I'd use it since the cost of RAM is cheap.

32 gig is certainly nice but it's not going to make much of a
difference if you're not pushing the limits of 16 gig and most people
don't.

Getting an SSD is not so
important.

nonsense.

an ssd is one of the easiest and best ways to boost performance, and by
a *lot*, even for older computers.

For example, Photoshop will launch faster when it's
installed on an SSD but the app itself won't run any faster.

everything will be significantly faster because the majority of what
people do is i/o bound, including photoshop.

There's a
benefit to using an SSD as a scratch disk for Photoshop if the image
doesn't fit into RAM. If the image does fit into RAM and you've got
lots of RAM, there will be no performance benefit to having an SSD.

nonsense.

you've never actually tried it, have you?

The only nonsense is coming from you. Direct from Adobe's website:

"Installing Photoshop on a solid-state disk (SSD) allows Photoshop to
launch fast, probably in less than a second. But that speedier startup
is the only time savings you experience. That's the only time when much
data is read from the SSD.
To gain the greatest benefit from an SSD, use it as the scratch disk.
Using it as a scratch disk gives you significant performance
improvements if you have images that don't fit entirely in RAM. For
example, swapping tiles between RAM and an SSD is much faster than
swapping between RAM and a hard disk."


Of course, what does Adobe know about their own application?

I installed an SSD in my laptop that is used as a scratch disk. Since
doing so I noticed a significant increase in operational speed.

Telling nospam that everything need not be on an SSD, will provoke a
reaction that is almost as violent as if you made a disparaging comment
about Apple.


The
cost and size of SSD vs. HDD may be enough of a factor to use HDD.

use both.

put the operating system and all apps on the ssd, along with any
current documents being worked on.

keep less frequently used documents on a hard drive, such as a photo
library, music library, tax returns from last year, etc.

even better, get a fusion drive (only available on macs) and let the
computer figure out what goes where based on usage patterns, all
without any effort from the user.



--
PeterN

"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article , PAS
wrote:


if you replace your hard drive with an ssd, where exactly do you
think
the scratch file will go?

In a multiple drive system you choose where it goes.

the majority of computers have a single drive, but regardless, it's
trivial to choose.

again, an ssd is the easiest and often the cheapest performance
boost
one can make, which affects just about every single app.

Yes, there is a performance boost but if one's primary use of a
computer
is Photoshop, there's not much of a boost.

oh yes there is.

i can tell you first hand that changing a spinner to an ssd makes a
*huge* difference across the board, hands down, even on older
computers
where the bus is not as fast as in modern computers.

it's night and day, even on an older computer that's bottlenecked
by
slower sata or even pata, but the benefit will obviously be less.

do you have an ssd in any of your systems? i think not.

I have no need for one.

exactly as i thought.

you have no experience with ssd. you're talking out your ass.

I said I don't own one, that doesn't mean I've never used one or perhaps
someone in my house has one on his laptop? Being all-knowing, I'm
surprised you didn't pick up on that.

I will have one eventually but at the moment my
HDDs work just fine for my needs. My 174hp Subaru gets me around
fine,
I don't need a 707hp Dodge Charger Hellcat to do that. It might be
nice
to have but not necessary for my needs.

in other words, you're happy with a substandard system.

Are you happy with your substandard car?

if you spent just $100 for an ssd (256 gig) and moved the os and apps
to it, you'd see a *huge* performance increase, for very little money.

shop around and you can even find an ssd for $70-80ish, and that's a
name brand (crucial or samsung), not some noname crap.

On 9/17/2015 1:11 PM, Alan Browne wrote:
On 2015-09-17 12:27, PAS wrote:
"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article , PAS
wrote:

what's more important is getting an ssd and a lot of memory, 16 gig
should be sufficient unless you're *really* pushing it hard.

16 gigs is a good amount of ram. If my motherboard supported 32 gigs,
I'd use it since the cost of RAM is cheap.

32 gig is certainly nice but it's not going to make much of a
difference if you're not pushing the limits of 16 gig and most people
don't.

Getting an SSD is not so
important.

nonsense.

an ssd is one of the easiest and best ways to boost performance, and by
a *lot*, even for older computers.

For example, Photoshop will launch faster when it's
installed on an SSD but the app itself won't run any faster.

everything will be significantly faster because the majority of what
people do is i/o bound, including photoshop.

There's a
benefit to using an SSD as a scratch disk for Photoshop if the image
doesn't fit into RAM. If the image does fit into RAM and you've got
lots of RAM, there will be no performance benefit to having an SSD.

nonsense.

you've never actually tried it, have you?

The only nonsense is coming from you. Direct from Adobe's website:

You're using marketing hyperbole to cover your misunderstanding of
memory use by PS.

"Installing Photoshop on a solid-state disk (SSD) allows Photoshop to
launch fast, probably in less than a second. But that speedier startup
is the only time savings you experience. That's the only time when much
data is read from the SSD.
To gain the greatest benefit from an SSD, use it as the scratch disk.
Using it as a scratch disk gives you significant performance
improvements if you have images that don't fit entirely in RAM. For
example, swapping tiles between RAM and an SSD is much faster than
swapping between RAM and a hard disk."

Photoshop's aged scratchdisk implementation comes from a time when there
wasn't much RAM and a typical machine had many resources competing for
memory.

Given today's memory space on typical computers, the scratch disk is
probably not used at all in most photo processing by most people. And
high volume workload photo editors typically have machines with generous
amounts of RAM.

These days the cheapest boost to photoshop speed is RAM, RAM and more
RAM whether or not you have SSD. Given HD or SSD the later is better,
of course but in most machines it's not even touched.

I have 24 GB on this computer. So the scratch disk is an unused
afterthought.


That is true for a lot of cameras. But my D800 basic image is 34 mp.


--
PeterN

In article , Pablo
wrote:

moving the cursor is not an 'event'. no cpu is needed for it to move.

Ok, so when a programme wants to know where the mouse cursor is, how the
hell does it know? What the hell is the point of a mouse if programs
don't even know where the cursor is?

if an app wants to know where the mouse is, then it can query for its
position.

otherwise, there's no need to know.

Information has to be updated so that if a program wants to know where the
cursor is, it just queries the OS or API or whatever.

cursor position information is maintained by the hardware controlling
the cursor, not the cpu.

Either way, you haven't a clue what you're talking about.

oh yes i do. i used to write trackball drivers.

Interrupts still happen. The mouse cursor being *defined* in hardware has
nothing to do with that.

interrupts haven't been used for mice for years.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...x-ubuntu-14-04

all that means is linux is stuck in the past. no surprise there.

In article , PeterN
wrote:

I installed an SSD in my laptop that is used as a scratch disk. Since
doing so I noticed a significant increase in operational speed.

no surprise there.

Telling nospam that everything need not be on an SSD, will provoke a
reaction that is almost as violent as if you made a disparaging comment
about Apple.

not only is that wrong, but it's exactly what i said.

you ought to read the posts before you spew.

"Alan Browne" wrote in message
...
On 2015-09-16 16:23, PeterN wrote:

Thanks, sounds like good information. Since I am doing pre-purchase
research, I will not be doing the experiments. I am thinking quad
core
with about a 3.5 - 3.8 CPU. I know there are faster, but I am not yet
convinced that the additional price is worth the extra cost.

Typically it's not. If you're trading RAM for CPU always go for more
RAM and less clock. More cores and less clock is good too.

8 GB is not expensive. 16 GB is affordable. (Generally it is cheaper
to buy a desktop computer with 8 GB and then eventually add 16 GB in
the 3rd and 4th slots for 24 GB total. Then you're talking - and it
leaves you the option to swap the 8 GB bank for 16 in the future)

Good point. One word of caution is to research what motherboard will be
in the computer that is being bought. Some may not have more than two
memory slots. Then there's the issue of enough USB ports in which case
if there isn't, a card will have to be added and there has to be one
open slot for that.

Before I upgarded my home-built desktop, My wife and I were in Costco
and she questioned me as to why won't I just buy one the systems they
had there. I walked over the the best one they had and opened the
case - no room for any real expansion. That's a good enough reason for
me not to buy one. But that's an off-the-shelf system from warehouse
store. One can be ordered from a number of sellers to fit anyone's
needs. I just like to build my own.

Even under high loads a dual core (HT) (most recent i5's for example
run 4 threads) computer won't use 99% of all the CPU resources -
certainly not in Photoshop - or when it does it's a fleeting thing.

If you do a lot of video processing, then by all means more cores,
higher clock and more memory is the way to go.

GPU use is also increasing in many photo apps like Photoshop.
For example, Adobe will be adopting OS X "Metal" in upcoming versions
of Photoshop/Lightroom, and so on. Under Windows Adobe GPU use is
done by the less efficient OpenGL in Lightroom and camera raw.